Jessica Helfand

Interviews by Brainard Carey

Photo: by Philip Bennett Jessica Helfand (b. 1960) is an artist and writer. She grew up in Paris and New York City, and received her BA and MFA from Yale University where she taught for more than two decades. She is the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism, and was the first-ever recipient, in 2010, of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome. A 2018 Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieri and a 2019 fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Jessica Helfand was also the 2020 Artist in Residence at Caltech. She lives and works in New England. A view of some of the paintings which will be on view from May 1 to June 1 at Jim Kempner Fine Art in New York. (Photo courtesy of the artist.) Agnes Grey, Anne Brönte, 1847, Mixed media and oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, 2024The cold wind had swelled and reddened my hands, uncurled and entangled my hair, and dyed my face of a pale purple; add to this my collar was horridly crumpled, my frock splashed with mud, my feet clad in stout new boots, and as the trunks were not brought up, there was no remedy … so having smoothed my hair as well as I could, and repeatedly twitched my obdurate collar, I proceeded to clomp down two flights of stairs, philosophizing as I went. Claudine, Claudine in Paris, Colette, 1901, Mixed media and oil on canvas, 52 x 42 inches, 2025. Pointed chin, you’re attractive but don’t, I implore you, overdo that point. Hazel eyes, you persist in being hazel and I can’t blame you for it; but don’t retreat under my eyebrows with that excessive modesty. Mouth, you’re still my mouth, but so pale that I can’t resist rubbing those short, colorless lips with petals pulled from the red geranium in the window. (Incidentally it only gives them a horrid, purplish tinge that I promptly lick off.) As to you, my poor little white, anaemic ears, I hide you under my curly hair and secretly look at you from time to time and pinch you to make you redden. But it’s my hair that’s the worst of all. I can’t touch it without wanting to cry ... they’ve cut them all off, just below the ear—my auburn ringlets, my lovely, smoothly-rolled ringlets!