The Easel

11th July 2017

As in Nature and No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Times Two at the Clark

William Belcher | The Alt | 10th July 2017

After Jackson Pollock some wondered what was next. Frankenthaler’s “soak-stain” technique was one answer. It expanded the vocabulary of abstract painting and allowed her to combine organic effects and painted shapes. Her woodcut prints, perhaps less acclaimed than her paintings, are also innovative: “these woodcuts are astonishing … and challenge a conventional understanding of the medium” More images are here.

Dark enlightenment of Edvard Munch

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 25th June 2017

Munch wrote “My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm”. And don’t his paintings show it. Seeing van Gogh’s work in Paris, he understood how colour might help express his grand theme – the self as a battleground. Self-analysis was a theme of the coming century and it brought him some commercial success. But his art retained its angst. Increasingly he kept his works, and himself, to himself.

These Four Painters Won’t Be Ignored Any Longer

John Yau | Hyperallergic | 2nd July 2017

London’s Lisson Gallery made its name by championing unfashionable modern artists. Fifty years later, it is still at it. A new show gathers four such overlooked artists, eliciting the writer’s wholehearted approval. “One gets tired of seeing the same combinations repeatedly. It is like eating in a parody of a Chinese restaurant from the 1950s, where there is only one item in column A and one in column B.”

¡Viva modernismo! Houston, Dallas shows highlight Mexican art masterpieces

Molly Glentzer | Houston Chronicle | 23rd June 2017

Less a review than a survey of the last 100 years of Mexican art. In the lead-up to WW2, Mexico was a focal point of international modernism. But after the war abstract expressionism grabbed all the attention. Interest is now returning and more artists are being recognized in addition to the perennial Rivera and Kahlo. Claims the writer – “the world’s love affair with Mexican art is burning hotter than it has in years.”

The Novelty and Excess of American Design During the Jazz Age

Alison Meier | Hyperallergic | 10th July 2017

The Roaring Twenties was famously a period of excess. But it was also a time of design innovation. Germany’s Bauhaus, the 1925 Paris World Fair, and Holland’s De Stijl were focal points, redefining what it meant to be modern. The US contributed innovations in architecture, fashion and music. One critic observes “Despite nearly a century … no other design period speaks as directly to contemporary tastes.”

4th July 2017

Sophie Calle at Fort Mason: Reports from love’s front lines

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 1st July 2017

It’s difficult to be precise about the art of celebrated French conceptual artist Sophie Calle. A gallery blurb says her projects deal with issues of absence and loss. She based one such project on a break-up email received from a lover. Calle circulated the note to a wide circle of women requesting their analysis “without pathos”. An excellent background piece sums up her work thus: “autobiography wrung dry of all emotion”.

Myth-Maker of the Brothel

Ian Buruma | The New York Review of Books | 29th June 2017

Utamaro painted refined scenes of beautiful women in Tokyo’s brothels. In truth this “floating world” was not so glamorous nor he its habitué. His celebrated paintings possibly had rather prosaic origins: “Politically oppressive, the authorities nonetheless gave license to men to indulge themselves in amusement. Sex, kept in bounds by rules of social etiquette, was less threatening … than political activity.”

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