The Easel

2nd July 2019

Cindy Sherman’s first UK retrospective

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”.

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

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.

25th June 2019

Interpreting Oscar Murillo

Murillo is going places. Backed by a prominent collector he can boast notable auction results. He has frecently been nominated for Britain’s Turner Prize. However, only a few critics have reviewed his current show, one of them describing it as “rubbish”. A reaction to unfamiliar art? If so, this reviewer shares it, saying the work is “perhaps Murillo’s means of dealing with [his] anxieties”.

Bartolomé Bermejo: Beat the Devil

The art world in the fifteenth century was focused on Italy. Spain, provincial, was ignored. Bermejo took advantage of this to develop his own style – somewhat similar to Flemish masters like van Eyck. His works show intricate detail and a mastery of oil painting. One work, recently restored, is “one of the supreme works of art produced in all of Europe in the fifteenth century.”

The Colorful Waves Generated by Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School

Hard-edged abstraction, as Frank Stella conceived it, was macho. Melehi, part of the same New York circle in the early 60’s, saw something different – a resonance with “the abstraction inherent in Islamic art.” Back in Morocco he pioneered an aesthetic that married abstraction with Berber craft motifs. A new chapter in the culture of independent Morocco had begun.