Claire Gilman blogs about the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York through June 5–September 3, 2012.

Gilman writes that "Kelly has called the plant drawings 'a kind of bridge to a way of seeing that was the basis of the very first abstract paintings,' and indeed, both the botanical renderings and Kelly's abstract compositions aim to strip things down to their basic shapes and contours, supplying the minimal amount of information necessary to understand a form. Still, with their fragile edges and delicate lines, Kelly's plant drawings have an emotional charge that is distinct from that of his abstract work."