The Easel

6th February 2018

Imagining President Donald Trump Sitting on Maurizio Cattelan’s Solid-Gold Toilet

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 29th January 2018

Amidst an anti-Trump rant, some interesting points about art. Duchamp argued that context gives meaning to art. Does the fracas over the Guggenheim’s action add meaning to Cattelan’s toilet, making it a better sculpture? Would installation in the White House have made it a different artwork – or perhaps not an artwork at all? At least one critic disapproves: “an erudite potty joke but a potty joke all the same”.

The Eternal Peter Hujar

Sarah Nicole Prickett | Document | 29th January 2018

A tinge of romance attaches to New York’s Lower East Side of the 1970’s. Amidst the urban decay important artists were emerging – Warhol, Basquiat, Mapplethorpe. Hujar was confident that fame would eventually find him, too. His friends thought likewise “In his portraits, he doesn’t exert the gaze, which is the norm of most photography. He met people where they lived. He is the greatest portraitist of the twentieth century.”

30th January 2018

Jack Whitten: once neglected artist lately the toast of the art world

Sebastian Smee | The Washington Post | 22nd January 2018

Despite getting an early career solo show at New York’s Whitney, Whitten struggled all his life for recognition. It is now starting to arrive, belately, after a long career of sustained innovation. His “visually arresting [work] can feel like a missing link between the abstract expressionists of the postwar years and the minimalists and conceptualists”. He died last week. An excellent interview with the artist (2.50 min) is here.

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