The Easel

2nd February 2021

The Empathy of John Singer Sargent’s Portraits

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 2nd February 2021

John Singer Sargent’s portraits are in the grand style and brought fame during his lifetime. Since then, critics have taken to calling him names; “staid”, or “a society flatterer”. That’s a superficial reading, suggests Contributing Editor Morgan Meis. Sargent was “neither of the avant-garde nor of the conservative reaction”.

One painting “seems to rise above its clichés, to brush them aside in the service of something greater. He lets each sitter create their own tragedy, their own farce. He lets them reveal the image they have of themselves, and then he lets that image waver and falter. The end result is not ridicule but compassion. Sargent’s genius was to reveal the fragility of these moments of person-being without completely dissolving the necessary illusions.”

The beastly return of Francis Bacon

Emma Critchon-Miller | Prospect | 26th January 2021

Bacon was electrified when first confronted by Picasso’s disregard for the rules of figurative painting. Bacon determined that he too would be a painter and break rules. Break them he did, creating faceless heads, human/animals and other unclassifiables. What was it all for, this parade of “anguished creatures”? For his supporters, Bacon was “a violent seeker after truth”, an artist whose central goal was “to “trap the fact” of our animal nature through painting.”

Richard L. Feigen (1930–2021) – a legendary art dealer whose own private collection was the toast of New York

Susan Moore | Apollo | 1st February 2021

Feigen had a protean talent for spotting the “undervalued or underestimated.” After starting with an eclectic artist roster, the Old Masters caught his eye. Over the 1980’s he became the “ultimate dealer” in that genre. Museums around the world sought his advice and bought from him, though he confessed he often kept the very best for his own superlative collection. Asked about his legacy he said “Taste. Not prescience or anything like that. But just taste.”

The Uffizi’s New Dante Exhibition Takes Us To Purgatory

Matthew Salyer | Forbes | 5th January 2021

Around 1315, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, a pilgrim’s tour of the afterlife. Centuries later, the Renaissance artist Zuccari made 88 illustrations of the epic poem. Florence’s Uffizi, which has shown the drawings only twice in 300 years, has put a digital rendition online to mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Dante’s work is an awkward fit with contemporary worldviews, but Zuccari’s illustrations suggest one thought – Dante is but “our stranger selves”.

Rothko, Reverential and Otherworldly, in Houston

Brian Allen | National Review | 30th January 2021

Following a renovation of Houston’s Rothko chapel, a re-evaluation. Rothko viewed the chapel as his “final statement” and the paintings have an “end-of-life” character.  They are “nocturnes”, their dark colours (some only dark plum and crimson) better appreciated under the new hi-tech lighting. And they are big works, as if Rothko wanted to create a separate world. Approvingly, the writer says the chapel is “an Old Testament place”.

Review: Robert Irwin’s virtuoso light art, minus the light

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 14th January 2021

Irwin, one of the Light and Space group, is famous for his clusters of coloured fluorescent tubes. These meditative works show the interaction of light and colour. Now he is exhibiting new works where the tubes are not lit. Does it work? The reviewer thinks so, calling the show “unexpectedly gorgeous and deeply absorbing”. Perhaps so. It is surprising, though, that the appeal of these works is not diminished in the absence of their previously defining element.

At Peabody Essex, a reset on South Asian art

Murray Whyte | Boston Globe | 14th January 2020

The Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts has long collected Indian art.  It seems a risky area for a western museum. Were all the works ethically acquired? What about work, made during British colonial rule, that pandered to colonial stereotypes? How much of the diversity of India can Western audiences absorb? One solution, partial at best – include contemporary works that address issues like rural – city friction, a reality understood everywhere.

26th January 2021

The Gloopy Glory of Frank Auerbach’s Portraits

Jason Farago | The New York Times | 21st January 2021

A ‘national treasure in Britain, Auerbach gets few shows in New York. Given one though, critics there are wowed. One ponders the show’s “almost heroic dimension”, a reflection of Auerbach’s “obsession with the painterly stroke”. This writer marvels at the intense, condensed Auerbach gaze: A portrait of the artist’s wife “appears to be just a dense knot of thick golden strokes. You looked at someone for a whole year and saw … this?”

How El Anatsui Broke the Seal on Contemporary art

Julian Lucas | The New Yorker | 11th January 2021

Something of a career stocktake of this Ghanaian artist made famous by his bottletop sculptures. This novel raw material beguiles, but what exactly is his work – contemporary abstraction, a modern take of an ancient craft or some unclassifiable other? Some thought his wall sculptures were a flash in the pan. That’s certainly wrong. Bottlecaps, says Anatsui, have “more versatility than canvas and oil”.

Provenance of a Collection, the Torlonia Collection

Staff | Art and IP Law | 9th October 2020

The Torlonias are a noble Roman family who, for centuries, administered the Vatican’s finances. With their wealth they acquired ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, mainly from nobles fallen on hard times. It seems no superlative is too grand for their 500-year-old collection, largely unseen since WW2. It is about to go on show in Rome, following resolution of squabbles impenetrable to all but the locals. The Torlonia Foundation website is here.

Blockbuster Bloat

Jackson Arn | Art in America | 12th January 2021

When do we reach too much of a good thing? In 1980, Cindy Sherman launched her acclaimed performative photographs Untitled Film Stills. Are her new works just repeating the same ideas? Sherman has been “dulled by decades of A-list indulgence. As pictures have gotten smaller and nimbler, [her] art has gotten bulkier and slower, not to mention pricier. Sherman has become beholden to big-spender audiences who expect the same joke year after year.”

In Making Gavin Brown a Partner, Barbara Gladstone Is Betting That You Can Get Big and Still Think Small

Sarah Douglas | ARTnews | 17th December 2020

To understand the dramas being caused by mega-galleries, read this. Smallish New York gallery, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, was superb at finding new artists but kept losing them to mega galleries. Largish Gladstone Gallery is renowned for looking after its artists but its founder is now in her 80’s. Their merger last year, a rare event, poses the question – can a gallery be viable without being a global selling machine? Many hope so.

Learn to mind your mannerism

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 17th January 2021

Not sure if this item belongs under ‘education’ or ‘fun’. Mannerists came after the Renaissance but before the Baroque. And it was all a bit odd – “a prison break [by artists] fed up with the rules laid down by heavily policed Renaissance”. The essay is a users guide to their various aesthetic crimes and peccadillos.

From Medicis to Mythologies: How Sandro Botticelli Became One of History’s Most Influential Artists

Angelica Villa | ARTnews | 25th January 2021

Coinciding with a Botticelli portrait coming to auction is this somewhat textbook-ish essay. The Medici’s patronage allowed Botticelli to tackle the more ambitious pictures that now underpin his reputation. Often these blended mythology, Christian parable and deft gestures to Florentine politics. Those politics were nothing if not volatile and, once the Medicis lost power, Botticelli reverted to stern medieval painting conventions.

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