The Easel

30th September 2025

‘The Art of Manga’ Brings New Worlds to the de Young Museum

Janea Melido | KQED | 25th September 2025

Manga, once a uniquely Japanese black and white graphics product, is now global. The most famous manga is One Piece. Having appeared weekly for 28 years it is now a “cultural juggernaut”. Loosely, it’s a pirate adventure story that focuses not on raiding parties but on adventure and freedom. Other manga address crime, sports, history, sexuality, friendship, science fiction, martial arts and more. Says a curator “there is a manga for everybody” A review of a Netflix adaptation is here.

In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

Jack Moss | Wallpaper | 29th September 2025

Intended to mark 50 years of the Armani brand, a Milan show has become a retrospective. Armani’s concept of dressing was “fluid rather than structured suiting”. Women in particular were liberated from “fussy and figure-hugging silhouettes”. The Armani look was one of “louche glamour”, achieved through “refined use of decoration, the preference for neutral and refined tones, and attention to workmanship”. Said he “I am neither a couturier nor a tailor, but I feel I am someone who creates a style”. Images are here and an obit here.

‘Sixties Surreal’ Curator Dan Nadel Is Expanding American Art History, One Outlier at a Time

Alex Greenberger | ARTnews | 22nd September 2025

The textbook story of post war art seems neat and tidy – abstraction, Pop, Minimalism and so on. Yet plenty of art didn’t fit this “New York centric” discourse.  Viewing such work from the 1960’s, one writer detects a common thread – psychosexual imagery. A curator suggests differently – these artists simply didn’t fit the “formalist” conversation of that time. Old academic views have “started to crumble” but the aim is not to establish another canon, just “a different set of players and ideas”.

The Lucas Museum and the Question of Narrative Art

Leo Braudy | Los Angeles Review of Books | 17th September 2025

Important, maybe. Geoge Lucas is using his Star Wars fortune to build a Museum of Narrative Art. Narrative art is visual storytelling where the representation of physical movement conveys “elapsed time.” The Chauvet cave paintings, for example, imply the pursuit of animals. Bas-relief carvings show Egyptian pharaohs sallying forth in their chariots. And the Bayeux Tapestry justifies William the Conqueror’s invasion of England. The take-out seems to be that movies are narrative art par excellence.

The Trailblazing, Shapeshifting Artist Suzanne Duchamp Gets a Museum Retrospective, Finally

Andrew Russeth | Artnet | 26th June 2025

Marcel Duchamp had a sister who also was an artist. Who knew? Early in her career, Suzanne made “superb”, colourful Dadaist images but in 1922, abruptly turned to figuration. Those “somewhat awkward” paintings have not served her reputation well. Says one writer, she was freely exhibited in her lifetime so her significance now is mainly as a female contributor to the male-dominated dada story. Was she a major artist? Perhaps not, as it seems she prioritised personal interest over career maximisation.

Enthusiastic about Pictures

Elizabeth Goldring | London Review of Books | 25th September 2025

Following its $330m renovation, the history-oriented back story to New York’s Frick Collection. To turn his family home into a public museum, Frick followed the example of London’s Wallace Collection. Having discovered the Old Masters, he bought so rapidly that dealers allowed him to trade-in superseded acquisitions. Renovation has allowed the Collection to display more of its decorative arts objects. Frick most liked buying paintings though, saying “you can draw your dividend daily”.

23rd September 2025

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories

Joe Lloyd | Studio International | 19th September 2025

Marshall’s study of Italian Renaissance paintings made him want to be a part of that art history tradition -“like Giotto and Géricault”. But where, he thought, were the Black figures? His works are thick with references, both to art history and to popular culture. In that sense they are “living history paintings” featuring the lived Black experience, Black subjects with their own preoccupations, emotions and ambitions. Says one writer, a “staggering, triumphant show”. A discussion of one key work is here.

Seydou Keïta’s Revelatory Portraits of Malian Life

Kobby Ankomah Graham | Aperture | 15th August 2025

Keïta’s photography tells deep stories. Some portraits have figures posing on motor bikes, symbolising modernity in newly independent 1960’s Mali. Malian eyes would likely pick out the textiles though, that displayed not just traditional designs but also influences from French colonial fashions. In his meticulous images, “individuals claim space within a rapidly shifting society. Keïta crafted a distinctive modernist photographic language anchored in the Malian arts of textile.”

‘Little Beasts’ at the National Gallery

Stuart Vyse | Skeptical Inquirer | 7th July 2025

In the 1500’s, Netherlanders regarded insects as vermin. Once they acquired an empire though, that changed. Artists and the learned classes were wonderstruck at the unknown insects and wildlife being brought in from the colonies. Both male and female artists created work, the best of which was “delightfully intricate and realistic”, seeding the idea of empirical observation. By around 1600, scientific enquiry was seen as separate from philosophy, and natural history was an established discipline. Images are here.

Georges de La Tour, the luminous to rediscover at the Jacquemart-André Museum

Letizia Dannery | L’Express | 13th September 2025

De La Tour is one of art history’s mystery men. Some think his centuries-long oblivion was a result of living in rural Lorraine. Yet he was an artist to the French king and joined in the stylistic innovation sparked by Caravaggio. Famous for candle-lit nocturnal scenes, his attention to detail helped convey a deep understanding of human emotion. Rediscovered in the twentieth century, de La Tour is now regarded as one of the great artists of the baroque. Images and a video link are here

Cropped, Chopped, and Silhouetted: Taking Celebrity at Face Value

Cara Shatzman | MOMA | 17th September 2025

Images are the fuel of celebrity culture. Whether it’s social media influencers, film stars or (increasingly) politicians, images are manipulated to flatter or to convey an idea. Archives of Hollywood studio photos show just how “ruthless” this process could be, with exaggerated images of femininity placed next to exaggeratedly masculine figures. One curator likens these images to the Pictures Generation artists who famously explored the gap between image and reality. Says another curator “celebrities are products”.

Radical Harmony at the National Gallery: ‘you can have just too many dots’

Melanie McDonough | Yahoo news | 12th September 2025

Pointillists like Seurat were, it seems, “narrowly doctrinaire” with their ever-so-carefully painted dots and colour choices. But Paris at that time was a hotbed of artistic experimentation, and colour theory didn’t exactly sound exciting. Signac emerged as an apostle of Seurat but his dots were coarser. Sometimes he even used lines! Despite the affinity of dotting with landscapes, this painting movement faded.  Seurat’s La Grand Jatte “was the great painting of the movement, but it still seems like a one-trick pony”.

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