The Easel

10th November 2026

A tribute to Marisa Merz, Arte Povera’s only female artist

Marina Paglieri | la Repubblica | 30th October 2026

Merz was married to one of the stars of the Italian arte povera movement whose mantra was to use humble materials. A belated retrospective makes clear just how much she contributed to the group. She made art in her kitchen –shapes formed by knitting copper wire, small clay figures, hanging pieces of aluminium sheeting – in what one writer calls “a total collapse between art and life”. Said one writer of an earlier Merz show, “Arte Povera may turn out to dwell largely in Ms. Merz’s shadow.” Images are here.

Yoshitomo Nara’s Big-Headed Girls Are Taking Over New York

Erin Ikeuchi | Hypebeast | 8th November 2026

The volume of Nara merch is so big, one reviewer comments, that it can obscure his artistic achievements. He does not try to satirise Japanese consumer culture but offers cuteness as “an expression of authentic feeling”. Over the years, those feelings ranged widely – anger, loneliness, “punk insouciance”. Now, his girls are a little mellower and show a social conscience. New sculptures also seem softer, painted metal with contours like soft ice-cream. “Nara is an artist of a generation”.

At MoMA, Brancusi Is Lost in Space

Aruna D’Souza | Hyperallergic | 5th November 2026

With Centre Pompidou being renovated many of its Brancusi works are showing in New York. They are “glorious” when seen firsthand. Up close, says one critic, he comes across as “less a purist … than a craftsman enamored of the sweaty satisfactions of cutting stone and wood.” And bases mattered to him. Compared to his polished modernist sculptures they sometimes seem “gloriously mismatched”. Ever the visionary, Brancusi was demonstrating the potential in disjunction and dissimilar textures.

A Lasting Moment: Marc Riboud in England

Stephanie Papa | Magnum | 5th November 2026

Riboud trained as an engineer but got his chance to work in photography when sent on assignment to Leeds. Leeds in 1954 was “the most depressing city in England”. His images, forgotten for 50 years, are among the first to document postwar social change. Riboud shows a hard-pressed working-class, worn down by rationing and battered infrastructure, yet drawing on its tight community bonds as it faced a diminished and uncertain future.

Mariko Mori predicted the future. She’ll do it again

Victoria Bennett | The Japan Times | 6th November 2026

Mori’s art sounds so characteristically Japanese. Her early, mid-1990s works focused on anime, pop culture and the role of women in Japanese society, but soon she began paying attention to technology. Later performance and installation works blurred the boundary between technology and self, anticipating avatars well before social media. Subsequent works including sensors projecting viewers brain activity onto large displays, place Mori at “the cutting edge of art, technology and consciousness”.

Light and Magic at Tate Modern – why turn a photograph into a painting?

Laura Cumming | The Observer | 15th October 2026

Once photography emerged in the 1820’s, a debate started about whether it was art. Pictorialism was one response to that debate. Spread through camera clubs across the world, it advocated for photos that looked like … paintings. That meant “the darkroom, not the lens” was where the magic happened. For example, images of ballet dancers were made to look like Degas’ damsels. But why bother? By the time some of these images were made photography was already “its own kind of art”.

3rd November 2026

‘A way of celebrating presence’: What Botero’s rotund remakes of classical masterpieces tell us about art history

Precious Adesina | bbc.com | 31st October 2026

Botero always pushed back at suggestions he painted “fat” people. He was, he explained, painting figures “with volume in mind”. Was this the influence of pre-Colombian art from his homeland that featured rounded forms, or simply an attraction to giving the ordinary a “monumental quality”. Either way, he celebrated voluptuous womanhood and rotund blokes in a non-sexualised, non-judgemental way. Adds one writer, Botero’s art is “unsettling as well as sensual … it forces us to think about life as well as art”.

MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and M+ Will Treat Their Holdings as One Collection in Unprecedented Alliance

Sarah Douglas | ARTnews | 29th October 2026

The recently announced “cultural alliance” between MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and M+ seems a big deal. These institutions have a common focus on “the art of the present”. Their alliance will attempt a long-term sharing of artworks to make the collections “work harder” rather than works idling away in storage. Ambitiously, each museum may end up with a dedicated gallery in the others. At a time of modest government support and expensive logistics, this is a “shrewd move”.

L.S. Lowry: a fresh look at the complex works of a self-described ‘simple man’

Alastair Smart | Christie’s | 23rd October 2026

Lowry has an odd backstory. He was a rent collector by day, painting only in the evenings. He lived at home and is not known to have had any romantic relationships. Combining what he saw from walking Manchester’s street with his artistic imagination, he captured the grime of the industrial landscape and people and places he said “nobody wanted”.  Says one writer Lowry was a “visionary of the industrial age … a modern expressionist who finds his inner melancholy reflected in the industrial sublime”.

Late-Arriving Pictures

Andrew Witt | Los Angeles Review of Books | 29th October 2026

Images of jazz musicians by Lisette Model showcase her “plainspoken” style. DeCarava’s jazz images were different. His work does not provide a standard narrative about Black experience. Famous musicians are shown alongside “garment workers and labourers”. When manipulated in the darkroom to achieve “an astonishing range of tonal gradations and transitions”, the images become “elusive”. This is DeCarava exploring whether “sound can acquire a visible form”.

A new $724 million museum is a visually stunning train wreck

Philip Kennicott | The Guam Daily Post | 24th October 2026

The fancy architecture of Los Angeles’ LACMA cost squillions and has been widely reviewed. What about its display of the art? It is an experiment in “non-hierarchical” display, with the art grouped geographically so it can be viewed in whatever sequence visitors wish. This is “conceptually clever but creates a confused, jarring experience. Chronology is too fundamental a human category to be dispensed with entirely. [For everyone except experts] the museum offers nothing but frustration”.

The unknown painter behind Manhattan’s Gilded Age interiors

Jane Coombs | Engelsberg Ideas | 20th October 2026

Decorative art is generally seen as not-quite fine art, and Finn was one of its great exponents. His art training in 1890’s Paris attracted the attention of American architects who were designing mansions for Gilded Age titans. They wanted to unify exterior design with interior aesthetics and Finn’s interior paintings “perfectly enhanced” the architecture. His acclaimed works include public libraries and theatres. Posthumous obscurity may not have bothered Finn as he sought acclaim only from his “peers and patrons”.

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