The Easel

12th March 2019

The Helmet Heads review – Henry Moore should never have gone near a chisel

An excoriating review. Moore’s fascination with armour led to a decades-long series of modernist heads. “The Helmet Heads are Moore’s answer to Bacon’s screaming popes. The trouble is, they have none of Bacon’s cruel genius. [They have] neither the immediacy of a photograph nor the imaginative impact of truly original art. Moore is always a few miles from life.”

The Female Power of Carolee Schneemann

Lady Gaga’s meat dress is but one indicator of Schneemann’s broad influence. Her pioneering body and performance art was criticized for its eroticism, a charge she rebutted by saying “sensuality [is] always confused with pornography”. Only in the last decade has recognition come from major galleries. Schneemann thought herself “a painter … using her naked body in lieu of the “phallic” brush”. A video (2 min) is here.

Is the Renaissance nude religious or erotic?

Nudes in the early Renaissance were most common in religious art, their realism serving to portray Christ’s sacrifice. New humanist ideas about beauty led to a sly eroticism. Male nudes particularly showed this, reflecting a society where same sex male relationships were common. The Reformation tried to re-establish modesty but “after the Sistine Chapel, “everyone wanted their artists to paint nudes.”

The Global Art Market Reached $67.4 Billion in 2018, up 6%

The art market in 2018 was looking “top heavy” and “vulnerable”, according to a key market report. Turnover was $US67bn, little changed from recent years. Dealers accounted for 53% of this with big galleries growing their share. Auction lots of over $1m were just 1% by volume but a huge 61% by value.  The US and UK are the two biggest markets. Gender equality improved, at a snail’s pace.

Dorothea Tanning review: This artist is the surreal deal

Tanning was tagged a surrealist as much because of her marriage to Max Ernst as her work. Surrealism was certainly a reference point for her but a retrospective shows a wide artistic range – abstraction, gothic, pop-like sewn sculptures. Not all these forays were successful but “whatever she made, she gave it a feeling of believable surprise.” More images are here.

Transformative Sculpture

Matthew Barney gets high praise – among “the greatest [artists] of the last 50 years”. His work – video, “wonderous” sculpture, drawings – is undoubtedly influential. Skeptics persist, though, seeing his work as less than the sum of its parts. One reviewer thinks his current show a “visual dreamscape, both on the movie screen and in the gallery space [but] without legible intent.”

The AI – Art gold rush is here

An interesting and at times hyperventilating piece.  Are AI images art? Probably yes. It’s a big step, though, to fretting that AI might “dominate” aesthetic trends. AI uses existing works to create a software ‘recipe’ for a given genre, such as portraiture. Novel (and lucrative) this art may be, but it isn’t inspired by new ideas. No-one is talking about a “shock of the new”.

5th March 2019

Hans Hofmann’s wide-ranging art at UC Berkeley Art Museum

Hofmann taught a who’s who of 20th century American artists. That distinction overshadows his reputation as an artist, despite his leading role in New York abstract expressionism. Perhaps teaching provided the gestation period for his late career achievement, ‘colour plane abstractions’. They are “the pinnacle of American academic abstraction … a world of floating forms”.

Phyllida Barlow interview: ‘A cul-de-sac has the claustrophobia of suburbia’

Barlow’s sculptures are without aspiration to beauty. Tilting timber objects, ungainly slabs of building materials, draped fabrics, they all manipulate the space around them in a humorous, gentle way. “My work has always been an enjoyment of the absurdity of the made object that isn’t going to have any useful function in the world other than for itself.” A good bio piece is here.

Angel of Uncertainty: A Conversation with Photographer Sally Mann

An early career controversy over Mann’s photos of her young (and sometimes nude) children has faded. With hindsight the controversy seems way overblown, pushed aside by the poetic character of a career’s work. Subsequent images of her now adult children “[speak] to the evanescence of our mortal selves, arguing strongly, again, for the old carpe diem approach to life”.

Marina Abramović – The Life, Serpentine Gallery: ‘a slow, minimal, intimate encounter with a virtual Abramović

You can see the attraction of 3D imaging for Abramović. Such technology may allow her to “perform” in virtual reality without being present. A first-ever such “mixed-reality art experience” has just finished in London, to mixed results. One critic complains “The tech overshadows the art”. Responds Abramović, the technology makes her feel like “the first woman on the moon”.

Gustav Klimt in the Brain Lab

A neuroscience perspective on responding to art. Our biggest response is to faces, “the most important visual image we ever encounter”. We process images, not like a camera but as “an act of assembly with numerous brain areas contributing”. This assemblage is highly individual: “something special in the art [sets] off the physiological triggers of attraction and love. And so we say, ‘What a great painting.””

From Charcoal to Lipstick, Drawing’s Potential for Experimentation and Rebellion

New York and London both have institutions dedicated to drawing, as if the art form needs special support. Some see it as just a working tool, more bridesmaid than bride. London’s Drawing Biennial 2019 suggests it reigns supreme as a means of experimentation and caricature. Says one artist, it’s “a space of reflection and speculation … the fulcrum of [my] practice”.