Some think that the English are “mingy” in the recognition they accord their own artists. Hilton Als, the eminent American critic is not so restrained. “Contemporary British art [including “visionaries” such as Paul] has had a global impact. She builds up on a series of canvases a great originality, an emotional breadth, a vocabulary of loss, of loss even before it happens.”
Höfer is yet another distinguished photography alumnus of the Dusseldorf Art Academy. Her images, says the writer, are of “institutional spaces”. An alternative and perhaps more accurate description is “the ways in which people are directed and contained by architecture.” More images are here
Should male artists still paint the female nude? While #metoo suggests not, is it so straightforward? One artist frets “we could be living through “a new Victorian age”. Another observes “the human psyche is not politically correct” A female artist notes “I’ve always had the sense that women must be proud to be sexual beings”. A quiz at the end of the article is revealing.
The writer of this essay seems muddled. He admits the best pieces in this Cambridge show deserve comparison to Moore, Brancusi or Giacometti. However, he is perturbed by the craft / art demarcation being unclear. Some pieces (gasp) even have practical uses! An essay by the curator offers a steadier narrative. More images are here.
Suh has lived in lots of houses. Because of this transient existence “home” is an important concept to him and drives his art. He makes “fabric sculptures”, delicate life-sized recreations of past dwellings, complete with embroidered household objects. These works “convey both the weight of architecture and the weightlessness of memory.” Images and a video (2 min) are here.
White females dominate American curatorial appointments. So, appointing yet another white woman to curate African American art at Brooklyn Museum always risked causing a ruckus. It has. The appointee’s former professor, among many, has weighed in. “The outrage is… not really about diversification. Rather, it [is] about ownership of African art which, at best, is misguided”.
The Tate’s 1956 show of American abstraction got a hostile public reception, but Ayres found it inspirational. To be more specific, she loved its energy and use of colour, not the angst associated with its American founders. She said “‘I love obscurity in modern art. I don’t want a story.” The obituarist’s view of her work is similar: “decorative unruliness … large, loud, fierce and bold”.
Image: suehubbard.com
Feted in London this show has moved to Washington. Cezanne “faltered” in his portraits because of the difficulty of showing what he wanted to show – a person not a personality, “an absoluteness not just of seeing, but of being”. This idea is a building block of modernism and not easy. “Cézanne’s fate has been to be revered more than enjoyed.”
Art critics don’t often win prizes. New York critic Jerry Saltz is now an exception, today winning the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Saltz writes across a wide range of the visual arts, sometimes attracting controversy with his social media activity. One of his essays, mentioned frequently in the discussion of his award (and featured in The Easel when first published), is here.
Many regard the Baroque woodcarver Gibbons as the greatest wood carver ever. His exquisite, almost unbelievably detailed, work brought fame in his lifetime and prestigious commissions from royal palaces and elsewhere. A panel of his work has been purchased for a British public museum, prompting a celebratory exhibition. An excellent video (2 min) is here.
The idea of art expressing the unconscious has a long history. Paul Brown has given the idea a modern twist – writing computer programs that autonomously generate art. These works are not Brown’s self-expression but rather art that “makes itself” and is testimony to the “beauty of spontaneous and organic structures”. Images showing the development of these ideas are here.
Should some ancient stone tools be viewed as sculpture? A “provocative” US show promotes this hypothesis, displaying hand axes too big for practical use and other tools so symmetrical as to compromise usability. Early examples of Duchamp’s concept of the readymade, perhaps? A concession of sorts comes from one critic – “some of the oldest aesthetic objects on earth”.
An art world heavy hitter draws attention to the nearly-forgotten Colescott. Colescott anticipated important social issues, especially identity stereotypes. His preferred approach was not earnestness but humour. An obituary, in 2009, noted his “giddily joyful, destabilized compositions … satirized and offended without regard to race, creed, gender.” More images are here.
Longish but interesting. Roberta Smith explains why the job of an art critic is challenging. “You have to be disinterested in your own responses, no matter what they are. Saying exactly what you think is really hard. There is a way to let your eye just be, and you follow it. It is just amazing to me how hard it is to see, and how little you see.”