Kate Nepveu
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katenepveu.bsky.social
Kate Nepveu
@katenepveu.bsky.social
550 followers 170 following 630 posts
Speaking solely for myself. Neither gives nor receives unsolicited advice. She/her.

Also:

https://kate-nepveu.dreamwidth.org/
https://katenepveu.tumblr.com/
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katenepveu.bsky.social
SteelyKid and Argos both enjoy it when Argos visits
a big yellow Labrador Retriever lying across the lap of SteelyKid, a teenager, who is stretched out on the floor the same duo except the dog has shifted his head so his face is extra squishy
September 21, 2025 at 2:00 PM
katenepveu.bsky.social
hmm that's very interesting and an angle I hadn't thought of!

though one of my thoughts was, is this just Swordspoint (the "point": power makes people shitty), which of course everyone always used to quote without adding the following paragraph. something something gritty reality of fairy tales?
From chapter one of Swordspoint: Let the fairy tale begin on a winter’s morning, then, with one drop of blood new-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on the lace cuff. And it therefore follows that evil lurks behind each broken window, scheming malice and enchantment; while behind the latched shutters the good are sleeping their just sleeps at this early hour in Riverside. Soon they will arise to go about their business; and one, maybe, will be as lovely as the day, armed, as are the good, for a predestined triumph… BUT THERE IS NO ONE BEHIND the broken windows; only eddies of snow drift across bare floorboards. The owners of the coats of arms have long since abandoned all claims to the houses they crest, and moved up to the Hill, where they can look down on all the city. No king rules them any more, for good or ill. From the Hill, Riverside is a tiny splotch between two riverbanks, an unsavory quarter in a prosperous city. The people who live there now like to think of themselves as evil, but they’re really no worse than anyone else. And already this morning more than one drop of blood has been shed.
September 14, 2025 at 3:02 PM
katenepveu.bsky.social
really, Nick Carraway, do tell me more
From Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby: Most of the time I worked. In the early morning the sun threw my shadow westward as I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York to the Probity Trust. I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee. I even had a short ​affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department, but her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction, so when she went on her vacation in July I let it blow quietly away. Also from Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby: Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
September 14, 2025 at 2:36 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
it's a lovely sunny day that's not, for a change, too hot, with a bit of a breeze, and so all's right with the world if you're a pupper
Brown brindle dog lying down in sunny grass and smiling
August 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
katenepveu.bsky.social
me to @orzelc.bsky.social : "How did you do this?!"

Chad, looking at me like I'm the one who's weird here: "Carefully."
the tiniest sliver of the end of a stick of butter, carefully sliced straight up-and-down, standing all by its lonesome in a butter dish
July 27, 2025 at 1:43 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
oh no I've just realized that "Charlie my pupper, Charlie my dog" scans to "How Long?" from Hadestown, and I'm going to be spending all day trying to come up with more lyrics.

(we earlier found that "Charlie is a good pupper" scans to "Sheena is a punk rocker," but that's all you need for that one)
the aforementioned Charlie, a brown brindle dog who does not like being wet or having a towel draped over him, and therefore looks sadly at the camera
July 22, 2025 at 10:21 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
I thought I was done with art for the day after I left the museum, but then I saw the giant baby heads out back.

Day and Night by Antonio López García. Bronze, edition 1 of 3.

collections.mfa.org/objects/5068...
collections.mfa.org/objects/5131...

18/18
Two almost eight-feet-tall bronze sculptures of baby heads in front of the Fenway side of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The head closest to the camera, on the right side of the picture, is "Night" and has closed eyes; the distant one, on the far left, is "Day" and has blank open eyes.
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Sarah Bernhardt. French, 1844-1923. Fantastic Inkwell (Self-Portrait as a Sphinx), 1880. Bronze. (MFA's photo.)

The little devil's eyes are hollow, which isn't clear from this photo; I was pretty sure that hers were too.

collections.mfa.org/objects/5405...

