The Easel

25th August 2026

In Venice, Michael Armitage’s paintings are an emotional retelling of the political climate

Gameli Hamelo | Wallpaper | 31st May 2026

Armitage was Nairobi born and raised, but then trained in traditional London and now paints images that reflect these very different environments. Socio-political and identity issues are prominent, represented in a style that mixes the documentary and the dream-like. Painted in rich colours on highly textured bark cloth his work has a “lyrical, cinematic” quality. Such images, says Armitage, don’t “speak for somebody [but] speak to something”.

Women hate this artist’s boob obsession — men aren’t so sure

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 3rd August 2026

Critics have long puzzled about Currin’s paintings, and a London show continues the trend. Painted with great finesse, these images of women are drawn from 1970’s clothing catalogues and display a “cornucopia of boobs”. One writer suggests these are “images of desire, discomfort, and spectacle”. This writer pushes back. Currin is not being rude toward women but instead representing memories of women in his mother’s social circle. “Yes, there’s mockery [but] there’s a tenderness to be felt as well”.

New book ‘Chromatic Architecture’ celebrates colour as a ‘fundamental aspect of human pleasure’

Natasha Levy | Wallpaper | 15th August 2026

In art, colour is a fundamental creative element. In architecture, it seems to have a lesser role – sometimes no more than a finishing flourish. A new book advocates for a bolder approach. Not only does colour affect how we respond to a structure, but it can also “elevate a building to otherwise unachievable heights“. That’s an idea, it is suggested, that goes all the way back to the caves of the Neanderthals.

Fang sculpture stands taller than ever

Emma Crichton-Miller | Apollo | 20th August 2026

At first glance, this is a straightforward report on the market for African sculptures and masks. The huge prices indicate the immense aesthetic appeal of what one writer calls “masterpieces of premodern global art”. From there it gets complicated. Recent scholarship suggests Picasso, on first seeing these works in 1907, engaged in direct copying rather than painterly interpretation. And, as to how such objects can be shown in western museums, (assuming bulletproof provenance) that is still a matter of considerable debate,

The Grand Egyptian Museum

Geoffrey Lenox-Smith | The Past | 20th August 2026

Although the museum officially opened last November, its crowning glory – the full contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb – is only now on display. Included are his personal possessions such as a carved calcite boat intended as a dining table centrepiece, and six chariots. A ceremonial chair made of ebony would have needed “a pile of cushions”. His spectacular funerary mask contains 10kg of gold and inlays of glass, obsidian and lapis lazuli. “I spent three full days in the GEM and look forward to returning”.

Is there such a thing as dangerous art?

Nadia Beard | Financial Times | 28th May 2026

Titian’s painting The Rape of Europa (1560) depicts abduction and rape. Is it any different from a video game – another art form – containing graphic sexual assault? Is there an “ethical grid” that identifies good from bad? What about imponderables like the intentions of the artist or the merits of judging centuries-old art by today’s standards?  The power of art lies in its ability “to transgress“. Observes the writer, “depraved art is a many-headed monster”.

18th August 2026

Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Audrey Wollen | The Yale Review | 8th June 2026

Interesting though dense. The late 20th century had a “profusion” of new cultural ideas but now we are in a period of “creative emptiness”. That is bad because an inventive culture benefits us all while kitsch “never asks us to change”. But haven’t we already got a surfeit of the completely new, such as our burgeoning, online world? Who says cultural originality is the only path to social progress? Kitsch – the repetition of familiar things – breeds new forms of subcultures and from those come new ideas.

Derrick Adams: View Master

Lee Ann Norman | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st July 2026

The challenge of a mid-career survey is to sum up an artist’s trajectory while it is still evolving. A case-in-point is Adams, whose colourful paintings of Black people at leisure convey “Black joy”. His figurative works are popular, but what is the enduring idea? One writer suggests it is identifying those banal moments “that make individual lives whole”. Or, says this critic, Adams shows how Black people can exist within a Eurocentric culture yet “create something else entirely”.

Dissidence for dummies

Pierre d’Alancaisez | The Critic | 12th August 2026

At Ai Weiwei’s first big show in London 15 years ago, he was hailed as an intellectually stimulating conceptual artist. A current show shows how much that reputation has shrunk. The works on display are often huge – a 49m inflatable boat, a three-tonne black glass chandelier, enormous flags – and address a profusion of issues. Some carry emotional impact while others are “self-aggrandising” or just “glib”. “Ai …  pretends to illuminate a problem whilst, in fact, obscuring it”.

The high summer of Finnish art

Gordon Sander | Engelsberg Ideas | 14th August 2026

In the 1890’s, Finland was under the sway of Russia. Finnish artists, wanting to resist Russia’s ever-closer embrace, were drawn to painting realist images of the Finnish countryside. They variously highlighted the landscape, the lives of poor farming families or Finland’s effulgent summers. Influenced by Russian art and French impressionism, they crystallised “the country’s imaginative firmament” and made Finland’s presence at the 1900 World Fair the coming out of a soon-to-be national identity.

An Andrea della Robbia Masterpiece Is on View at The Met for the First Time in 70 Years

Rena Gross | Galerie | 14th August 2026

Andrea della Robbia trained as a goldsmith before developing a method of glazing terracotta sculptures and devotional bas reliefs. Not only was his glazing more durable than a painted surface, but colours like “della Robbia blue” gave sculptures “a lifelike presence and an ethereal force”. Even though their work became popular throughout Europe, the della Robbia’s kept their techniques a secret, so much so that when the family died out several generations later, those secrets died with them. A video (3 min) is here.

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