The Easel

16th December 2025

Remembering Martin Parr (1952–2025)

Staff | Magnum Photos | 10th December 2025

After getting married, Martin Parr increasing directed his photography toward capturing the mundane aspects of British life. His seminal work, The Last Resort, featured seaside holiday makers in situations where “hope and promise don’t quite match reality”. While some praised his “pin-sharp satirical genius” others called him a “cynical smart-arse”. He seemed untroubled by the furore, responding that his work was “social documentary. I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment.”

An Exhibition at the Met May Just Make Finnish Modernist Helene Schjerfbeck Your New Favorite Artist

Laird Borrelli-Persson | Vogue | 8th December 2025

From studying in Paris Schjerfbeck developed a realist style broadly consistent with emerging modernism. After returning home to Helsinki, this style started to change. Her interiors took on an “architectonic plainness”. A curator says her portraits focused on “light, space, volume—not the soul of the sitter”. Her self-portraits were without sentiment, “depicting her mortality with an almost Goya-like intensity”. Says one writer. The rarely exhibited Schjerfbeck “shaped modern portraiture from a distance”.

Jeff Koons with Joachim Pissarro

Joachim Pissarro | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st December 2025

Koons divides opinions, and his first New York show in years is no different. The linked piece describes a studio visit where Koons enthuses over 18th century porcelain figurine that have inspired him. Sounding a bit like a retailer, he highlights his personal involvement with his new works. One writer protests that these glossy works are “intentionally stealing from the past. Poor [Koons]. He has no idea that no one will be thinking about this forgettable show by this time next year”.

Westwood | Kawakubo: NGV hosts the works of two iconic catwalk rebels

Lucianne Tonti | The Saturday Paper | 6th December 2025

Westwood and Kawakubo are revered fashion designers. Westwood pioneered “anarchic dressing” that celebrated female sexuality. Kawakubo’s anti-fashion aesthetic offers outlandish silhouettes and is almost never sexual.  Their common ground was rebellion and opposition to the “docile image of femininity”. For Kawakubo, comfort was a lesser priority than designs that made a person “aware of [one’s] existence. It just so happened that my notion [about this is] different from everybody else’s.”

June Leaf: ‘Shooting From the Heart’: The Grey Art Museum Honors a Lifetime of Uncompromising Creation

Abigael Sidi | The Science Survey | 17th November 2025

Leaf had a long career but never enjoyed sustained acclaim. Perhaps she was overshadowed by her famous photographer husband. More simply, perhaps her art also was too difficult. In the 1950’s when abstraction was all the rage, she not only stuck with figuration but produced work in “every art medium imaginable”. One renowned painting left the writer “equally captivated and confused, sure of its brilliance but unsure of its message … constantly layering ideas on top of each other”.

Bridget Riley and the pleasure of looking

Lily Le Brun | The Observer | 22nd November 2025

At the venerable age of 94, Riley is still painting. An “elegant” survey demonstrates she is still coming up with eye-deceiving abstractions that add to an already large “alphabet” of such work. Yet this prompts the question is this new work really new? Riley’s response is that she is trying to replicate the feeling of looking at nature. One work, consisting of triangles, evokes the sensation of waves lapping on the shore. How does she do that asks one writer? “I can’t stop looking”.

9th December 2025

Frank Gehry, masterful architect who transformed L.A.’s urban landscape, dies at 96

Christopher Hawthorne | Yahoo news | 6th December 2025

Twentieth century architecture thought “less is more” but not Gehry. A childhood spent tinkering with appliances gave him an affection for “mechanisms that spill their guts for all the world to see”. Starting with his own house, Gehry pioneered a “more expressionistic architectural language”, inspiring his profession to move beyond the pristine modernist box. Sometimes criticised for “architectural sculpture”, his best work combines “balance and elegance” with “boisterous energy”. Images are here.

Five Ways of Looking at Wifredo Lam

Staff | MoMA Magazine | 18th November 2025

Lam’s work has long perplexed the art world. Born in Cuba, he moved to Spain in his early 20’s to study art. Eighteen years later he returned, wanting to blend cubism and surrealism with a Caribbean sensibility. La Jungla, his acknowledged masterpiece, does just that, placing figures amidst sugar cane and jungle foliage. Lam said the work was “an act of decolonisation … in a mental sense”. He gave “a mystical presence to [everyday] scenes”. Says a curator “There’s so much that remains to be [understood]”.

Tyler Mitchell: the photographer of the moment

Staff | The Economist | 4th December 2025

Mitchell shot his first Vogue cover – of Beyonce – at age 23, an indicator of his precocious talent. Now 30, he has a high-profile career that straddles fashion and fine art. His focus is on Black style and beauty, often featuring black figures in playful or leisurely moments that contrast with charged media imagery. Having grown up in the worlds of skateboarding and music, he is hyper-aware of image. “It becomes about how we present ourselves culturally. The clothes kind of become this other thing”.

The 2025 Power 100: A User’s Guide

Staff | ArtReview | 4th December 2025

ArtReview’s Power 100 comes with a warning – it is subjective and prone to favour those with money. With that caveat in mind here are some takeaways from this year’s list. The art world is becoming multi-polar and “old art centres” have lost ground to the Middle East [not by much]. Artists themselves take most of the top 10 spots [good] and artists from Africa are prominent [about time]. The “old gallery model” is struggling [unlikely]. The art world conceals much of its activities [twas ever thus].

Protest Photography

Daniel Trilling | London Review of Books | 20th November 2025

London has witnessed street protest for ever. What do photographs of those events tell us? One writer thinks they are a valuable record of social history – who knew that the National League of the Blind protested in 1920 for better rights?  The meaning behind some images is not always clear – police surveillance photos sometimes resembled those taken by the protesters. Claims this writer, the show affirm that “we are here, we are alive, we matter”. Says another it is “an exhibition stuck in the past”.

 

Varnish & Virtue

Peter Marshall | Literary Review | 3rd December 2025

Holbein was quite an operator. Introduced by Erasmus to Thomas More, he gravitated to Thomas Cromwell and later the royal court. A new biography calls him a “relentless pragmatist”, a workaholic, who ditched family and patrons when it suited and who churned out portraits “on an industrial scale”. But here’s the thing. Holbein painted the iconic portrait of Henry VIII that projected regal vitality and temperament but also showed a man who was “puffy, phallic and cruel”. Holbein’s head stayed on his shoulders.

“Origins of Impressionism” at the Met

Karen Wilkin | The New Criterion | 8th December 2025

Art history likes its categories. Reality is messy though, and painting movements emerge in fits and starts – as was the case with Impressionism. In the 1860’s Monet was closest to being an “impressionist”. Degas “flirted” with a classical style, Renoir was being “pretty”, Cezanne was “all over the place” and Courbet and Corot weren’t Impressionists at all. In 1868 Monet painted a modest work that highlighted reflections on a river. With hindsight, that may well have provided the “aha!” moment.

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