The Easel

26th December 2017

Why Would Anyone Pay $450 Million for the ‘Salvator Mundi’? Because They’re Not Buying the Painting

Tim Schneider | artnet news | 17th November 2017

Before reading the story, watch this video clip of the auction (7 min). It really is something! One expert hailed the sale as vindication of the Old Masters market. True, but surely it’s a bigger deal than that. “It’s like taking your dog out for its regular morning walk only for it to be snatched off the street by a pterodactyl. This was not just an acquisition. This was arguably the greatest socioeconomic flex the arts have ever seen”.

Matisse in the Studio review: Inside Matisse’s mind

Matthew Collings | Evening Standard | 1st August 2017

Matisse, like Picasso and others, found inspiration from his studio – his world within a world. “[My] state of soul”, he said, “is created by the objects that surround me”. However he did not simply reproduce the interior of his studio on the Cote d’Azur. “He was a great ruthless violator of normal appearances. [This show gives] a really good lesson in what makes a Matisse a Matisse.” More images are here

“How to See the World Properly”: An Interview About Jasper Johns

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 17th October 2017

A companion piece to Morgan Meis’ recent Gallery Essay.

The Royal Academy of Arts landmark survey of Jasper Johns work, “Something Resembling Truth”, was co-curated by Roberta Bernstein, a personal friend of Johns.  Johns has said about his work “I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don’t think that’s a painter’s business.” Morgan recently interviewed Roberta about this famously elusive artist.

“He is a complex man and his art is challenging. The understanding of a painting as a real object occupying space was so vividly conveyed [by Painting with Two Balls (1960)] and made me think about art in a new way. [Johns] is, I think, struggling with (and also fascinated by) the impossibility of fixing meaning or meanings. He’s more interested in how the mind … constructs meaning.”

The Many Faces of John Berger

Ratik Asokan | New Republic | 30th December 2016

The art critic and writer, John Berger, died on January 2. Many standard obituaries don’t clearly explain his stellar reputation. The linked piece, a review of Berger’s last book, does better. “Berger doesn’t view art history as something that happened, rather as something that continues to happen. [He] decides to firmly root himself in the present and focus on why a particular artwork …appeals to us today”.

Andrew Wyeth and the artist’s fragile reputation

Henry Adams | The Conversation | 6th July 2017

It is curious that a retrospective to mark the centenary of Andrew Wyeth’s birth is not travelling to a big east coast US city, despite its likely popularity. Clearly disagreements about Wyeth continue. This writer offers a truce. “I believe he fits into a larger tradition of modernist creativity that goes beyond the medium of painting. His influence … has been most important in poetry, literature and film making.”

GALLERY ESSAY: Is The Painting Counting?

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 23rd September 2017

When Jasper Johns was starting out abstract expressionism reigned supreme, asking ‘big’ questions like ‘what does painting do’. Johns had different interests, painting mundane objects like flags. Such paintings, argues Morgan Meis, are elusive. “.. if I paint the number ‘2’ on a canvas, have I brought that number into existence? Is the painting now a ‘2’? Or is it a painting of a ‘2’?

Art does not uncover what is hidden, or resolve itself into clear, declarative statements – this means this, that means that. Rather, in art, meaning is a glimpse of reality, like something seen through a periscope. Periscope (Hart Crane), is not a puzzle to be solved. It is, in the end, a simple painting composed of simple images. Yet those images are resonant with metaphors of the sea, of depths, of longing, loss, secrets and the mystery of meaning.”

A major retrospective of the American artist Jasper Johns, “Something Resembling Truth” has just opened at the Royal Academy of Arts. This essay is reproduced with the permission of the Royal Academy and Morgan Meis.

19th December 2017

Holidays

19th December 2017

This is the last regular issue of The Easel for 2017. Next week, and the week after, the newsletter will highlight the most popular stories of the year, as indicated by your reading patterns, dear readers. There will then be a break of two weeks before The Easel resumes on Tuesday January 23.

Many thanks for your interest over the last year. 2018 promises to be better yet!

Season’s greetings to all.

Andrew

Artifacts from the Now: Stephen Shore’s MoMA retrospective

Lev Feigin | Lens Culture | 1st December 2017

A key idea behind Pop art was to depict everyday reality, unprettified. Having hung around Warhol’s ‘factory’ in New York it was natural that Shore would bring this radical aesthetic into his photography. He helped create a “new photographic vernacular: a flat, deadpan aesthetic that thrives on the deliberate blandness of its subject matter and a rejection of artistic conventions.”

‘Painted in Mexico’: LACMA’s remarkable and important new show

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 28th December 2017

After Spain’s colonization of Mexico, the Church acquired great wealth. Paintings were one way for it (and an emerging local elite) to promote itself. And it did – thus supporting a vibrant local artistic community. A first ever survey of this late Baroque art is “spellbinding. [It is] an extraordinary artistic era just coming into focus … and the show a remarkable curatorial achievement, one of the most memorable exhibitions of the year.”

This painting might be sexually disturbing. But that’s no reason to take it out of a museum

Phillip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 15th December 2017

Balthus had a thing about adolescent girls. Amid the furor about sexual abuse and #MeToo, should New York’s Met comply with a petition and take down an apparently lascivious work? Definitely not, according to this writer. Art is full of sexual imagery. “The danger in the wings is a new Puritanism … The challenge now is to define codes of behavior without throwing out the maps that got us to the place we are now.”

These Stunning A.I. Tools Are About to Change the Art World

Gabriel Nicholas | Slate | 11th December 2017

Art has always seized on new technologies with enthusiasm. Will artificial intelligence be another happy example? Some think not, fearing it will shift “more of the creative legwork to machines”. Job losses in commercial art is one concern. Longer term, AI software may compromise artists’ ability to claim ownership of their work, if the software is deemed responsible for “the lion’s share of the creativity.”

Andrew Wyeth forever

James Panero | The New Criterion | 18th December 2017

Andrew Wyeth is the itch that critics just can’t help but scratch. James Panero is the latest to join the doubters’ ranks. Wyeth loved action movies and brought to his painting “a dreamy brand of realism. A coastal [elitist] who romanticized but also valorized the struggles of the overlooked … his compelling images still offer up a voyeuristic escape, all with the timeless stamp of inauthenticity.”

Older links
Newer links