The Easel

27th November 2018

Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again, Whitney Museum, New York

Waldemar Januszczuk | The Sunday Times | 18th November 2018

Its easy to lose sight of Warhol, simply because he is so ubiquitous. This widely praised show focuses on the duality of his life – a gay from macho Pittsburgh; an active Catholic in secular New York; sincere artist and cynical businessman.  He uniquely understood, says the curator, “America’s defining twin desires for innovation and conformity, public visibility and absolute privacy”.

Paul Gauguin, self-conscious outsider, at de Young Museum

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 20th November 2018

Gauguin’s move to Polynesia still puzzles. Was he escaping wife and family, or embracing the primitivism becoming evident in his art? Little in his art indicates much knowledge of the Polynesian culture. If his was a spiritual journey, as a San Francisco show suggests, surely it was more about the fantasy in his middle-aged head than the reality of his tropical destination.

Has the Art Market Reached a Stage of End-Game Nihilism? Kenny Schachter on New York’s $2 Billion Auctions

Kenny Schachter | artnet news | 21st November 2018

New York’s November art auctions raised a phenomenal $2bn. This knowledgeable writer details some goings-on. He admits that the huge numbers, the high octane gossip, the sheer excess, can be depressing. “The spiritual content of art is veering to the calibre of profundity of the local brand of toilet paper. Maybe a backlash will soon be underway—I can only hope.”

Balthus: Beyeler honors Klossowski the younger

Marta Galli | Conceptual Fine Arts | 30th October 2018

Is it possible to view Balthus’ paintings without revisiting the recent uproar? A Swiss museum is having a try but it’s a big ask. Balthus protested his innocent motivations, a claim supported by his widow. From his perspective, his dreaming, pre-pubescent girls “dwell forever in a realm secure from the rude intrusion of common mortals”. Still, to look at his works and not wonder is indeed a big ask.

Lorenzo Lotto Portraits review: National Gallery show uncovers a forgotten Renaissance master

Matthew Collings | Evening Standard | 5th November 2018

To be blunt, Lotto was out-competed in Venice by Titian. Consequently, he mostly worked in Italy’s lesser towns. There, the talent that may have rankled Venice’s great and good could be fully revealed – portraits with great psychological depth. As one critic has noted, “One of the most interesting painters of the Renaissance rather than one of the best.”

20 Years On, It’s Time to Admit Our Rules for Handling Nazi-Looted Art Have Failed

Noah Charney | Observer | 20th November 2018

A noble idea – returning artworks stolen by the Nazis – has become “a failure”. Claimants need to establish provenance which can be a “toxic” task. They then face resistant museums keen to hang on to prized works. Even governments are uncooperative because restitution involves “looking into the often unseemly past of nations, and sometimes their heroes”.

Gainsborough’s Family Album review – the powerfully affecting work of a lifetime

Laura Cumming | The Guardian | 25th November 2018

Gainsborough liked landscapes but only did society portraits for the money. Portraits of his family were another matter. Advertisements of his capabilities they may have been, but “what is so compelling about these family portraits, seen en masse, is the paradoxical combination of light touch and deep emotion.” More images are here.

20th November 2018

Ancient or modern? The perplexing case of indigenous art

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 20th November 2018

Indigenous art sometimes gets the lame description ‘outsider art’, implying it has little in common with western art. This view would have greatly surprised Picasso and Matisse, among others. So how do we describe the relationship between indigenous and western art? Morgan Meis takes a close look.

“The fact remains – a great many of the artists [including Picasso] who are celebrated in the galleries and museums of Modern art were utterly discontented with the boundaries of “the Modern,” of which they are often considered the exemplars. Fascinatingly, for our purposes, they would replace the Modern idea of art with something more akin to what the Aboriginal artist has been doing all along: making sacred and ritual objects that mediate between human being and cosmos.”

Colour Blast

Emily McDermott | Wallpaper | 1st December 2018

Tempted though she initially was by photography, Grosse succumbed to the allure of painting. Her “absurdly” large fabric installations, painted in riotous colours, are all impact and have no narrative structure. “My task is to propose images, painted images … for how we can expand our imagination. That’s what artists do, we make proposals to expand the imagination.”

Paula Rego: Cruel Stories for Curious Women

Staff | Randian | 5th November 2018

Rego loves folk tales but her paintings give them a dark twist. In some works the relationships between her figures seem troubled. Her paintings of Little Red Riding Hood even go so far as to allude to a rape. “Rego is a story-teller of tales with enigmatic endings, not parables and nothing quite comforting but possessed of a bewitching otherness”.

Chairpersons: The World of Charles and Ray Eames

Jonathan Curiel | SFWeekly | 1st November 2018

It is suggested that every American has, at some time, sat in an Eames chair. Charles and Ray Eames focused on looks and utility in a way that reflected, and brought into the mainstream, the ideas of the Bauhaus. Not that they saw themselves in such grand terms “We don’t do ‘art’ – we solve problems” declared Charles Eames. A discussion of some of their main designs is here.

Jack Whitten

Aruna D’Souza | 4Columns | 11th November 2018

Jack Whitten was best known for his abstract paintings. Unbeknownst to most, he also put time into sculpture. He was in pursuit of a big idea, to connect ancient African, Mediterranean and African American aesthetics. Contrary to our inclination to recognize the culture of each ethnic group, Whitten was reaching for a global aesthetic, “a story of black classicism”

What Vivian Meier saw in colour

Andrea Scott | The New Yorker | 8th November 2018

Meier’s day job was as a nanny but her passion, discovered only after her death, was street photography. Control of her archive is under dispute but the quality of her work is very clear – “images of sublime spontaneity, wit, and compositional savvy “. The one subject she seemed to conspicuously avoid was herself. “I am sort of a spy” she said. More images are here.

Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy at the Met Breuer

Dan Fox | Frieze | 9th November 2018

This review is a hoot, liberally sprinkled with paragraphs of ‘conspiracy think’. Some artists back conspiracies that prove well founded while others fall under the spell of “fever dreams”. “Do artists receive the benefit of the doubt because, deep down, we still cling to a Romantic belief that the artist is the conduit for higher truths?” An interview with the curators is here.

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