Marni Kessler
@marnikessler
Prof. 19th-C French art. Thinking about aerial & subterranean environments, materiality, & always gender | Books (UMinn Press): Discomfort Food: The Culinary Imagination in Late 19th-C. French Art; Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet's Paris
One last visit to see the gorgeous Hilma af Klint:What Stands Behind the Flowers@MoMA before it closes next week. It’s still about the searching roots & fragile petals for me. But these goat willows with their nearly translucent faces overlaid w pin-sized dabs of yellow! Just wow!
Yes! Such an amazing show! For me, her representation of roots was especially revelatory. Each one so fragile yet so tough.
Astonished as I look and look at every gorgeous watercolor in the Hilma af Klint show @MoMA. Just the right amount of pigment barely held by fragile graphite filaments and slivers of unfilled paper to represent intricately searching roots, gossamer petals, and slender stems.
Spent Fri in the study room @artinstitutechi.bsky.social thinking about industrial smoke, Prussian blue, and extraction in Degas’ knockout Landscape with Smokestacks
Such a joy to see the magisterial “Gustave Caillebotte:Painting his World” exh @artinstitutechi.bsky.social on Sat with 2 beloved former grad students. The show is full of clever juxtapositions that inspire new thoughts. But I’ll never tire of the grids and veils that structure many of his works.
Moved by the Friedrich exhibition @ the Met. Delicately drawn clutches of leaves & blooms and spruce needles quieted by the softest snow. He understood deeply the aliveness of nature.