The Easel

11th June 2019

Easel Essay: Bauhaus: A Failed Utopia? Part 1: The Manifesto

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 11th June 2019

The Bauhaus was probably the single most influential modernist art school of the 20th century. To mark the centenary of its founding, Morgan Meis is writing an essay – in three parts – on its history and impact.

“Bauhaus’ founding manifesto [by Walter Gropius] is a document wild with utopian ideals. It is not a utopianism wishing to abolish the past in the name of a glorious future filled with glass and concrete. There is nothing in it that comes anywhere close to the idea that form should follow function, that ornament is an enemy, or that formal simplicity is a goal in and of itself. The biggest question … is whether the movement lost – or found – its way through the course of the 20th century.”

Why is African American art having a moment? The reasons are as varied as the art itself

Charles Desmarais | SF Chronicle | 2nd June 2019

The art world, it seems, is getting woke. There has always been a market for the work of African American artists. It’s just that the leading museums are now involved, with changed curatorial appointments and museum acquisitions. Conspicuously, auction room results have also upshifted. Says one curator “there has been a whole parallel universe … that people had not tapped into”

Faith Ringgold @ the Serpentine Gallery

Simon | astrofella | 6th June 2019

Ringgold’s work is political, intense. It thus surprises how often it is called colourful – even “pretty”. She started with painting and posters but moved to “populist” quilts, a form women have long used for story telling. The art world can be sniffy about textiles but they suited Ringgold, their textures and colours expressing her “exuberance and optimism” in the face of angry subject matter.

April Dawn Alison Casts Light On the Identities That We Hide Away

Louise Benson | Elephant | 9th June 2019

Alan Schaefer had a secret – April Dawn Alison, an after-hours female persona. Following his death, decades of Polaroid images were found, “an extraordinary long-term exploration of a private self”. In our social media age, a project “intended only for private consumption and personal pleasure feels so anachronistic and so genuine as to become almost sacred.” More images are here.

4th June 2019

Brancusi and America

William Agee | Art in America | 1st May 2019

Brancusi felt a debt to America, its openness to the new. In return he has been “the fountainhead” of American sculpture. Listing his undoubtedly numerous innovations tends to obscure where his true greatness lay. An earlier critic is more specific – “his rapturous feeling for surfaces … [and endowing] his forms with something of the clarity and finality of law”.

Cute puppies and octopus sex: A Japanese art exhibition reveals our fascination with animals

Philip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 30th May 2019

Animals, for the Japanese, figure prominently in their culture. They feature in the Shinto religion, sometimes with supernatural powers, other times representing human foibles. Animal iconography also appears in secular political and philosophical discourse. And, of course, there is contemporary kitsch. All in all, a very, very Japanese thing.

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