The Easel

13th February 2018

12 Masterful Portraits Leave Their Castle For The First Time

Wendy Moonan | 1stdibs | 29th January 2018

Velazquez was the greater painter but, still, Zurbarán was a star of the Spanish Baroque. Velazquez went off to the royal court but devout Zurbarán painted for churches and monasteries. Probably intended for churches in the New World these monumental portraits instead ended up in rural England, scarcely to be seen in 250 years. Zurbarán, it seems, “is about to be rediscovered yet again”. A discussion of the paintings is here.

The Artist Questioning Authorship

Calvin Tomkins | The New Yorker | 29th January 2018

Long but interesting essay about conceptual artist Danh Vo. His family were Vietnamese refugees and the experience seems to echo. His work mostly comprises objects—collected, collaged, repurposed – that are in some way ambiguous. He is a “hunter and gatherer” says his gallerist. The curator of his Guggenheim show is more poetic: he expresses “vagaries of lived experience and the flickering instability of the self”.

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.”

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