The Easel

9th July 2019

Easel Essay: Bauhaus: A Failed Utopia? Part 2: The Strains of Middle Age

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 9th July 2019

By 1930, many key Bauhaus figures had left Germany for Britain or the US. There, the idealism around supporting craft traditions was less and less to be seen. Something had changed.

“Even at a young age, Gropius found himself frequently influenced and inspired by American architecture and industrial design. Mies van der Rohe once wrote, “We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual.” The oft-voiced criticism of Bauhaus is that, as time went on, that third component dropped out almost entirely. Why was Bauhaus unable to maintain its balance into the middle and later parts of the 20th century?”

Neo Rauch at the Drawing Center

Jonathon Goodman | Arte Fuse | 4th June 2019

One writer puzzles about Rauch’s works thus “We wonder why the characters are doing what they are doing, and they do not seem to know either”. Sometimes they wear clothing from other eras. The Leipzig of his childhood might be relevant. Just don’t look to Rauch for guidance – painting, for him, is “walking into a fog”. Besides, he “hates painters who think of themselves as philosophers.”

Enigmatic and erotic: the art of Félix Vallotton

Samuel Reilly | 1843 | 3rd July 2019

Will the real Vallotton please stand up. Vallotton’s early satirical woodblock prints are “astonishing in their sheer graphic force”. He then married into money and switched to painting. These later works are diverse, some having the polished realism of Holbein, others anticipating the acute psychology of Edward Hopper. Perhaps the only common thread is “the uneasy sense … that something is going on, concealed from the viewer.”

An Unshakeable Visionary – On the Late David Koloane

Achim Drucks | ArtMag | 3rd July 2019

Koloane grew up thinking art was not a career option for a black man in Johannesburg. He was in his mid-30’s before getting formal art training. Despite the late start he was pivotal in establishing South Africa’s first gallery for black artists, as well as non-racial studios and artist workshops. International recognition for his own art came late. Many of his works feature scavenging dogs – at least, noted one writer “the dogs are free”.

We’re All in a Flutter About Rebecca Horn

Jane Ure-Smith | Frieze | 25th June 2019

An anxious childhood led to Horn’s interest in alchemy and absurdity. She has since produced extraordinary, unsettling works – performance art, films, machine sculptures. Some reflect on the solitary nature of human experience. Others concern social change, aiming to “drill a little hole in a problem that exists in a place or social situation”. A video of Horn’s machines is here and images here.

Market Values

Cody Delistraty | The Baffler | 3rd July 2019

Art market theorizing on a grand scale. Prices for figurative art are currently healthy because “society wants truth from its art in a time of social distrust”. In placid times we like the ambiguity and “messiness” of abstraction. How does this view fit with Impressionism and Cubism emerging in Paris at a time of great social change? And, do New York auctions reflect the broader art world? Hmmn.

How posters became art

Hua Hsu | The New Yorker | 1st July 2019

The role of posters is to persuade. They were perhaps the defining form of mass communication in Belle Époque Paris. Since then they have become more, a street view of culture. Not all critics approve – Susan Sontag described posters as “emotional and moral tourism.” That’s severe. There is something to be said for their democratic nature that tells “a story of collective consciousness”.

2nd July 2019

Cindy Sherman’s first UK retrospective

Tim Clark | British Journal of Photography | 24th June 2019

This exhibition, a lap of honour for Sherman, tells an important art story. Sherman doesn’t try for excellent photography. Her work shows the “gestures and tropes of womanhood” and is a commentary on images. As one writer puts it “Her work signaled the arrival of photography on art’s main stage … There is no real Cindy Sherman, only infinite characters who reflect the countless mediated images that bombard us daily”.

Willem de Kooning: Acrobat with a Paint Brush

Stephen Ellis | New York Review of Books | 1st June 2019

De Kooning brought with him from Europe a decent art training. What he did with that training was remarkable. He used it to bring formal structure to his works. Yet he somehow remained open to the influence of American culture. He remains an artist who resists precise categorization – a radical who “refused to be pinned down … as either “representational” or “abstract”.”

Exhibiting Change: When Some of the Best-Attended Exhibitions in Museums Are Protests, Where Do Institutions Go from Here?

Barbara Pollack | ARTnews | 21st May 2019

Museums should serve their communities. Multiple recent protests about museum practices suggest there is room for improvement. A broader focus than white male artists would be a good start, though only a “drop in the bucket”. One museum director advocates abandoning “the old model of museum as temple … the most important book a museum director should be reading is the census”.

Lubaina Himid’s colorful paintings explore the influence of the African diaspora

Sarah Moroz | i-d.vice | 24th June 2019

Himid has the voice of an activist. She charges that Britain’s “selective version of the past” erases black people. To make that point with her art, she has drawn on the work of satirists like William Hogarth. Himid often puts her figures in formal groupings, in the style of eighteenth century paintings. Satire, she says, helps with the “task of taking apart old ways of holding on to power.”

Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, Dulwich Picture Gallery review – a cut above

Katherine Waters | the arts desk | 19th June 2019

Print making has been popular for centuries. After WW1, the linocut was briefly all the rage. While not requiring the skill of, say, etching, it was ideal for the bold colourful style of British modernism. Municipal entities used linocuts widely in promotional materials to convey the speed and optimism of the burgeoning metropolis. Sadly, that mood and linocut’s popularity disappeared as peace came to an end. Images are here.

Renoir the sensualist, and the pleasures of paint

Murray Whyte | Boston Globe | 6th June 2019

Some call Renoir a ravishing colourist. More often, critics praise is sparing. This writer says of one work “it has little to tell, and everything to show.” Renoir’s sin – “lush, gorgeous escapism”. At a time of wrenching social change he focused on “the pleasures of color and light, flesh and form.” An excuse, of sorts, is offered up – Renoir was simply an artist for whom “subject was secondary, and painting was all”.

When Gekko Collects Art

Stoyan Sgourev | The Smart Set | 27th June 2019

The art market’s expansion is significantly due to greater participation by finance executives. They see the finance and art markets as having “similar principles of evaluation and pricing”. Their “flexible aesthetic preferences” favour contemporary art where connoisseurship plays a lesser role. Factors like “brand power” and celebrity mean the art market “increasingly resembles … professional sports.” Reasonable people may disagree.

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