The Easel

19th November 2019

The Ceaseless Innovation of Duane Michals

Some artists – just a few – seem endlessly innovative. Michals is one. He was never attracted to the photography of objective story telling, à la Life magazine. His work is almost the opposite – staged sequences, handwriting on his images, manipulated images. In so doing he has expanded what photography can be. As the curator expresses it “Duane cut photography’s umbilical cord”.

A motel room of one’s own

Hopper liked to travel. Once successful as an artist, he and his wife began taking road trips. Some hotels they stayed at ended up in his art. And why not? Empty hotel rooms have an air of loneliness, something that would have been obvious to Hopper, a loner. What better a subject for his detached, “empty” compositions, where he could lay out “the truth of a scene”. What remains elusive though, is which truth?

Dora Maar: A solo retrospective

Before her relationship with Picasso Maar enjoyed commercial and artistic success as a surrealist-influenced photographer. The famous romance obliterated those early achievements. While now getting recognition, can Maar the artist be disentangled from Maar the muse? Probably not, concedes the curator: “it is simply impossible to represent the professional without the personal – they are intertwined.”

Curators of Culture

In a landmark moment, New York’s Met is holding an exhibition of native American art. Good news, right? Well, not according to this writer who argues that this “deeply depressing” show fails to present objects in their cultural context. Others suggest that many items, being ceremonial, are not even art. The Met protests that it consulted widely on the show but is now moving to hire a curator specialized in this area.

The Dream Team

A fun piece. Here’s a game of “restrained gluttony” – choose ten artists whose work you would most like in your home. The writer is co-head of Sotheby’s high end advisory firm and gets to see lots of the best. To play, it may help to brush up on your art history – eight of his picks are before 1650!

Why Architectural Elites Love Ugly Buildings

The proponents of popular versus highbrow architecture continue to battle it out. Much of the argument comes down to the merits of modernist (high rise) functionality versus the reassurance of the familiar. Sweeping urban “renewal” is discredited but a mania for “starchitect bling” persists. Architects should abandon “grand societal visions … leaving only purely aesthetic judgements”.

MoMA Director Glenn Lowry, Photographer Nan Goldin Top ArtReview’s Power 100 List

Art Review has just released its 2019 Power 100 list of art world notables. Individuals who have made a significant institutional impact take the top spots, followed by prominent artists, big gallerists, museum directors and so on. Art Review comments that the list “continues to reflect a shift away from the traditional power hubs.” Make of it what you will.

12th November 2019

Yayoi Kusama’s Radical Work Goes Far beyond Her Infinity Rooms

Kusama’s infinity rooms are so popular they obscure the broader career theme. Pattern repetition appears in her earliest work as a way of invoking infinity. From those 1950’s paintings and performance pieces, the first immersive infinity room (in 1965) seems not so large a jump. Don’t be misled by popularity, suggests a critic, “It would be disingenuous to say that [the infinity room] fails to encourage introspection.”

The Opera Backstage

Degas liked to watch. A solitary figure, he had a keen eye for the revealing gesture. Dancers were his perfect subject, women from “the lowest classes” looking to parlay fleeting glamour into a higher status life. Degas portrayed the backstage realities obsessively and with “an attentive cruelty”. It aligned with his artist’s ideal – “to separate what we tell ourselves from what is true”.

The Muse at Her Easel

Superb writing. The artist’s muse – art topic or relationship topic … or both? Celia Paul, a celebrated artist, has written about her relationship with Lucien Freud. The heart of her narrative is the competing demands of a relationship versus her own art. Conventional views of the muse as victim don’t, in this case, suffice. What is clear, as another of Freud’s lovers put it, is that “selfishness is what it takes to make great art”.

Acting out

The performance artist Pope.L is basking in a survey show at MoMA. It highlights his most provocative act – crawling city streets. One such “intervention” covered 22 miles, done over nine years. Social justice is his major focus. But why crawl? Says one curator “He’s constantly putting pressure on symbols of success and aspirational behavior”. And is it art? Says another “it’s art because it’s reimagining something.”

Tutankhamun review – thrills and fun as King Tut gets the Hollywood treatment

What else is there to say about Tutankhamun? Only that which is so obvious it is overlooked. He was young, frail, an inconsequential ruler. The gold is fabulous but more impressive is the exquisite craft and refinement of lesser objects. Everyday objects like food containers give the show “real warmth”. And vulnerability; “they remind you that this is about death and the craving for something beyond it”.

Bridget Riley

Riley says of her own work: “One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.” Her favoured tools are the optical effects of patterns and the way colours jostle against each other. One critic thinks this is now passé. Really? Illusion has long been a central preoccupation of art. It’s difficult to see Riley as other than a strong contributor to that ancient tradition.

Centre Pompidou marks China expansion with ambitious new museum venture

Quite a coup! Adding to collaborations in Spain and Belgium, Centre Pompidou now has a joint venture in Shanghai. Official statements trumpet an East – West dialogue but less lofty motivations are also visible. Encouraging more Chinese to visit Paris is surely high on the list as well as Shanghai’s own ambitions to be a financial and arts “hub”. Might brand promotion for the Pompidou also be a driver? “Definitely not” says its director.