The Easel

18th May 2021

Introducing: Jean Dubuffet

Camille Houzé | Barbican | 11th May 2021

Dubuffet was rebellious, hating academic art theory and rigid art traditions. His aim was to “‘amuse and interest the man in the street”. Child-like figures in his early works, then numerous experiments with “banal” non-traditional materials and, in late career, graffiti-like abstractions. Hockney, Haring and Basquiat are among those to have sung his praises. As for the man in the street, “the success my work has had is quite contrary to the beliefs I hold”.

Atget’s Paris in Sepia

Laure Etienne | Blind | 12th May 2021

When Baron Haussmann set to remodeling Paris, Atget set to recording the small streets and passageways that were disappearing. His impersonal documentary style showed urban life in an unmistakably modern way. Yet he also showed a way to express “poetry [that] was forged from attention to detail”. Street photography is but one area that reflects his immense influence. Background on Atget is here.

David Hammons ‘ghost pier’ draws lines to Village’s waterfront past

Lincoln Anderson | The Village Sun | 14th May 2021

Public art sometimes disappoints but New York now has a piece that is being feted. Pier 52, once a derelict structure on the Greenwich Village shoreline, was both a noted gay haunt and subject to large “cutouts” in its walls by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark. The pier is long gone but an outline in steel now stands on he site as a tribute to this rich social history and to Matta-Clark. Says one critic, approvingly, “its empty of everything but history, light and air”.

Deborah Remington’s Singular Place in Art

John Yau | Hyperallergic | 8th May 2021

Remington trained as an abstract expressionist and her early paintings had the gestural style of that genre. Then she abruptly changed course. Paintings of alien objects floating in three dimensional space, meticulous drawings of vaguely biomorphic and skeletal forms – all difficult to pin down. With such creativity, why has she received so little recognition? Says the writer “When you don’t have a genre, you might as well be invisible.”

Canaletto’s Eternal Sunshine

James Gardner | The Magazine Antiques | 14th May 2021

Wealthy young Englishmen on the Grand Tour wanted mementos of their salad days. Many bought a Canaletto, one of the 18th century’s great scene painters. Still hugely popular, his views of Venice’s Grand Canal have a photographic quality. The artistry with which it is rendered involves “prodigious clarity … a singular gift for detail … silken texture”. Canaletto’s Venice evokes “a sense of serenity, of happiness [that stands] at the heart of the world”.

The Turner Prize’s Radical Chic

JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview | 14th May 2021

A brisk slap in the face for the Tate and its famous Turner Prize. This year’s short-listed artists are all art collectives. Tate says this reflects “the mood” in British art. The writer doesn’t buy it – this is all about Tate positioning itself as “progressive”. It is doing so because of “the fashions prevalent among its institutional curators”. Catering to this group means neglecting the “diverse reality of its wider public” and its own responsibility for “a national conversation about art.”

The Making of Rodin review – not a radical, just a plain old genius

Jonathon Jones | The Guardian | 11th May 2021

A case of trying too hard? After umpteen Rodin shows, London’s Tate is showing a large array of Rodin’s preparatory plaster casts. Its unclear that they show something new. Repeated use of particular casts was nothing more than standard procedure for the day. Further, Rodin’s mix-and-match method has none of the spirit of today’s ready-mades. We are left with what’s already known – Rodin’s radical vision replaced stilted realism with the expressive modern body.

11th May 2021

Peter Hujar: The Show Must Go On

Laurie Barron | Ocula | 5th May 2021

Once just a minor figure in New York’s downtown subculture, Hujar is now seen as a great of American photography. Especially acclaimed are his meticulous, empathetic portraits. Drag performers were a particular fascination because of their courage to be different as well as the ambiguous dividing line between the person and the performance. Said Nan Goldin “he found beauty and value in every stage of life, and grace in every variety of flesh”.

Apocalypse now: John Akomfrah’s The Unintended Beauty of Disaster

Adrian Searle | The Guardian | 15th April 2021

There is plenty of acclaim for Ghanaian-born, London raised Akomfrah’s new show. His videos don’t offer a single flowing narrative. They are montages of images and video footage, visually different but arranged in “affective proximity”. His current work obviously addresses a #blacklivesmatter moment, but also themes of community, migration and the environment. Says one critic “[Collectively, they] stand among the great bodies of art produced this century”.

Torlonia marbles: An archaeology of a 19th-century antiquities collection

Matthew Symonds | The Past | 23rd April 2021

Easily the best recent piece about this “greatest private collection of ancient Roman antiquity”. The Torlonia marbles tell such human stories. Sculpture collections were initially used to prove one’s Roman heritage. They then became a means of demonstrating wealth and erudition. Radical restorations were undertaken to show modern superiority over the ancients. Oh, and the sculptures …  “of such high aesthetic quality that the visual impression is almost overwhelming.”

Markus Lüpertz: Recent Paintings

Joe Lloyd | Studio International | 3rd May 2021

Lüpertz believes in painting and sculpture only (forget new media) and is impatient with those who think otherwise. Like other post-war German artists, he is labelled a neo-Expressionist but that belies a career marked by “variousness of genres”. He has slalomed between extremes, “abstract and figurative … severity and smirk”, making much of his work “inscrutable”, an artist of prowess but one “easier to respect than enjoy”. A career bio on his 80th birthday is here.

The mystery of the Salvator Mundi: Where has Leonardo da Vinci’s €375m painting gone?

Staff | The Irish Times | 15th April 2021

An update. Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi was to appear in a Louvre exhibition in 2019 but was suddenly withdrawn. A recent documentary claims that the Louvre, having done a secret analysis, doubted da Vinci had painted all of the work. In response, a “widely leaked” document has emerged, seemingly endorsed by a leading da Vinci scholar, stating the Louvre harbored no such doubts. Expect more.

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