17/18
Accompanying label text: Celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt was also a sculptor, and this bronze inkwell is a self-portrait. She shows herself as a sphinx, with the body of a griffon, wings of a bat, and tail of a fish-a metaphor for her ability to transform herself, both on stage and off. When touring abroad, she sometimes exhibited a cast of this self-portrait in cities where she was performing. Helen and Alice Colburn Fund, 1973 1973.551a-d
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Arnold Böcklin
Swiss, 1827-1901

Odysseus and Polyphemus, 1896
Oil and tempera on panel

This is not that big but it feels appropriately epic.

collections.mfa.org/objects/5641...

16/18
Accompanying label text: Böcklin's training as a landscape painter shines through in this unconventional interpretation of an episode from the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey. Set on the island of the Cyclopes--one-eyed, ill-tempered giants--this dramatic scene finds the escaping hero Odysseus calling back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops Polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Playing up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of such stories, Böcklin conjured a pre-classical world governed by violence and lust, while giving it a plausible setting rooted in naturalistic observation. Museum purchase with funds by exchange from the Gift of Laurence K. and Lorna J. Marshall, 2012 2012.626
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Jean Hélion. French, 1904-1987. Composition: Standing Figure, 1935. Oil on canvas.

From down the hall I fully believed this was three-dimensional.

collections.mfa.org/objects/3358...

15/18
Accompanying label text: When the Museum acquired this painting, the artist noted in a letter: "This picture of 1935, painted when I felt fully non-representational, was already a figure. Something standing up. With a small part on the top; a fat part in the middle; a smaller part at the feet. [...] In 1935 and 1936, I painted a suite of standing figures that I visualized as a sort of family." Hélion and Arp, whose relief is displayed nearby, worked in the same artistic circle in Paris during the 1930s; their works on view here share a playful quality, contrasting flatness and depth, abstraction and figuration. Gift of Mrs. Peggy Guggenheim, 1957 57.153
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Doron Langberg. American (born in Israel), born in 1985. Merge, 2023. Oil on linen.

This is massive and joyful.

collections.mfa.org/objects/7145...

14/18
Accompanying label text: Langberg is known for boldly colored scenes of homoerotic intimacy. Often posing models in his studio, the artist develops sketches from life, then uses these studies to create larger compositions. While most of Langberg's work to date has depicted friends and lovers in domestic settings, his recent pictures such as this one move them out of the bedroom and into nighttime gathering spots. These dance clubs, bars, and underground parties are places of public communion and revelry that provide the opportunity to experiment further with a bright but nocturnal palette and represent a world of different possibilities for queer culture and community. Museum purchase with funds donated by Brian McCarthy and Daniel Sager and Ives Family Fund, 2024 2024.2926.1-2
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Kiki Smith. American, born in 1954. Lilith, 1994. Silicon bronze and glass.

Another one that compels attention from across an entire room.

collections.mfa.org/objects/3587...

13/18
High on a blank wall is a sculpture of a nude female figure, who is crouching with her hands and feet against the wall, her head pointing down, and her back facing the viewer. Accompanying label text: In ancient Jewish folklore, Lilith was the disobedient first wife of Adam. When she refused to submit to her husband, she was expelled from the Garden of Eden and forced to roam the wilderness for eternity. For some, she became a child-stealing, home-wrecking she-demon whose unruly femininity countered everything sacred and good. For the artist here, Lilith's mythical defiance is not only unsettling but also empowering: her refusal to be domesticated or subservient is symbolic of her uncontrollable spirit and feminist power. Contemporary Art Support Group Fund, Robert L. Beal, Enid L. Beal and Bruce A. Beal Acquisition Fund, Barbara Fish Lee, and Lorna and Robert M. Rosenberg Fund, 1996 1996.60 The same sculpture from below and to the right; her face is turned to the right and looking slightly upward. The irises of her eyes are red.
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Fred Wilson. American, born in 1954. lago's Mirror, 2009. Murano glass.

