The Easel

26th March 2019

Tintoretto was brilliant and ambitious. This new exhibition shows he was also sublimely weird.

A landmark show. Facing stiff competition from Titian and Veronese, Tinteretto took from Michelangelo. Putting energised human figures in his paintings may provide them narrative force. It did indeed. Not all Tintoretto’s works are masterpieces but they always persuade. “Deeply original, often sublimely weird [he was] one of the most imaginative painters of the Renaissance.”

How Lincoln Kirstein Changed NYC Culture From Behind the Scenes

By age 21, Kirstein had founded a literary journal and a contemporary art society. After graduating he chose the young MoMA as “the perfect repository for his many enthusiasms.” At 25, he co-founded the New York City Ballet! His contributions to modern art via institution building and support of individual artists “was one of the greatest of the twentieth century.” A video is here.

An Artist’s Archeology of the Mind

This bio piece makes Sacks sound intimidating – literature specialist, poet, Harvard academic and now, at age 69, successful painter. His paintings take years, sometimes having 10 or more layers. Not abstract art, he says, more non-representational. “They are like very slow action paintings … one step at a time. In a certain sense, it’s up to the materials to show me the way.”

Review: Searing moments of American truths in ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’

Different people see things differently. In London, this show was praised for its “beauty”. On home soil it is the show’s “searing moments” that catch attention. Some 1960’s artists were trying to create distinctively ‘black’ art. While that didn’t quite happen, art did find its voice on race issues. Now, art focused on these issues has “a secure place within the art market”.