The Easel

28th April 2020

America’s Big Museums on the Hot Seat

Holland Cotter | The New York Times | 18th March 2020

In the flush of post-Civil War confidence, New York founded the Metropolitan Museum. Some reviews marking its 150th anniversary recount the museum’s early days as the “tycoons darling”. The linked piece notes contemporary challenges – an uneasy relationship with contemporary art, a tendency to ignore artists who are not male and white. “They need to rethink the Temple of Beauty branding … they need to rethink what they were and are.”

Close Contact

Michael Lobel | Artforum | 21st April 2020

Spanish flu killed millions yet seems absent from art works of that period. But perhaps not. John Singer Sargent, who caught the flu while working as a British war artist, produced Gassed, which shows soldiers blinded by gas.  It “equates [war and pandemic] in its portrayal of a group of people waiting to receive medical attention. [I]t makes what is so fearful in a time of viral pandemic—physical proximity and human touch—into a saving grace.”

Nina Katchadourian

Aruna D’Souza | 4Columns | 24th April 2020

Now here is art for our constrained circumstances. Katchadourian has lifted her profile with several series of works made under a lockdown of sorts – long distance flying in economy. Most notable among these is her series Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.  These inventive works encourage us to “lean into the boredom, and there to rediscover the pleasures of play”.

A Portrait of the Socialites as Bright Young Things

Lou Stoppard | Aperture | 27th April 2020

Beaton left Cambridge without a degree. No matter – Vogue had already started publishing his photos. His brilliant career covered portrait photography and, later, Hollywood film design. Beaton moved in exotic circles and his images of aristocratic 20-somethings partying to excess in the 1920’s is “a social record nonpareil”. Some background on Beaton is here.

Deineka / Samokhvalov exhibition in St Petersburg

Yulia Savikovskaya | Russian Art and Culture | 13th February 2020

A recent St Petersburg exhibition of two painters popular in the Soviet era drew big crowds. Through Western eyes, the show expressed a “cozy, amused nostalgia” for the Soviet era and Socialist Realism art. A Russian critic see something deeper: “there are [visions of Russia] still floating out there in our post-Soviet age of individualism. The Soviet dream of unity and belonging is still haunting us”. More images are here.

Three colours: Blue

Philip Ball | Homunculus | 17th April 2020

Philip Ball, Homunculus: April 17, 2020

Colours have interesting histories and blue a more exotic back story than most. The Egyptians came up with Egyptian blue. Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan yielded ultramarine for artists with deep pockets. Starting in the 18th century, systematic chemistry developed a wide array of affordable hues. In 1959 Yves Klein famously produced a blue so vivid that ‘it spoke for itself …“blue is the invisible becoming visible”.

The impact of Covid-19 on art critics

Anna McNay | Studio International | 27th April 2020

Most art critics are self-employed and work on a project by project basis. For them, life now has a gritty immediacy, addressing postponed projects, doing the filing and trying out new ideas.  This writer cannot disguise an inability to answer her own jaunty question – “If there’s no art, does an art critic make a sound?” Her piece on how artists have been impacted by the shutdown is here.

21st April 2020

Virus Void

Well, its happening. With galleries having shut down, there are no new shows and reviews are petering out. Some writers are trying to review online exhibitions, with so-so results.
What to do? The challenge, even more than usual, is to find quality pieces. As long as worthwhile pieces continue to be written I will pick them up, even if that means a skinny newsletter with just a few items Just as galleries are putting real effort into their online presence, perhaps writers will find more compelling ways to write about it. Let’s hope.
If you come across particularly good online offerings, or have other suggestions, please drop me a line at andrew@the-easel.com.

Andrew

Mortality and the Old Masters

Peter Schjeldahl | The New Yorker | 6th April 2020

Once museums re-open, will we see our favourite works in the same way? Will we still resonate to the “soulful heft” of Old Masters works, made when pandemics were a constant worry? “I’m interested by an abrupt shift in my attitude toward [Velazquez’ Las Meninas. It] suddenly casts a shadow of … death and disaster. There would never be another moment in the Spanish court so radiant—or a painting, anywhere, so good”.

The art world goes virtual

Thomas McMullan | Frieze | 30th March 2020

Galleries are getting serious about online. New offerings – exhibition walk-throughs, restricted access sales, even robot led tours – are all being tried. One gallerist expects smaller art fairs to be hit but change might be broader than that. Says another gallerist “I don’t believe [the gallery] model will cease to exist but the scale on which we were all operating may well.” A sample of current online shows is here.

Painting After All: Authors Sheena Wagstaff and Brinda Kumar on the Gerhard Richter Book and Exhibition

Rachael High | metmuseum blog | 14th April 2020

Curators of the Gerhard Richter show in New York explain Richter’s belief in painting. He has a “deep-seated mistrust” of photography. It cannot capture a sense of realism and is “ultimately not about truth in any direct way”. Painting, in contrast “has more of a singular presence and relevance to our actual living moment. After everything that has happened to humankind … painting is still there as evidence of our collective endurance”.

Eileen Gray’s Deco Designs Launched Modernism. That Was Just the Beginning

Fred Bernstein | 1stdibs | 12th April 2020

Eileen Gray is being restored to her rightful place in modernist history. She was a rarity – a female designer working before WW1. Having been exposed to Le Courbusier’s modernist ideas she applied them to interior design. Gray then designed the E1027 house in France, widely considered a modernist masterpiece. Little recognized by male contemporaries, she is now being acclaimed as “the mother of modernism”. A background bio is here.

Visions of the implausible

Mario Naves | The New Criterion | 12th March 2020

When this show was mounted in Paris, it mystified. It mystifies in New York, too. Lecqueu trained as an architect and moved to Paris just before the French Revolution. His perfectionist, grandiose designs “fizzled”, his career as well. He also produced equally meticulous, “unnerving” erotic drawings. Where does this leave us? “[T]he appeal of his art is, in fact, its impossibility. A little of Lequeu goes a long way.”

So you mean it’s not so repulsive after all?

Donn Zaretsky | The Art Law Blog | 16th April 2020

Museums in financial trouble sometimes sell items from their collections. Problem – it upsets people. Now that many museums are worried about survival, surely more will do so. Long standing opponents to this practice are bowing to the inevitable. One observer, noting the current dire circumstances, says “the notion of a “public good” has become nothing but academic and journalistic fodder.“

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