I didn't realize it was actually a working mirror until I read the label; you can see me in the right-hand photo.

collections.mfa.org/objects/5526...

12/18
Ornate black mirror seen from slightly to the left. Accompanying label text: Wilson fabricated this work alongside skilled glassmakers in Venice, one of the locations for William Shakespeare's Othello (1603-04). That play's cruel villain, lago, is a trusted friend of the general Othello--described by the playwright as a Moor, a person of African or Arab descent. Perhaps in part motivated by hate for Othello's racial identity, lago forms a devious plot to manipulate the court and destroy Othello's relationship with his beloved wife, Desdemona. Wilson and the artisans applied a solid finish to the back of the glass rather than the traditional reflective silver, so the now jet-black mirror seems to reflect a world darkened by histories of conquest and betrayal. John and Ernestine Payne Fund and The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, 2011 2011.235 The same mirror seen from the front.
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Peter Halley. American, born in 1953. Kirk, 1992. Acrylic, Day-glo acrylic, and Roll-a-tex on canvas.

I was interested that the label doesn't mention that "kirk" means "church."

collections.mfa.org/objects/3540...

11/18
A square abstract painting with a background of medium gray. A solid square of very dark grey or black is centered in the painting and fills most of it. In the center is a smallish hollow square in neon yellow, which is divided evenly by three vertical neon yellow lines or bars. Accompanying label text: Since the early 1980s, Halley has imbued the hard-edged geometries of 20th-century abstraction with references to the built environment, specifically the barred windows, tight corridors and tunnels, and rectilinear cells of prisons. While his use of fluorescent pigments speaks to his interest in the contemporary spirit of the electronic age, the centuries-old forms of architecture made for isolation that inspire his compositions also evoke the harsh chill of surveillance and punishment so heightened in our present moment. Gift of the artist, Karen Sweet and Charlene Engelhard Troy, 1992 1992.481
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Jeffrey Gibson. Mississippi Band Choctaw, Cherokee, born in 1972. Document, 2015. Acrylic and graphite on deer rawhide, steel nails.

This is just extremely cool.

collections.mfa.org/objects/6308...

10/18
Accompanying label text: In Document, Gibson adapts the format of winter counts--illustrated calendars made on bison or deer hide for and by Indigenous communities in the Plains region to visually register historical events and communal memory. Rather than documenting the experience of passing years, Gibson combined abstract forms and precise layering of paint over several months to ruminate on the conventions and differences in how time and history are marked. The rigid edges of Gibson's painting respond to the sinuous, organic edges of the stretched deer hide. James N. Krebs Purchase Fund for 21st Century Paintings, 2016 2016.110
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Jas Knight. American, born in 1977. Lumumba's Harp, 2012. Oil on linen.

I really liked the starkness of this painting's composition.

collections.mfa.org/objects/6918...

9/18
Accompanying label text: This painting pays homage to Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961), a leader in the Congolese National Movement against colonial control by Belgium, who was elected the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960. An outspoken pan-Africanist who emphasized the shared political interests of all people of African descent across the world, Lumumba was assassinated six months after taking office. Knight's portrait consists of objects gathered from across the African continent: the mask from South Sudan, the carved figure from Nigeria atop a pot holder basket from Cameroon, and the harp from Gabon. Jim N. Krebs Purchase Fund for 21st Century Painting, 2020 2020.220
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Yoshitomo Nara. Japanese, born in 1959. Your Dog, 2003. Fiberglass, black paint, clear coat.

This doesn't seem super subversive to me, despite the label text, but then again I like dogs?

collections.mfa.org/objects/6643...

8/18
Accompanying label text: Nara's canine sculpture evokes the large stone guardians, often called "lion dogs," stationed at entrances of Shinto shrines to ward off evil spirits. It may also remind us of just how big a dog can seem when you are small--the immense scale of Your Dog adds an element of menace as it towers over us. Although they recall the artist's own youth, Nara's works subvert conventional depictions of childhood as happy, simple, and carefree. First rising to prominence in the mid-1990s, Nara is part of a generation of Japanese Neo Pop artists who employ the style and vocabulary of contemporary popular culture in order to both critique and celebrate it. Gift of Barbara L. and Theodore B. Alfond, 2019 2019.653
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Norval Morrisseau. Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation, 1931-2007. Bear Father, Bear Son, 1989. Acrylic on canvas.

