The Easel

6th February 2018

Philip Pearlstein: Paintings 1990 – 2017

Emily Spicer | Studio International | 30th January 2018

His friendship with Warhol is marketing catnip but far from the most interesting thing about Pearlstein. He championed realism when it was not popular to do so. Further his paintings feature nudes which are posed, factual and remote – almost the opposite of the erotic pin-up. This is strange art leaving the viewer to wonder – focus on the bodies, the objects around them or the “rules” that give rise to such a deliberate tableau?

Down with blockbusters! James Bradburne on the art of running a museum

Richard Holledge | ft.com | 22nd January 2018

A reforming museum director bemoans the scarcity of passion about art and wants museums to change this. Excluding temporary exhibitions “permanent collections are, in fact, losing business. [Don’t] confuse an excellent collection with an excellent museum. We need a Copernican revolution in which you put the museum at the heart of the community and visitors at the centre of the museum.” (You may have to click on “Skip Survey” to bypass the FT paywall)

Kiefer Rodin at The Barnes

Julia Cliff | Title | 18th December 2017

Kiefer’s visit to Musée Rodin has led to an exhibition about the “compelling dialogue” between the two artists. Their interests overlap – Rodin’s passion for Gothic cathedrals and Kiefer’s interest in sculpture/architecture. Sadly, and not for the first time, hackles are raised by the more erotic works. Rodin’s drawings carry “a whiff of misogyny” while Kiefer’s are “woefully unskilled and fail utterly to transcend their perviness.”

“Art” A Brief Retrospective on the Legal Term

Michelle Pham | Helsell Fetterman | 26th January 2018

You know there is going to be trouble when the law has to decide what is, and is not, art. “U.S. Customs officials did not see a bird in Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space and refused to exempt it as a work of art when it arrived at New York Harbor in October 1926. Instead, they classified it as a “kitchen utensil” and imposed a standard 40 percent tariff on the sale price.”

This piece originally appeared in The SciTech Lawyer and has been made available with the kind permission of the author

Imagining President Donald Trump Sitting on Maurizio Cattelan’s Solid-Gold Toilet

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 29th January 2018

Amidst an anti-Trump rant, some interesting points about art. Duchamp argued that context gives meaning to art. Does the fracas over the Guggenheim’s action add meaning to Cattelan’s toilet, making it a better sculpture? Would installation in the White House have made it a different artwork – or perhaps not an artwork at all? At least one critic disapproves: “an erudite potty joke but a potty joke all the same”.

Fabergé And The Russian Crafts Tradition: An Empire’s Legacy

Karla Klein Albertson | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 30th January 2018

Peter Carl Fabergé was part of a crafts tradition going back centuries. Tsarist patronage of the arts was partly intended as a demonstration of national prowess – and Fabergé eggs do nothing if not that. Bolshevik ambitions were, of course, far more muscular and, after 1917, some of these exquisite objects came to Europe in the arms of emigres. No longer symbolic they are now merely objects of “otherworldly beauty”.

The Eternal Peter Hujar

Sarah Nicole Prickett | Document | 29th January 2018

A tinge of romance attaches to New York’s Lower East Side of the 1970’s. Amidst the urban decay important artists were emerging – Warhol, Basquiat, Mapplethorpe. Hujar was confident that fame would eventually find him, too. His friends thought likewise “In his portraits, he doesn’t exert the gaze, which is the norm of most photography. He met people where they lived. He is the greatest portraitist of the twentieth century.”

30th January 2018

Andreas Gursky, master of the contemporary sublime

IW | The Economist | 26th January 2018

Gursky is widely acclaimed because he reveals a world that we know and yet still takes us by surprise. He composes images where “all the pictorial elements are as important as each other”. Confronted with so much detail the eye defaults to a summary impression – “a kind of abstract expressionism, painterly in scale and epic in intention”. An excellent commentary by the curator (5 min) is here.

Jack Whitten: once neglected artist lately the toast of the art world

Sebastian Smee | The Washington Post | 22nd January 2018

Despite getting an early career solo show at New York’s Whitney, Whitten struggled all his life for recognition. It is now starting to arrive, belately, after a long career of sustained innovation. His “visually arresting [work] can feel like a missing link between the abstract expressionists of the postwar years and the minimalists and conceptualists”. He died last week. An excellent interview with the artist (2.50 min) is here.

Rediscovering the Overlooked Talent of French Sculptor Camille Claudel

Cody Delistraty | Frieze | 26th January 2018

Claudel had beauty, talent and a famous lover – Rodin. She was, by all accounts, greatly supportive of his art and he reciprocated at least to some degree. Like other female artists of the day (but particularly because of her association with Rodin) she received little acclaim during her lifetime. Now a group of her sculptures have been deemed to be of national importance and acquired for France’s public museums.

Chuck Close is Accused of Harassment. Should His Artwork Carry an Asterisk?

Robin Pogrebin and Jennifer Scheussler | The New York Times | 28th January 2018

Accusations of sexual misconduct against American portraitist Chuck Close have led Washington’s National Gallery of Art to cancel an exhibition of his work. Is this the right response? Cancellation of the show is a gesture of support toward his accusers. On the other hand, many esteemed artists are on display, despite deeds that are far worse. Is “the prism of reprehensible behaviour” the only way to view an artist’s work?

Charles I – King And Collector at Royal Academy review: A show fit for a king

Matthew Collings | The Evening Standard | 23rd January 2018

A visit to the Hapsburg court made Charles 1 want what they had – a stonking art collection. Over his 25 year rule he acquired just that – and it was promptly sold after his beheading. Magnificent though they are, these paintings were flattery. “Everything that looks good in a Van Dyck picture of Charles on horseback 10 feet high supports the idea that the king actually is good, the almost ultimate good next to God”. More images are here.

Georg Baselitz, upside-down artist of international renown, at 80

Torsten Landsberg | DW.com | 23rd January 2018

The fuss over Baselitz’ 80th birthday demonstrates the high regard in which he is held. Not only did he face up to the challenge of addressing Germany’s Nazi past but he did so using a unique visual language. Whether the controversy that he courts adds to his reputation is a matter for individual judgement. This video (2.40 min) does a nice job of putting his work in a broader context.

Rubers: The Power of Transformation

Sarah Vowles | The Idle Woman | 16th January 2018

A whiff of disapproval seems to attach to Rubens. Is it his prolific use of studio assistants, all that voluptuous flesh, or his borrowing of other people’s ideas? He was, of course, a product of his time. Aspiring artists went to Rome and then liberally referenced others’ works as a sign of new erudition. It wasn’t considered plagiarism. Indeed, it’s what marks Rubens as special – he could take the ideas of others and improve on them.

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