The Easel

9th April 2019

10 things to know about KAWS

Lately, KAWS has been selling for millions at auction. His paintings and sculptures of cartoonish figures are attention-grabbing and Instagram-friendly – perhaps he is the next Basquiat or Haring.  Naysayers think this is absurd. His early street art had vitality, but endless repetition since shows up the real issue – the “sheer conceptual bankruptcy of KAWS work.”

2nd April 2019

Powerful elegy for a world that is slipping away: Tate Britain’s The Asset Strippers reviewed

This “magnificent” show has a painful resonance with the Brexit identity crisis. Nelson has salvaged a mass of obsolete machinery from post-war industrial Britain. A show “not of nostalgia but deep sadness” says one critic “It’s about the end of an era: industries moving on and out of the country … everything must go, entire eras of the past.” More images are here.