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”.

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