The Easel

26th October 2021

Hans Holbein’s Portraits Defined—and Immortalized—Tudor England’s Elite

Nora McGreevy | Smithsonian Magazine | 21st October 2021

Holbein the Younger lived through the charged politics of the Protestant Reformation. As the leading painter in Henry VIII’s Tudor court, a balanced deference was required to both Church and State. His most famous works, portraits of the court’s members, are masterful character studies, full of symbolism and psychological insight. They were also a balancing act – flattery versus truth, professional identity versus the person. Says one writer, Holbein was a “political artist to the tip of his brush”.

Cartier’s hidden debt to Islamic art uneathed in new Exhibition

James Tarmy | Bloomberg | 22nd October 2021

Around 1900, Europe’s interest in Islamic art was shifting from idle curiosity to avid appreciation. Cartier, famous for its opulent ‘garland’ style – romantic bows and rounded shapes – picked up this change and started to incorporate Islamic geometric designs. It was not a passing fad but an abrupt and sustained aesthetic shift – “there’s no evolution … they used all these Islamic patterns all the time”. More images are here.

Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel at the Barnes Foundation

Ed Voves | Art Eyewitness | 10th October 2021

In the late 19th century, artist’s models were not taken too seriously. Valadon overcame this prejudice – and her working-class background – to become a notable realist painter. Her modern appeal comes from her psychologically insightful portrayal of people – often women – as capable individuals, rather than passive figures. She revealed the domestic realm, says one critic, “beyond the expectations of bourgeois propriety … [an explorer] of interior space”.

Land art was designed to disappear. This photographer preserved it for the world to see

Nate Berg | Fast Company | 1st July 2021

The vast spaces of the American West attracted Smithson and other 1960’s land artists.  Remoteness and scale meant that many works could only be seen from photographs. Gorgoni became renowned for making these images. Gorgoni once erected a scaffolding tower to record the large circular tracks made by a motor bike on a dry lakebed. Those tracks soon vanished, so were they, or the photograph, the artwork?  More images are here.

William Kentridge on Francisco Goya

William Kentridge | Frieze | 25th October 2021

As deft as it is brief. Kentridge, a South African artist, looks at a single etching to show how Goya used small details to communicate a great deal. It’s a lesson in looking carefully at works of art. Kentridge draws our attention to “the turning of the woman’s left leg as she puts her foot on the horse’s neck. A simple shape and black line give us all we need to know about her foot, the delicacy of the shoe, its decisive pivot toward us.”

Sword fights on canvas: Georges Mathieu at Perrotin and Nahmad Contemporary

David Ebony | Art in America | 22nd October 2021

Postwar European abstraction leaned toward the geometric which didn’t enthuse Mathieu. Visiting New York, he met Pollock and others who, like himself, were exploring gestural abstraction. Thus encouraged, Mathieu built his career on flamboyant gestural paintings, executed at top speed. A revealed liking for painting for an audience did not enhance his reputation. Neither does it diminish his role in pioneering a European expression of “testosterone-driven, postwar angst”.

19th October 2021

‘It’s almost confessional’ — massimiliano gioni on ed atkins exhibition at the new museum

Nina Azarello | Designboom | 22nd June 2021

Ed Atkins is widely regarded as a leading figure in video art. One of his recurring themes is how the self is transformed in the digital realm. His most recent work (preview is here) is a conversation with his mother where the artist is represented by an avatar. “As I was watching the video, I kept thinking of what it really meant to see a digital creature speak to its mother … [this is] an essay about distance … technology promises the comfort of presence but often just delivers ghosts.”

A new look at Walker Evans

Brian Sholis | Aperture | 13th October 2021

Evans’ crystal clear, elegant images helped establish documentary photography. Who was the person behind these “deadpan, yet astonishing” pictures? He portrayed his subjects with dignity, but seems not to have harboured any activism – one critic notes he had little of “either politics or empathy”. His interest was just the aesthetics of buildings and people. Yet that subject matter was enough for him to help “define the contours of a uniquely American culture”.

Ceaseless Porousness

Staff | Disegno | 12th October 2021

Installing your work in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern is a sought-after commission. Given her chance, Yi has created a swarm of aquatic-inspired interactive balloons (“aerobes”), illustrating her interest in the way art and science interact. It’s pretty cerebral stuff, Yi’s representation of “humans and the ecosystems we live in”. As to the installation itself, the museum calls it “unforgettable”. In that vast hall, however, critics are less sure, one calling it “all a bit ho-hum”.

Theaster Gates: London, urban reform and exemplars of Black excellence

TC Chan | Wallpaper | 13th October 2021

Gates has travelled far from his roots as a ceramic artist, being also a musician, an urban community activist and more. Demonstrating how he has the art world “at his feet”, he has three concurrent pottery shows in London. Mostly the reviews gush – this is not the only one to use the word ‘magnificent’ – but they struggle to keep separate the artist from his multiple other activities. One way or another, though, they support the comment that “this is a man who does not stay still”.

Surrealism Beyond Europe: 5 Essential Artists Getting Recognition at New Met Show

Alex Greenberger | ARTnews | 15th October 2021

Surrealism started with a bunch of Paris bros. In time, they conceded that others (women) were involved. Now, a New York show demonstrates just how much happened outside Europe. Surrealism was never a single idea. It may be better thought of as an inclination to find the uncanny amidst the day-to-day. Or, as one critic puts it, surrealism is ideas “blowing across the globe like trade winds of the subconscious”.

What quilts mean now

Kayleigh Perkov | Art in America | 15th October 2021

Despite too much jargon, this piece covers an interesting issue. American quilts were first presented as works of art in a 1971 exhibition. What kind of art are they – objects of beauty, autobiography, symbols of exploitation? Although better scholarship has dispelled the more nostalgic interpretations, quilts remain hard to read. Given their complex history, they are “multivalent things; they speak different words to different ears”.

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