The Easel

19th May 2026

Human Touch Wins Big With the 2026 Loewe Craft Prize

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron | Cultured | 14th May 2026

One writer, reviewing the Loewe Craft Prize, refers to the “tension” between craft and art. An alternative view is that the works on display emphasise, yet again, that craft occupies a unique aesthetic space. Fine craft, if one can call it that, is not about practical use but about materials, their uses and limits, and the techniques needed to create something. It’s “another way of thinking about objects”. Amidst anxieties about losing human invention a finalist observes reassuringly “we think through our hands”.

Beauty and Ugliness

Beatrice Loayza | 4Columns | 8th May 2026

Renaissance artists had a fixation with beauty. Having inherited the ancient Greek view that beauty arose from symmetry and geometry, they added to it by introducing anatomical realism. Further, they thought that outward beauty expressed inner virtue. Of course, there was also a fascination with ugliness, which was deemed to manifest absence – an absence of virtue,  a disordered soul. Modern values eclipse these views; we prioritise the interesting; “strange faces are infinitely more alluring”.

The Ignorant Art Historian: The Blind Man’s Meal

Hal Foster | The Paris Review | 12th May 2026

Current art criticism is often consumed by political or identity issues. Another, older approach, such as this piece, takes a more lyrical interpretation of a painting. This discusses a Picasso work.  “The man is not only sightless but eyeless; his sockets, which are dark green, are empty. The man is scarcely distinct from the dark gray room. It is as though we cannot see clearly anything that he cannot touch—the room above all. [But] he is not so alone after all; he is with things in a way that the sighted are not.”

‘It’s Personal’: Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer and Max Hollein on the Met’s Groundbreaking Merger With the Neue Galerie

Dodie Kazanjian | Vogue | 14th May 2026

Successful museums rarely merge. This merger of New York’s Met and the Neue Galerie is described as “one of the most significant institutional partnerships in American museum history”. Neue Galerie, with its famous collection of early 20th-century Austrian and German art, brings strength to an area where the Met is (relatively) weak. In return the Met appears to be offering longevity. Says Neue Galerie’s (not immortal) founder “I want to make sure … the Neue Galerie will stay the Neue Galerie.”

AI induced cultural stagnation is no longer speculation − it’s already happening

Ahmed Elgammal | The Conversation | 22nd January 2026

As AI-generated imagery expands, one possible outcome is “cultural stagnation”. AI systems naturally produce “compressed and generic” outputs. Training other systems on this material could result in images that favour “the familiar and the conventional”, leading to a loss of diversity in our visual environment. One might spot a silver lining here. The spread of slick AI imagery is feeding a new appreciation of the hand made, “lo-fi” imagery that contains the minor imperfections characteristic of humans.

I thought William Blake was a one-off but this powerful show surprised me

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 4th May 2026

Blake’s England was buffeted by the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and a “mad king”. Given this fraught society, perhaps we should not be surprised that Blake seems “totally bonkers”. Showing him alongside his contemporaries (including JNW Turner) reveals that they too painted monsters and fantastical beasts. The spirit of that age was “joyless people in unhappy landscapes.” Even so, no one was quite as good at “imagining the unimaginable” as Blake. He was unique.

12th May 2026

Georg Baselitz, the German painter who turned postwar art upside down, dies at 88

Maria Martinez | Reuters | 1st May 2026

Baselitz was a provocative but consequential artist. Resisting the pull of 1950’s abstraction, he focused on the human form, using a style reminiscent of pre-war German Expressionism. It amplified his controversial focus on the “destroyed landscape… people [and] society” of post-war Germany. He often used the disorienting technique of painting figures upside-down. Late in life he opined that women “don’t paint very well”. The idea of “looking toward the future” is nonsense, he said. “Simply going backwards is better”.

Cecily Brown: ‘Painting happens very quickly; often I don’t know if it’s working’

Jackie Wullschlager | Financial Times | 21st March 2026

After art school, Brown left London for New York where she hoped she would fit in. Two decades later she is back for her first major solo show. Her “landscapes-as-abstractions” are both commercially appealing and critically acclaimed. Gestural amalgams of “flesh and pastoral” don’t carry a message other than her appreciation of painting. For some critics her work can be “inert” but not this writer. Brown wants to show “convulsive beauty [and] has magnificently achieved it … a triumphant homecoming”.

First Impressions of a Venice Biennale Torn Apart by the Present

Ben Davis | Artnet | 6th May 2026

The Venice Biennale is so big that generalisations are unavoidable. One writer points out that multiple controversies create the impression that the event is “on the verge of collapsing”. The linked piece, however, finds “plenty to like” with an awareness of the backlash against identity themes and a move toward the “craft-adjacent, ritual-inspired idiom that defines what matters now in global art. [The Biennale] makes visible the further collapse of Western cultural authority.”

Henry Moore at Kew: Monumental Nature

Sarah Tucker | The Arbuturian | 9th May 2026

Can a garden become part of an artwork?  The sculptor Henry Moore saw sculpture as “an art of the open air” and this show places thirty of his large modernist works amidst the Victorian splendour of London’s Kew Gardens. While not an obvious pairing the result, says this writer, is “unexpectedly profound”. Amidst Kew’s ancient trees, not only do Moore’s works become “elemental” but the trees begin to look “anatomical … nature keeps quietly demonstrating [sculpture-like] forms nearby. Magnificent.”

The fierce life of Louise Bourgeois

Laura Cumming | The Observer | 14th January 2026

Louise Bourgeois’ “psychological artwork” was clearly autobiographical. Does a new biography, benefitting from access to her diaries, cast new light on this “raging genius”? Not much. Her troubled family life gave rise to well-known obsessions – “sexuality, her relationship to her parents, her sense of isolation” – that drove her creativity. Yet the biography is “too timid” and skirts many issues that might illuminate her art. That’s a pity because, as Bourgeois’ herself noted “sculpture is the body. My body is the sculpture.”

Recasting the monument for divided times

Oliver Basciano | Art Basel | 10th April 2026

Removing Confederacy statues in the US – and colonial-era statues elsewhere – pinpointed some difficult questions. Should these figures be judged by today’s standards or the standards of their day? “Retain and explain” is now a common approach as is the placement of more relatable figures. Yet controversy continues. The latest experiment will be a work in London’s Trafalgar Square showing an “everyperson” Black woman. Asks one sculptor about such works, “Why are they so controversial?”

Silver is Dead: Long Live Silver

Ulysses Dietz | The Magazine Antiques | 5th May 2026

An ode to the fading appeal of silver. Silver’s widespread cachet came not just from its use as cash but also because it is pretty, malleable and durable. The cultural connection it once enjoyed has now “clearly weakened”. A major factor, it seems, is that few of us have servants to polish silver pieces when they tarnish. Further, in our eating out culture, the custom of afternoon tea (using the silver service) has declined. What is left is silver as a prized design material and as the carrier of stories from the past.

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