The Easel

1st February 2022

Robert Gober’s Mirror

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 24th January 2022

Gober’s sculptures of chairs, sinks, legs and more are meticulous, “hyperhandcrafted” as the writer puts it. Why such effort? Careful fabrication makes these objects that we all use seem precious, worthy of our close attention. But then, some details are awry – old windows, for example, that have the curtains hung wrongly. All this helps explain why Gober’s sculptures are acclaimed. They connect us, says the writer, to “something bigger … a promise of new beauty.”

Allison Katz, Artery, review: a zany show that puts the mischief back into painting

Cal Revely-Calder | The Telegraph | 17th January 2022

When a new artist gets their first solo show, critics try to spot the artist’s ‘theme’. Katz, at her first major solo show in London, seems to have everyone stumped. Some of her paintings are full of “trickery” – word puns, visual illusions. Others feature cabbages, cockerels, or open mouths. “There is no grand theme or statement’ concludes the writer, just an artist considering the conventions of painting … and producing work that is “continuous fun”.

Retrospective for performance artist, arch provocateur and 80s club kid Leigh Bowery hits London

Joe Bromley | Evening Standard | 24th January 2022

If Yves Saint Laurent has a place in the art world, so too does Leigh Bowery. It’s just hard to name that place. Bowery was prominent – monstrous – in 1980’s London, in fashion, dance, club, music and art, famously inspiring portraits by Lucien Freud. His most obvious legacy is the wild creativity and street/club culture he brought into fashion. A rock star of that time called him “modern art on legs”. Of himself he said, “if you label me, you negate me”. Images are here and a bio piece here.

Made In The Dark Room: Roy DeCarava Captures Mid-Century New York

Amah-Rose Abrams | The Quietus | 29th January 2022

After trying to be an artist, DeCarava switched to photography. Success came very quickly and his images of 1950’s Harlem – the Harlem that he knew – are still remarkably fresh. Jazz clubs were a favourite haunt and their smoky low-light ambience suited his aesthetic perfectly. If necessary, he processed his images to darken them – “not quite black and white, more tones of grey … His images can seem teased out of the darkness”. More images are here.

New galleries of Dutch and Flemish art

Ivan Gaskell | The Burlington Magazine | 1st February 2022

Art history has thought the Dutch Golden Age spectacular – superstar artists and a tolerant civil society. Such ideas are now “dead”, replaced with a more realistic narrative about slavery, colonialism and class conflict. How should a museum tell such a radically different story? Very carefully, that’s how. Donor sensitivities abound, as do the expectations of museum visitors. Challenging “received opinion” is a core task of museums and such debates are the “mechanics of museum-making itself”.

Tauba Auerbach: the gift of intellect and its boundaries via new exhibition “SvZ” at SFMOMA

Nate Rynaski | Flaunt | 20th December 2021

Science has a certain romance because it’s where we touch the unknown. Auerbach has spent her career expressing scientific ideas – and the limits of our understanding – in art. Some find her “deeply inquisitive” work tough going, “Uncompromisingly abstract” says one writer. Another grouches that it’s “both too arcane and oversimplified”. Expressing maths through art is daunting, but Auerbach’s work captures the feeling that, when faced with the unknown, “we crave answers”.

‘Hue & Cry’ at the Clark explores controversy of color printmaking in 19th-century France

Murray Whyte | The Boston Globe | 6th January 2022

Printmakers in 19th century France avoided colour printing because it was emblematic of “banished [aristocratic] excess”. By 1870 advances in lithography made cheap colour printing possible, attracting artists like Cassatt, Chéret and, of course, Toulouse-Lautrec. A world first had emerged – “bona fide mass-market art”.  Acceptance into the 1899 Paris Salon brought recognition as fine art. That cost posters their transgressive character and slowly, the art market lost interest.

25th January 2022

Wayne Thiebaud’s artistic eye was so much keener than pop art confections

Phillip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 27th December 2021

One of Thiebaud’s early jobs was as a Disney illustrator, which gave him an enduring admiration for cartoons. He left to paint luscious cakes, pies, bow ties and other Americana, rendered in thick paint and exaggerated colours. They brought him fame. Some saw him as a Pop artist, but he denied his intentions were satirical. Affection seems closer to the mark.  He was still painting at 100, amazed at “the magic of what happens when you put one bit of paint next to another”.

Street cred – how Helen Levitt turned a cool eye on life in New York

Zakia Uddin | Apollo | 21st December 2021

One critic calls Levitt a “quiet genius” of modern photography. Her photographs of street life – most famously children – in New York’s poor neighbourhoods helped define street photography. First in black and white and then in colour – but always with a certain tenderness – her images show an eye for the off-kilter and portray the street as “above all, a theater and a battleground”. More images are here.

What’s Really at Stake in the Debate over Whether NFTs Are Art

Mieke Marple | Artsy | 24th January 2022

Wikipedia’s decision to exclude NFT sales from the category of art sales has ruffled some feathers. This writer, an NFT supporter, argues that a cultural shift is happening with digital art now backed up by serious money. Wikipedia is trying to stop these new players from “blowing [the traditional market] out of the water” – something akin to the upheaval of the Italian Renaissance. Rather than debate what is art, we should instead shape “this next chapter of human history for the better”.

Gainsborough’s Blue Boy: The private life of a masterpiece

Matthew Wilson | bbc.com | 21st January 2022

Gainsborough’s Blue Boy goes on show in London today. Quickly famous after its first showing in 1770, it remains so because its sumptuous beauty supports so many narratives. The image is performative – a young boy, a commoner, striking an aristocratic pose. Modern eyes detect gender fluidity leading to its use in anti-gay material and most recently as a marker of gay pride. It’s a two-century journey from “a pillar of traditional cultural values to gay icon”. Gainsborough would be astonished.

The 25 Best Museum Buildings of the Past 100 Years

Alex Greenberger and Emily Watlington | ARTnews | 24th January 2022

You know that any list of the world’s “best” museums will be arbitrary and hope it will be entertaining. This list is both. Besides the usual starchitects it also includes many lesser knowns, including one who thought straight lines “godless and immoral”. Some of these structures are notoriously dysfunctional – but then, who can resist a pretty face?

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