The Easel

28th July 2020

The Japanese-American Sculptor Who, Despite Persecution, Made Her Mark

Asawa’s “rediscovery” was just over a decade ago, yet she is now regarded as a great sculptor. A student visit to Mexico introduced her to weaving techniques that later re-emerged as woven wire sculptures. She exhibited in the 1950’s but slipped off the artworld radar. Of her art career Asawa said “Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.”

Artist Bisa Butler stitches together the African American experience

Quilting has deep roots in African American history. Butler has radically extended that tradition by taking it into portraiture, a genre with its own cultural connotations. Her “hybridized” works of appliqué and painting, all about black identity, resonate with this #BLM moment. For a relatively new artist, her works are receiving unusually widespread coverage. Images are here and video (6 min) here.

Bill Brandt/Henry Moore, The Hepworth Wakefield review – a matter of perception

Brandt, a photographer, and Moore, a sculptor, both recorded London during WW2, working independently but often on similar subjects. Moore’s sketches have a “mythical” quality but Brandt’s developing and cropping techniques made his images equally subjective. There is no hierarchy between these artforms says one critic, “both artists seem to have been aiming for the same semi-abstract goal.”

The greats outdoors: how Caspar David Friedrich searched the German landscape for reflections of his soul

The German Romantics saw God reflected in nature but man, somehow separate from nature, was unable to grasp the divine. The ensuing “longing” was the animating emotion of that movement and Friedrich one of its great exponents. The symbols he used – “figures staring into infinity … empty shores” are clear enough although the works are not easily understood. Says one “they are vague, even in his soul”.

To Bear Witness: Real Talk about White Supremacy in Art Museums Today

A confronting essay based on the writer’s curatorial experience. American art museums (like many others, surely) have internal cultures that prioritise white male art. Consequently, people of colour tend not to visit. Few [US] institutions have an “honest display of the diverse array of artists working throughout the twentieth century” Making museums truly inclusive requires institutional values that “decenters white people”.

‘Unflinching humanity’ – how photographer Paul Fusco united an America in pain

Fusco was invited into Magnum Photo in 1973, having built a reputation as a photojournalist. His signature style highlighted the human side of major social events – AIDS sufferers, destitute miners, the population affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Most famously he recorded the crowds witnessing the 1968 funeral train of Robert Kennedy – “the silent, staring faces a testimony to a dream not so much deferred as destroyed”.

What Is Lost With the Closing of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

The announced merger of the “deeply influential” Gavin Brown’s Enterprise into the “semi-mega” Gladstone Gallery has led to some amount of wailing. Mourning the loss of an innovative gallery? Apprehension that widespread gallery mergers could rob the art world of its air of romance? Says Gavin Brown, “there needs to be something more … to imagine [galleries] can all start again with business as usual is a collective delusion.”

21st July 2020

Who Was Giorgio Morandi, Master Painter and Perfecter of the Meditative Stare?

Morandi lived in a modest Bologna apartment, for decades painting pale still-lifes of bottles and tins. No bright colours or brand names, no dramatic shapes, yet these works stand out. Explaining this, Robert Hughes referenced the Japanese aesthetic of wabi – “the clarity of ordinary substance seen for itself, in its true quality.” John Berger, in an old but excellent piece, thought similarly – “precise and sharp observation … monastic”.

Revisiting a Revolution of Mexican Art in America

A personal take on an important, previously reviewed, show. Mexican artists who came to the US in the late 1920’s were innovators, cognizant of modernism but charting a different course. Little wonder they inspired Jackson Pollock, among others. Many enjoyed early success but, due to their communist politics, ended up with lives “of unexpected obscurity”. The social justice ideals that animated their art are now glossed over, seeming “quaint or merely pretty”.

Wheel of fortune – the life and achievements of Bernard Leach

Leach’s advocacy of Japanese techniques shook up “dowdy” English ceramics and revitalized its studio pottery. However, his mantra of “truth to materials” was unsympathetic to modernist ceramic artists like Lucie Rie. And did it really capture the essence of Japanese ceramics practice? Did Leach himself lack “aesthetic ambition”? Says the author, a legacy that “irritates and inspires in equal measure”.

The Art World’s Erasure of a Revolutionary Japanese-American Artist

In its excitement about abstract expressionism and Pop, the US art world for a while neglected other goings on. One of those neglected was Amino, a sculptor working in resin and wood. In a career full of experimentation, his most distinctive works were coloured shapes held within a transparent block. Completely unnoticed, Amino had entered “wholly new sculptural territory.”

Horse Power

Horses feature often in Western art. Not only are they a succinct indicator of social rank or valour but artists enjoy the challenge of portraying their complex forms. Here, Getty features some notable horse portraits from their collection. The rationale for the article, it seems, is nothing more than an offering of equestrian eye candy.

There’s a reason great artists are assholes

An explanation of bad behaviour, or just excuse-making? An “irrational career” in art requires an “eggs-in-one-basket type of person”. Often, the result is total self-obsession and a belief that one is on a “higher moral plane”. “Often, great art made by a bad person does more good for the world than the alternative … the pain they caused was an unfortunate byproduct of the masterpieces they left behind.”