This absolutely leaped out across an entire intervening room.

collections.mfa.org/objects/6968...

7/18
Accompanying label text: Morrisseau once described this painting as "Bear Gives Knowledge to Man. Man Gives Knowledge to Son," pointing to themes of kinship, teaching, and transformation. Against a symmetrical, yellow background, curved blue lines weave together humans, animals, insects, and orbs. Bodies filled with blocks of color slip into each other, obscuring where one figure begins and the other ends. The bear, related to Anishinaabe cosmologies and family organizational structures, has wide eyes, pointed teeth, and a strong back that supports the other beings. Bears were significant to Morrisseau, having personal connections with them through religious experiences while growing up at Sand Point reserve near Lake Nipigon, Ontario. Now recognized as the most influential First Nations artist to work in traditional Western painting, Morrisseau invented a style, visualizing Anishinaabe histories and powers of the natural world. His flowing black outlines, swelling circular forms, and vibrant colors have inspired generations of artists. The Betty Mayland Ellis Fund for Canadian Paintings, 2021 2021.785
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Hyman Bloom. American (born in Lithuania, now Latvia), 1913-2009. Chandelier No. 2, 1945. Oil on canvas.

The colors are even more intense than I was able to capture; the image at the MFA's website comes closer.

collections.mfa.org/objects/6718...

6/18
Accompanying label text: Fifteen synagogues once crowded Boston's West End, where Bloom settled after immigrating to the United States. He painted many Jewish subjects--rabbis, religious services, Torah scrolls, and synagogue chandeliers. This enlarged crystal fixture, abstracted from its surroundings, drips with intense light that almost dissolves its substance, transforming the physical into the spiritual. As painter Elaine de Kooning remarked, Bloom "packs in his colors...until the pigment itself seems to assume an extraordinary incandescence. The deep yellows...expand and shrink in a flood of multi-colored light which sets every dab of paint in motion before your eyes." Gift of the Bloom family in memory of Joan and Barry Bloom, 2018 2018.2759
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Joseph Mallord William Turner. English, 1775-1851. Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming on), 1840. Oil on canvas. MFA's photo.

This last piece is on the right wall of the room. It worked less well than Copley's for me.

collections.mfa.org/objects/3110...

5/18
Accompanying label text: At once beautiful and horrific, Slave Ship seduces the eye with its striking pinks, purples, blues, and yellows within layers upon layers of paint, and then strikes the viewer with a scene of unspeakable brutality. At lower right, an enchained limb is devoured by nightmarish fish. In the center, hands grasp for the surface in a futile attempt to stay above water. Turner asks viewers not just to look but to bear witness to slavery's horror, its drowning victims, and the cold cruelty of the enslavers who sail away into the night. The painting refers to a notorious incident aboard the Zong, a British ship whose captain forced 133 Africans overboard in 1781 to collect insurance money for those "lost at sea." Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 1899 99.22
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
Ayana V. Jackson. American, born in 1977. Some people have spiritual eyes I, 2020; Some people have spiritual eyes II, 2020. Archival pigment prints on German etching paper.

On the left wall of the exhibition. Her gaze and the composition are arresting.

collections.mfa.org/search/Objec...

