The Easel

14th October 2025

Peter Doig Turns Serpentine Into A Living Soundscape With ‘House Of Music’

Nargess Banks | Forbes | 10th October 2025

Can you have an exhibition where music gets nearly equal billing to the art? Doig paints to music and in this museum show, he wants it to feature prominently. Some of his paintings are hung in warmly-lit rooms where huge vintage speakers play Doig favourites. These paintings have a mysticism that make them, says one writer, “assuredly musical … ambiguous”. Says another, the music “will change, in the best way possible, how and what you see,”

Nigerian Modernism in London: ‘A bold new language for art’

Alastair Smart | Christie’s | 2nd October 2025

At last, a survey of modernist African art! This particular London show focuses on Nigeria, and it tells a complicated story. Independence created a sense of cultural “emancipation” but, in a country with 250 ethnic groups, the art that has emerged is hugely diverse. One critic thinks some of it is “folksy”, but perhaps that’s part of the story. It is a parochial story and should not, says the curator, be viewed through a “pan-African lens. It ought to be understood on its own terms”.

Calder Gardens, a Stunning New Tribute to Alexander Calder, Opens in Philadelphia

Chloe Schama | Vogue | 16th September 2025

Calder Gardens, just opened in Philadelphia, apparently wants to be a museum without being a museum. It has been designed by a ‘starchitect’ but is a small, “camouflaged” structure that is mostly underground and “too small to fail”.  It will not have its own collection, relying instead on loans from the Calder Foundation that controls a “vast trove”. Integral to the design is the surrounding garden that will be popular with those who generated most of Calder’s copious fan mail – children.

The sublime and silly art of Sèvres

Rachel Hunter Himes | Apollo | 9th October 2025

China had a monopoly on fine, durable porcelain until around 1710 when Meissen cracked its secrets. Sèvres was close behind. To secure Sèvres’ know-how, Louis XV made it a royal enterprise and it has since become a byword for refined taste. Curators regard its high-end pieces as sculpture – no surprise given that they were intended for the tables of imperial clients. These were items of exquisite taste as well as a projection of French state power. Eye candy of the highest order. More images are here.

Inside the V&A’s Marie Antionette Style with curator Dr Sarah Grant

Staff | The Cultivist | 20th September 2025

A show about Marie Antionette’s legacy is probably more culture than art. Joining the French court aged 14, dress was one way for her to project “feminine power”. The few pieces of original fabric that survive, together with reconstructed dresses, signal that this was a life of performance. Muses one writer, what carries most impact is less the eye-popping jewellery than an appreciation of Antoinette’s very human dilemma. She was being set up, and we, “caught up in looking … [are unwittingly] a part of a mob.”

How Hans Ulrich Obrist Became the World’s Most Influential Curator

Emily Steer | AnOther | 3rd October 2025

Obrist has a “terrifying” work ethic, networking, curating shows, appearing at art events, interviewing artists and/or posting to Instagram. Few curators can match his art world influence. His new memoir is busy with forthright views: nothing can replace one-to-one, in-person encounters; he wants to combine disciplines – certainly art and architecture, but also art and science; artists should be given jobs in government; art requires looking and looking and looking; he doesn’t cook.

Rauschenberg’s New York and the problem of seeing only surfaces

Samuel Abrahms | newgeography | 26th September 2025

A spate of exhibitions mark Rauschenberg’s 100th anniversary. The fact there are so many shows is testimony to his diversity – painting, photography, collage, assemblage. Not all this work was of high quality, but it was always inventive. His photography, for example, was skilful but really stood out when incorporated into his complex, layered work. In that aspect, Rauschenberg was prescient, his fragmented urban imagery anticipating today’s “civic crisis”.

7th October 2025

Michaelina Wautier: the female Flemish artist now seen as an old master

Philip Altermann | The Guardian | 28th September 2025

Forgotten for centuries Wautier is now being ushered into the hallowed ranks of the baroque Old Masters. Part of a well-off Flemish family she worked at about the same time as Caravaggio and Gentileschi. Remarkably, she was accomplished across portraiture, intimate genre studies, floral still-lifes and large-scale history work. Defying the norms of the day, she painted male bodies, and with great authority. Says the museum “The most exciting discovery of the past decade in art history”. A backgrounder is here.

Lee Miller review, Tate Britain – Seeks to rescue the artist from her role of iconic beauty and muse

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 30th September 2025

Miller was seen as a 1930-ish glamour girl until the posthumous discovery of her photography archive. It revealed that she was an accomplished photographer. When working with Man Ray in Paris, the “presiding spirit” of their work seems to have been his. After that, though, she emerges as a “high end, classic modernist”. Working as a war photographer, her cool eye produced some of that century’s most distressing images. For her, says one writer, “beauty and brutality had equal weight.”

Art Deco at 100: All Cocktails and Jazz?

Danielle Thom | ArtReview | 24th September 2025

Art deco, that most famous of design styles, gets put under the microscope. It was never a unified movement but rather “full of complexities”. At first, its ornate geometric lines showcased luxurious materials – “the extractions of empire”. It picked up motifs from Egyptian and Mayan discoveries. Hollywood used it as “shorthand for guilt-free opulence”, notably in movies featuring Fred Astaire. Today, art deco carries a ‘period’ feel, reincarnating optimistic, mid-20th century views of the future.

Gilbert & George review, 21st Century Pictures: Hayward Gallery exhibition is quite hectically of the moment

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 6th October 2025

As art students Gilbert and George sang pre-war songs, their faces painted bronze. Since then their endlessly provocative work has addressed sex, money, race, the tabloids and (particularly) religion. They have become, says a writer, the “scabrous chroniclers of London in the tradition of Hogarth”. Some think their act has become formulaic but it is still “quite hectically of the moment.” A curator discusses some of their works here.

How Europe Became Obsessed With Chinese Art (Chinoiserie)

Ching Lee Yim | The Collector | 2nd October 2025

A backgrounder. Silk road trade left a mark on Europe’s cultural imagination. Subsequently, maritime trade greatly increasing the availability of exotic luxury Chinese goods – especially ceramics. Chinoiserie became a thing among Europe’s well-to-do. Oriental motifs, such as flowers, dragons and pagodas, married well to rococo‘s decorative aesthetic. Of course, chinoiserie was part fantasy, Europe’s idealisation of Asian culture. Nonetheless, it is a cultural influence that endures.

Theatre Picasso review, Tate Modern – Familiar works transformed by a bold, atmospheric setting

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 15th September 2025

Are there new ways to exhibit Picasso? A London show tries, showing him in a theatrical setting, as if to focus on his love of play acting. One critic likes this approach, saying the show is “riveting, [giving the art] a jumpy energy.”. Other critics, though, are lukewarm.  “The exhibition mixes together a lot of chaotic ideas” is a common theme.  The above writer complains about the convoluted wall labels, admitting that it “isn’t quite the epic blockbuster we’d hoped”.

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