“Essentially we are each other.
I’ve given you my violence.
You are going to be prettier than me.

When will you hear my secret steps 
Along the rim of your eye?
I want us to live side by side” 
Jim Dine, Essentially We Are Each Other (1969)

             It is in the 1250 manuscript of Le Roman de La Poire, that we find the first depiction of a heart (the organ) as a symbol for one’s affection or devotion. In the letter S a man kneels, facing his lover. He extends his hand forward to offer his heart, the outline of which resembles a pine cone. Offerings are customary in tales of courtly love. Indeed, the novel takes its name from its most memorable scene: the damsel peels a pear with her teeth and offers the poet a bite –his heart, immediately taken over with love. 

I cannot tell you much about the pear, other than it derives from the rose, and is kin to the apple. You can turn an apple around and perhaps find the silhouette of a bum, or a heart. Slice the fruit in half from stem to flower and its erotic imagery is plain –it is inescapably the fruit of Venus. Same is true of the pear. Still, there is something less vulgar, less explicit about the fruit. After all, it holds no curse, no painful consequence. 

In an essay on the 13th century pear novel, scholar Véronique Guilhaume delves into the repetitive presence of offerings throughout the text, but mostly within the accompanying illuminations. First the poet offers the handkerchief, then the book itself, but when offering his heart, he does so indirectly. In his hand, the symbol. As if insisting on the sacred nature of the offering. In this exchange: a declaration of eternal fidelity and the sacrifice of a vital part of oneself – a necessary dispossession of one’s own organ, in order to receive that of the other. 

In 1969, Jim Dine produced a series of etchings, accompanying photographs by his close friend Lee Freidlander, some of which were included in their collaborative book Work from the Same House. The series, born out of their respective compulsion towards recording the mundane, became a correspondence of sorts, a testament to the intimacy of their relationship.

There is no more predictable symbol than a heart. Out of all of Dine’s work, the symbol radiates. Dine, similarly to Friedlander, is incredibly sincere. Their work is full of joy and humor, but it is never deceptive. A photograph stands out from the series: an out-shot, recently selected by Joel Coen for an exhibition, at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. In it, Dine’s frowning face leans back, behind the overexposed ghostly silhouette of Lee’s foot. As a child, I loved sitting by my mother when she watched television at night and extending my foot close to her face, waiting for her to notice it was there. One is only privy to the beautiful mundane details of another’s life, if they have offered up some of their own. 

Here, I was going to take a deep dive into 2010, the opening of Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times, a new painting show by Deborah Kass. I was going to mention the way second-wave feminism introduced this new formalism into painting of the 70s in New York, of which Kass is emblematic. And I was going to do so by also mentioning a thing or two about the New York of the early aughts –post market crash and 9-11, the deeply millennial context that these paintings were addressing while being infused with this inescapable nostalgia for the late 60s and 70s. Some kind of straw to grasp.

A little after 2010, I drove down to New Orleans, to meet and photograph an incredibly mesmerizing artist whose claim to fame was (in true millennial fashion) a Vice exposé  in which she had inserted something like two dozen tabs of acid inside of her inspiring a profound communication with extraterrestrial life.

This was when Leah still lived in NOLA, in her one bedroom. Something right out of paradise. On her coffee table there sat a book of poems from 1969 by none other than Jim Dine. I am not sure how she ended up with the book, but I have since looked and haven’t managed to find a copy that I could afford. It seems like every year I text her asking for photographs of some of the pages. Pick a poem, the most romantic you can find. 

I don’t think it is possible to be a millennial and not be riddled with nostalgia. In many ways it’s safer to look backwards. Like trying to pinpoint the moment on a timeline, where the intoxicating hope for freedom that permeated the times of Dine, Freidlander and Kass, faded out. Like trying to restage a photograph of a memory, just right, hoping it’ll bring back the moment. 

Every few days, instagram feeds me a video of Britney Spears talking to the camera: “If you’re having a real bad day” she says “Just find someone with hearts on their shoes” she runs to her assistant and points to her sneakers, laughing.  

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JODI HEARTZ (b. 1990, Fort Ellis, Nova Scotia) uses photographic techniques to decode connections between the iconic, the personal, and whatever lies in between.

Since 2011 Heartz has built a prolific career as a fashion, design and product photographer as well as commissioned work. Her range in work domains informs her conceptual practice, as she takes inspiration from signifiers unique to mass market imagery, playfully incorporating them with references pulled from art history.  Unexpected tones in a familiar place, antagonising optimism, and unfortunate joy are current harmonies considered in her images.

Heartz completed her BFA at NSCAD-U in 2014.

FRANCES WILLIAMS  is a Painter based in Montréal. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University, with a major in Painting & Drawing. 

Frances’ work deals with the middle-space of the abstraction/figuration dichotomy. While she considers herself an abstract painter, her works often suggest letters or text, teetering on the edge of readability. Similarly, figures begin to appear but often fall short of becoming representational forms. Other times, they do become readable as figures, taking the form of ethereal girls and women. Their presence is communicated in an interrupted visual language, where the girls fall back into abstraction. Frances recently took part in a duo-exhibition with Espace Maurice at Pangée in Montréal, a solo-exhibition at an off-site venue curated by Alexa Hawksworth, and will have a solo exhibition at Franz Kaka in Toronto in 2025.