The Easel

7th May 2019

Easel Essay: For love or money? The merits of investing in art

Andrew Bailey | The-Easel | 7th May 2019

It is common to see art referred to as an “alternative asset”. The market’s growth in size and sophistication since 1990 provides some justification for the claim. Impressive though its track record is, the intricate structure of the market complicates the usual investment analysis.

“Schiller’s argument is that asset markets like real estate (and art) are prone to making price “mistakes”. Perhaps Salvator Mundi was a mistake in the sense that it was a price spike, an expression of exuberance that may be followed by buyer’s regret. Perhaps low prices for art by women artists are also a mistake. Price overshoots and undershoots usually get corrected but as to when – sadly, that is unknowable.”

At 84, Sheila Hicks Is Still Making Defiant, Honest Art

Alina Cohen | Artsy | 2nd May 2019

A bumpy interview. Hicks likes her tapestries and wall hangings big. Sadly, they are sometimes thrown out when foyers get a make-over. Hicks is unfazed by the implied lack of recognition of her art. Of her piece shown at the last Venice Biennale: “The idea of its monumentality is to envelop you … you’re not thinking about the grains of the sugar. You’re into a very big meringue”. A better, older interview is here.

A Buyer’s Guide to the Venice Biennale: What Collectors Need to Know About the (Technically) Noncommercial Event

Melanie Gerlis | artnet news | 6th May 2019

Venice Biennale opens shortly and, for a period, will monopolise artworld attention. It is ostensibly non-commercial, with 90 participating countries and various “collateral events”. Most countries choose a working artist as a representative, a coveted recognition not driven entirely by the saleroom. Eight are profiled here, not all household names.

Michael Wolf, photographer, 1954-2019

Diane Smyth | British Journal of Photography | 3rd May 2019

Wolf was an acclaimed photojournalist but earned most praise for his own projects on city life. Tokyo Compression showed uncomfortably crowded commuter trains. Architecture of Density displayed the immensity of Hong Kong high rise apartments. For him, these images showed urban ingenuity: “his work defied categorization … his main muse was Hong Kong”. Images are here.

Blossoming artist: Damien Hirst on returning to the studio, fluorescent florals and the ‘muppets’ in government

Alison Cole | The Art Newspaper | 1st May 2019

Hirst’s “polarizing” 2017 show in Venice persuaded some that his sole interest is money. There is no sign he is chastened by this criticism but still, except perhaps to the irredeemably skeptical, he sounds thoughtful. Of his recent 18 months of studio work – “You need time to make things, and also time to consider them. You don’t want to show things before you believe in them.”

Verrocchio: Restored to greatness

Roderick Conway Morris | The Times Literary Supplement | 16th April 2019

Being the art tutor of da Vinci would surely accustom one to second billing. Such has been Verrocchio’s fate. A first-ever retrospective in Florence is a revelation. It shows that he innovated widely and his studio was “the principal artistic powerhouse of the Florentine Renaissance”. When he switched from sculpture to painting, this work “influenced his successors for decades.” Images are here.

Devan Shimoyama’s Vision of a Dazzling Black Future

Antwaun Sargent | The New York Review of Books | 9th May 2019

A review, dense in parts, but worth it because of the artist. At just 30, yet already with two solo shows, Shimoyama is perhaps a soon-to-be big name. A series of works, set in barbershops, explores “queerness and blackness”. Not all see these as explicitly political images. What is plain, though, is Shimoyama’s “impulse to complicate conventional notions of masculinity”.

30th April 2019

El Anatsui’s Monumental New Show Is an Act of Justice

Jason Farago | The New York Times | 29th March 2019

A fierce review. The Ghanaian Anatsui makes textile-like wall sculptures using bottle caps, “some of the most extraordinary sculptures of this new century”. Fumes the writer, why are in-depth exhibitions of this artist so rare? Anatsui seems unbothered: “Individual little caps don’t have much to say but when I put them together, then they have a voice.” Indeed. Images are here.

Notre Dame is an architectural nullity

Jonathan Meades | The Spectator | 27th April 2019

Notre Dame cathedral is a “collage”, redesigned in the mid-nineteenth century by an “average architect”. Not much of today’s building is “authentic.” Use new architecture, argues the writer, rather than risk a pastiche. He suggests looking south of Paris to the Millau Viaduct “the greatest gothic structure of the past century: the clusters of cables form diaphanous spires. It’s an anthology of superlatives”.

We’ve Been Looking at Jean-Michel Basquiat All Wrong. He Was a Conceptual Artist, Not an Expressionist—and Here’s Why

Blake Gopnik | Authentication in Art | 5th March 2019

Early on, Basquiat attracted labels like ‘radiant child’ and ‘primitivist’, leading many to surmise his work expressed inner turmoil. His frenzied scrawls may resemble European expressionism but only by accident. Instead, the key to his complex work is text. Basquiat was “an artist of words and thoughts, [like conceptual artist Jenny Holzer], not of instincts and inchoate emotions.”

“Allowing a modern audience to see Helvetica for the first time”: Charles Nix talks us through the newly released Helvetica Now

Jyni Ong | Its Nice That | 9th April 2019

Helvetica, “the neutral voice of mid-century modernism”, has been updated. You may care – it is the world’s most used typeface [see The Easel website – Ed]. Previous versions intended for digital applications have struggled, especially on small smartphone screens. Says the lead designer “Having it suddenly be incredibly legible at 3pt is one of those moments where the skies open up and the angels sing.”

Chantal Joffe’s Many Faces

Olivia Laing | The Paris Review | 11th April 2019

Joffe likes fashion mags – she gets ideas for portraits. That’s where the fashion connection ends. Her portraits, mostly women, are candid, expressive of personality, life stages, relationships. Her current show of self-portraits fits this mould. “When a woman looks at herself, [she assesses herself against] the flawless face we all carry around inside the handbag of our heads.”

Obituary: Monir Farmanfarmaian, the artist who opened the world’s eyes to Iran

Roland Hughes | bbc.com | 28th April 2019

An encounter with traditional cut-glass mosaics in an Iranian mosque changed Farmanfarmaian’s career. Thereafter she blazed a trail of allying “modernist abstraction with Islamic ornament.” This brought international acclaim as well as decades-long exile from Iran. Times change – a museum dedicated to her “lucent” work recently opened in Tehran. Images are here.

What makes British art British?

Jonathon Jones | The Spectator | 27th April 2019

Is art universal or local? A noted art critic opts for the latter. Since Tudor England, there has been a “lack of aesthetic ambition”. Rather, what emerged from about 1700 was a “British empiricism”, based on “a passion for truth”. This idea seems in good health, the art of Freud, Auerbach and Hockney all being based on a “raw, tough, empirical eye”. An unexpected thought from Brexit-befuddled Britain.

COMING UP

Art is often referred to as an ‘alternative asset class’. There is evidence for this view, but Easel editor Andrew Bailey is cautious. Next week he dissects the complex structure of the art market and suggests that a ‘love of art’ should be factored into expected returns.

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