Florine Stettheimer at DIA

One of a group of bloggers posting in support of the Detroit Institute of Arts collection, Andrew Russeth writes about Florine Stettheimer's Love Flight of a Pink Candy Heart (1930).

Russeth comments: "the more time you spend with [Stettheimer's paintings], the stranger and more interesting they get. You notice odd messages and codes that she had secreted within them. She hides inscriptions and captions in plain sight, and often includes seemingly random bits of architecture that actually have deep personal significance once you know what she's referring to (thanks to the work of some intrepid scholars). They're ideal permanent-collection works, in other words, generously repaying repeat viewings… they seem almost preternaturally confident and brave in their idiosyncratic style… Her work stands as a reminder that tidy, linear histories of modernism are simply false… in her paintings, definitions of gender and sexuality, as well as narrative and formalism, become gloriously unmoored and free-floating. They embody and promote a permissiveness that I suspect I am not alone in finding deeply comforting."