4/18
Accompanying label text: These self-portraits offer an Afro-futurist response to the history of the Atlantic slave trade. Jackson, who created the images on the coast of South Africa, poses herself as an inhabitant of Drexciya. Mythologized by Detroit hip hop artists in the 1990s, this imaginary underwater kingdom is populated by the children of the pregnant women who were thrown overboard or jumped to their deaths during the Middle Passage. The dress Jackson wears is made from Ghanaian currency, a commentary on how African lives were bought, sold, and exchanged-reduced from people into objects for capital gain. Jackson has commented that "many people have suffered from having their identities disgraced through a racist colonial gaze." In response, she returns a decidedly Black and feminine gaze, challenging Eurocentric ideas of beauty and civilization and the narratives of slavery and the ocean seen elsewhere in this gallery. Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund and funds donated by the Curators Circle: Black Arts and Artists, 2024 APP.2024.14, APP.2024.15
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
John Singleton Copley. American, 1738-1815. Watson and the Shark, 1778. Oil on canvas.

This is the first thing you see when you walk into this exhibit; the room for the video installation is behind it. It remains compelling despite its familiarity.

collections.mfa.org/objects/3099...

3/18
Text from accompanying label: Decades after Brook Watson lost his leg from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba, Copley painted the incident, resulting in this unforgettable image of unresolved peril. Watson and the Shark was and remains a radical painting, with a scale and subject matter that broke the conventions of its time. Particularly innovative was the inclusion of the central sailor, a Black man, in a time when Black people were rarely depicted as figures of agency. He holds the lifeline, yet unlike the other rescuers-striking the shark, keeping the boat balanced, reaching out for the drowning cabin boy-the central sailor is both observer and participant, leaning away from the commotion, yet forced into action. Copley begs a question that is at the heart of Akomfrah's and Jackson's work: What would it mean to see the ocean through the Black figure's eyes? Gift of Mrs. George von Lengerke Meyer, 1889 89.481
July 21, 2025 at 12:42 AM
katenepveu.bsky.social
I forgot to mention on the panel about The Fortunate Fall that I was wearing my white whale earrings in honor of it!

(they are by an American Indian artist whose information I cannot find)

bye Readercon, it was great, see you next year!
car selfie of me wearing earrings of painted wood depicting a white sperm whale in a stylized geometric fashion
July 20, 2025 at 7:10 PM
katenepveu.bsky.social
anyway Readercon folks who are coming to the panel "The Next Great Gatsby?" in 20 minutes, I will be referring to this beautiful essay by @amalelmohtar.com on Travel Light

www.npr.org/2014/01/01/2...

(the panel has also added Len Schiff, not reflected in the screenshot)
The Next Great Gatsby? Salon I/J, Duration: 60 mins Ellen Kushner Kate Nepveu R.W.W. Greene (moderator) At Readercon 33, Max Gladstone mentioned that The Great Gatsby flopped upon publication—and therefore was cheap to send to American soldiers abroad in WWII, which resulted its revival. He asked the audience to imagine how great a world would be in which, for some reason, copies of Sarah Caudwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered were suddenly everywhere. What other books ought to be suddenly ubiquitous?
July 20, 2025 at 3:40 PM
katenepveu.bsky.social
John Singer Sargent. American, 1856-1925. Henry Lee Higginson, 1903. Oil on canvas. (Harvard's photo, from where it is on loan.)

This is a Jeff Bridges character.

hvrd.art/o/300057

4/4
Text of accompanying label: Higginson appears in a golden light, physically dominating a leather armchair and wearing a brown wool day suit. The saber scar on his cheek and the blue military cloak draped across his lap testify to his service in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry during the Civil War. Sargent was commissioned to paint this portrait for the new Harvard Union. Funded largely by Higginson, the Union provided a gathering place, library, and dining area for undergraduates. Higginson's success as an investment banker, his generous civic philanthropy, and his confident, conventional masculinity, shown here through his clothing, were no doubt meant to inspire the men of Harvard. Higginson's generosity extended across Boston: he founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra, endowed schools and scholarships, and donated many works of art to the MFA, including Japanese swords, Auguste Rodin sculptures, John La Farge paintings, and Rogier van der Weyden's St. Luke Drawing the Virgin, on view in Gallery 244. Harvard University Portrait Collection, Gift by student subscription to the Harvard Union, 1903
July 18, 2025 at 1:26 PM