The Easel

11th July 2017

As in Nature and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Times Two at the Clark

William Belcher | The Alt | 10th July 2017

After Jackson Pollock some wondered what was next. Frankenthaler’s “soak-stain” technique was one answer. It expanded the vocabulary of abstract painting and allowed her to combine organic effects and painted shapes. Her woodcut prints, perhaps less acclaimed than her paintings, are also innovative: “these woodcuts are astonishing … and challenge a conventional understanding of the medium” More images are here.

Dark enlightenment of Edvard Munch

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 25th June 2017

Munch wrote “My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm”. And don’t his paintings show it. Seeing van Gogh’s work in Paris, he understood how colour might help express his grand theme – the self as a battleground. Self-analysis was a theme of the coming century and it brought him some commercial success. But his art retained its angst. Increasingly he kept his works, and himself, to himself.

These Four Painters Won’t Be Ignored Any Longer

John Yau | Hyperallergic | 2nd July 2017

London’s Lisson Gallery made its name by championing unfashionable modern artists. Fifty years later, it is still at it. A new show gathers four such overlooked artists, eliciting the writer’s wholehearted approval. “One gets tired of seeing the same combinations repeatedly. It is like eating in a parody of a Chinese restaurant from the 1950s, where there is only one item in column A and one in column B.”

¡Viva modernismo! Houston, Dallas shows highlight Mexican art masterpieces

Molly Glentzer | Houston Chronicle | 23rd June 2017

Less a review than a survey of the last 100 years of Mexican art. In the lead-up to WW2, Mexico was a focal point of international modernism. But after the war abstract expressionism grabbed all the attention. Interest is now returning and more artists are being recognized in addition to the perennial Rivera and Kahlo. Claims the writer – “the world’s love affair with Mexican art is burning hotter than it has in years.”

The Novelty and Excess of American Design During the Jazz Age

Alison Meier | Hyperallergic | 10th July 2017

The Roaring Twenties was famously a period of excess. But it was also a time of design innovation. Germany’s Bauhaus, the 1925 Paris World Fair, and Holland’s De Stijl were focal points, redefining what it meant to be modern. The US contributed innovations in architecture, fashion and music. One critic observes “Despite nearly a century … no other design period speaks as directly to contemporary tastes.”

The Vatican Discovers New Paintings by Raphael Hidden in Plain Sight—Right on Its Walls

Henri Neuendorf | artnet news | 6th July 2017

It must be tough for the Vatican to keep track of its treasures. Raphael, engaged to paint four of the papal apartments, (and fired up by a rivalry with Michelangelo) produced some of his greatest work. The project took decades and the largest and last room was thought to have been done well after his death. Apparently not. Restoration work has revealed that he actually did some of the work himself.

4th July 2017

Sophie Calle at Fort Mason: Reports from love’s front lines

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 1st July 2017

It’s difficult to be precise about the art of celebrated French conceptual artist Sophie Calle. A gallery blurb says her projects deal with issues of absence and loss. She based one such project on a break-up email received from a lover. Calle circulated the note to a wide circle of women requesting their analysis “without pathos”. An excellent background piece sums up her work thus: “autobiography wrung dry of all emotion”.

Myth-Maker of the Brothel

Ian Buruma | The New York Review of Books | 29th June 2017

Utamaro painted refined scenes of beautiful women in Tokyo’s brothels. In truth this “floating world” was not so glamorous nor he its habitué. His celebrated paintings possibly had rather prosaic origins: “Politically oppressive, the authorities nonetheless gave license to men to indulge themselves in amusement. Sex, kept in bounds by rules of social etiquette, was less threatening … than political activity.”

Otto Dix at Tate Liverpool: a portrait of a crumbling Germany

Claudia Pritchard | iNews | 22nd June 2017

Returning from the trenches of WW1, Dix felt the sacrifice of soldiers was little appreciated. Then the Roaring Twenties arrived. His unforgiving portraits depicted Weimar society living on borrowed time. Disliking his candour the Nazis labeled him a degenerate.  Dix declared “I need the connection to the sensual world, and the courage to expose ugliness and life undiluted.” He had that courage. More images are here.

Small Wonders at the Rijksmuseum: a treasure trove for the soul

Christine Medycky | DutchNews.nl | 21st June 2017

For Delft’s well-to-do in the 1500’s carved prayer beads and devotional miniatures were their Rolex equivalents.  Made from hard boxwood, these beautiful objects are so intricate that CT scanners are needed to discover all their details. Attempts to reproduce them with modern tools, or using 3D printers, have mostly been unsuccessful. Some astonishing images are here.

Gathering Dust

Marion Coutts | 1843 | 15th June 2017

When practicing his photography Man Ray took a shot of a dusty surface that is now renowned for its ambiguity. It prompted the curator of a London show to wonder if twentieth century history can be described “from the perspective of dust”? Dust is “a harbinger of disturbance. This is dust as history, settling in the aftermath of events.” A short essay by the curator and more images are here.

How documenta 14 Failed Everyone but its Curators

Jeni Fulton | Sleek | 2nd July 2017

A rant about curatorial earnestness. “On day two of the press review … I was sick of being lectured to. Was it the four hour press conference we’d been subject to on the opening day … or a 40 minute atonal piece for solo violin? Very little could be established as a fact … the curators eschewing such banal things as artists’ biographies. [R]efusing commentary not only disservices the viewer, but the artwork itself.”

The Unfinished Palazzo: Life, Love and Art in Venice by Judith Mackrell

Nancy Durrant | The Times | 13th May 2017

A harmless bit of art history fun. Peggy Guggenheim was famous first because of family wealth and then again by her prescient support of new modern artists. Retreating from New York, she acquired a Venice palazzo with a colourful history that provides the narrative for a newly published book. The building now houses the glorious Peggy Guggenheim Collection, one of the ‘must see’ attractions of that city.

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