The Easel

5th September 2017

EASEL ESSAY: Jeff Koons: Or, Who’s Liberating Whom?

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 5th September 2017

Few modern artists can draw as big a crowd as Jeff Koons. And equally few artists cause as much nashing of critics’ teeth. How come? “With Koons, we are liberated from the shame we might normally feel in liking the kitsch we are otherwise told is deplorable. “The art world wants to say to Koons, You can’t like this! To which Koons must reply, I can and I do. And so, in your heart of hearts, do you.” To dismiss Koons as completely vapid means taking the vapidness of his art at face value. But that’s exactly what it is impossible to do in looking at, for instance, Bear and Policeman. A sculpture that strange cannot, by definition, be called vapid. It’s very strangeness forces us to take it more seriously.”

Artist Rachel Whiteread talks to Simon Schama

Simon Schama | ft.com | 1st September 2017

With an imminent retrospective at Tate the British sculptor Rachael Whiteread is in the spotlight. She is best known for her casts of internal spaces including, famously, the inside of an old terrace house. “I think of her work as dominated by memory rather than memorial, and marked by traces of warm life as much as chill death. Whiteread’s great pieces are sighs made tangible.” A short video (8 min) is here.

Daniel Richter in five works

Staff | Medium | 2nd August 2017

Richter was designing record covers and posters before a belated burst of study led him to discover painting. “Hugely influential” according to one critic, Richter’s work is being featured for the first time at a London public gallery. He often draws inspiration from photos in the media to which he adds his own political commentary, sometimes giving a sense of the “retired anarchist”. An interview with Richter (28 min) is here.

Christie’s Ups Buyer’s Premiums

Nate Freeman | ARTnews | 29th August 2017

In 1975, Christie’s (and Sotheby’s) charged a mere 10% “buyer’s premium” on art works sold. Art prices have since skyrocketed but so too have transaction charges. With yet another fee hike coming is this just the auction houses focusing on “high end” sales? Perhaps. But part of the explanation surely is the need for art – touted as an “asset class” – to be easily bought and sold. And who provides that valuable service? The auction houses.

Robert Hughes Is Not My Dad

Rennie McDougall | Hyperallergic | 2nd September 2017

An appreciation – with misgivings – of the great art critic. A self-confessed cultural elitist, Hughes criticized Australia for its shortcomings, only to then rail against New York’s imperial tendencies. But then there was his fine prose: “Hughes’ prose is often like architecture itself, a solid, tangible construction, which, after a first pass, one can wander through again musingly, appreciating the shapely details within the foundation.”

Richard Gerstl, Neue Galerie, New York — mesmerising

Ariella Budick | ft.com | 16th August 2017

Fin de siècle Vienna was a nervy place and it produced some nervy artists. Richard Gerstl was certainly one of those. Talented but unhappy he had an affair with a friend’s wife which was promptly discovered. Uproar ensued and, shortly thereafter, Gerstl committed suicide at just 25. “[D]id mental illness shape his style, or does his work look especially desperate because we read backwards from his suicide?”

Coming Soon – Jasper Johns

Later this month the Royal Academy of Arts opens a major retrospective of the American artist Jasper Johns, the first such show in London for 40 years. In a few weeks an interview about this landmark show between co-curator Dr Roberta Bernstein and Easel Contributing Editor Morgan Meis will be published in the newsletter. Then, in early October, with the kind permission of the Royal Academy, the newsletter will carry the catalogue essay that Morgan has written for the show.

29th August 2017

Raqib Shaw

Veronica Simpson | Studio International | 21st July 2017

When Manchester was the textile capital of the world it was deeply influenced by designs from the sub-continent. It’s unsurprising then that Manchester’s Whitworth museum is showing Kashmir raised, London based Raqib Shaw. Criticism that Shaw’s elaborate paintings are merely ‘decorative’ doesn’t bother this writer. The show “contradicts the “less is more” modernist credo; when the choices are good ones, more can be more.”

Marc Chagall and Twentieth-Century Designs for the Stage

Stephanie Barron | Unframed | 1st August 2017

Going to Paris in 1911 exposed Chagall not only to the titans of modern art but also to the fabled Ballets Russes. Set design became an enduring interest and a major contributor to Chagall’s artistic reputation. The idea that dancers’ costumes could make them “mobile elements” of the overall set design remains influential. More images are here.

Tom Wolfe on Marie Cosindas, an Artist Who Created Something Completely New

Tom Wolfe | Vulture | 19th June 2017

Wonderful. “[S]he arrived at my apartment in New York to photograph me for a series called “The Dandies.” So I put on a new suit, beautifully tailored. I was particularly proud of that suit. Before I answered [the door] I fixed a confident, slightly smiling, amusingly knowing look on my face. I opened the door, and here was a diminutive woman with wavy brown hair … in the softest of voices she directed me to go change my clothes …”

Statue-phobia

JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview | 25th August 2017

Municipal statues are public art that tell a story. So how should the removal of Confederacy – era statues be viewed? Are they suddenly intolerable? Pulling down statues “[embodies] a political attitude which would rather blame the political shortcoming of today on the far-distant past … erasing its traces to sanitise the public realm of any recollection of it … statue-phobia is the worst form of fetishism.”

Why a Massachusetts museum selling its prized Norman Rockwell painting should worry art museums everywhere

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 23rd August 2017

A Massachusetts museum plans to raise money by selling some of its art.  One prominent critic is incensed. “Plainly they’ve lost their minds. [A] collection is held in the public trust … Absurdly, museum standards are being vandalized to protect the museum. Here’s an idea: Donate the art to other museums that would benefit most from having it. With community treasures being turned into private possessions, the public is the loser.”

Cartier-Bresson’s Distant India

Ratik Asokan | The New York Review of Books | 25th August 2017

Having helped found the Magnum agency, Cartier-Bresson set out for photojournalism. Sent to India, his images of Gandhi just before his assassination, and the subsequent funeral, brought fame. “Cartier-Bresson’s Indian photos are quiet, self-effacing … If in Europe he chased the “decisive moment,” there’s something conspicuously timeless about his panoramas of Indian peasants and cowherds.”

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