The Easel

20th August 2019

The Right To Dare Everything: ‘Paul Gauguin: The Art of Invention’

James Balestrieri | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 13th August 2019

It must be Gauguin’s immense influence that keeps writers gnawing away at his biography. Gauguin borrowed ideas from everywhere. A synthesis had started in Brittany but emerged fully in Polynesia – a “modern aesthetic, with its direction rather toward suggestion than description”. One writer concurs: “a protean talent who influenced the course of modern painting more than anyone except Cézanne”.

David Hammons Taunts the Art World in Los Angeles

Rachel Wetzler | Art in America | 13th August 2019

Hammons doesn’t maintain a public profile and doesn’t have a gallery relationship. If he wants to exhibit, he just asks a (“extremely blue chip”) gallery. His stellar reputation ensures ready agreement. Hammons is quoted as saying “the less I do, the more of an artist I am.” His infrequent shows are thus notable – indeed, it is difficult to decide if the linked piece reviews the art or the event.

A Depression-Era Mural, Caught in a Very Contemporary Controversy

Sarah Holder | Citylab | 5th August 2019

Debate over an “insensitive” San Francisco school mural continues. Haven’t we seen this movie before? Only two years ago some advocated removing “insensitive” Confederacy-era statues. What is the principle at issue here? One writer suggests it should be the preserving of objects that “tell the stories of our lives”. Sounds reasonable – presuming that it means all stories, not just the ones we happen to like.

‘All art is voyeuristic’: Lisa Yuskavage on the joy of provocation

Ann Binlot | Document | 13th August 2019

Yuskavage’s paintings of nude women lead some (but certainly not all) to say her work has a “soft porn aesthetic”. Yuskavage disagrees. Why so much nudity? It’s “the biggest subject in the history of art”. Is her work voyeuristic? “All art is voyeuristic. It’s fun to be provocative. I’m Apollonian in my life [but] in my studio, I’m pretty Dionysian. My experience is really smart people get [my work]”

I Learned Enormous Things: Hans Ulrich Obrist Remembers Marisa Merz

Hans Ulrich Obrist | Frieze | 8th August 2019

Merz was the only woman – and lowest profile – member of the 1960’s arte povera movement. Recent shows reveal her to be the “liveliest”. Her works were hugely varied, including a violin sculpture made of wax. “As we were installing the violin … it started to melt in the summer sun. Marisa wasn’t bothered: ‘Why would an exhibition have to last?’” An excellent video (10 min) is here.

Home Sweet Home

Sophie Wright | Lens Culture | 16th July 2019

The British middle class started being fond of their houses in the early 19th century. A “sensitive and confronting” exhibition of British photography reveals that it is now well beyond fondness. For individuals, houses are both a safe haven and a point of “collision of dreams, aspirations and realities”. Collectively, they help define national identity. So, is the home more a state of mind than it is a physical place?

Asset management

Federico Varese | Times Literary Supplement | 13th August 2019

An academic criminologist calls the attribution of Salvator Mundi to da Vinci a “miracle”. Is it? With improved analytic techniques, changed attributions on old paintings are not that uncommon. In the absence of new evidence, skepticism about this painting (presumably because of its price tag) doesn’t really add much value. Elegant though this essay is, it’s taking the debate nowhere.

13th August 2019

Bridget Riley, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, review: eye-scrambling insights into the workings of a truly great artist

Mark Hudson | The Telegraph | 14th June 2019

A piece just out from behind a paywall. Riley went from doing Seurat-like pointillist paintings to black and white op art pieces in just three years. She realized that “although Seurat’s dot is comparable in its simplicity, the line has fractionally more going for it.” (Fancy that!). Restricting her focus to just a few visual ideas set Riley on a path to being “one of the very few living British artists who genuinely deserves to be called great.” Images are here.

Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed

Simon Ings | The Spectator | 13th July 2019

Takis died last week, just after the opening of his “epic” London retrospective. Labelling him a pioneer of kinetic art scarcely does him justice. Some of his abstract sculptures use lights while others make strange sounds. Most famous are works that use electromagnetism to suspend objects in mid-air, “frozen in constant, unbearable, unbreakable tension.” Better than an obituary is this video (6 min).

teamLab’s Tokyo Museum Has Become the World’s Most Popular Single-Artist Destination, Surpassing the Van Gogh Museum

Naomi Rea | artnet news | 7th August 2019

An otherwise standard London show on technology had one standout item – an interactive installation by Japanese collective teamLab. Said one critic “the most genuinely interactive, and certainly the most mellow and blissful, I’ve ever experienced.” This is background for the news that teamLab’s Tokyo museum is the world’s most popular “single artist” museum. Food for thought for sceptics of multimedia / video art.

Stick ‘em up! A surprising history of collage

Samuel Reilly | 1843 | 24th July 2019

An exhibition claims collage has a lineage of 400 years. Really? The gluing on of scraps of paper is venerable and yes, Victoriana “scrap work” was varied. But collage in the hands of Braque and Picasso (and the surrealists) was light years away from what came before. Beyond this art history squabble, collage is entrenched as a creative – and disruptive – force in our visual culture.

London’s Turbulent Russian Market

Simon Hewitt | ARTDEPENDENCE | 1st July 2019

Dizzying auction prices obscure the reality that markets are social, that is human, institutions. Take, for example, London’s low profile and low-priced Russian art auctions. “The lead-in is … a Friday evening party held at Shapero Rare Books, opposite Sotheby’s. Christie’s, on Saturday night, have the best cocktails; MacDougall’s, on Sunday, the best music … Bonhams stood out – by hiring the London Russian Ballet School to perform dances”.

Can performance art be owned? Why the genre is often missing in museum collections

Deborah Vankin | LA Times | 8th August 2019

Performance art is “low down on the totem pole” of museum priorities. What does it mean to collect something that is so ephemeral? Apparently, an acquisition involves buying the concept and any documentation – plus a moral obligation to have it performed now and then. A few major museums are keen collectors, many not. Are these purchased works covered by copyright? Its “problematic”.

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