The Easel

3rd May 2022

Philip Guston’s paintings are controversial. But here they are

Staff | The Economist | 30th April 2022

After a hugely controversial postponement, the Guston retrospective has now opened. A “dramatic reimagining of the curatorial process” has provided a fuller context to the hooded KKK figures. Along with Guston’s  other icons – cigarettes, eyeballs, boots, light bulbs – they communicate a “malignant foreboding” that drew on the social turmoil of late 1960’s America. In this context the hoods “were—and are—a reproach. They are terrible in their ordinariness. [A] magnificent exhibition”.

National Gallery of Art enters new, overdue era with African diaspora show

Philip Kennicott | The Philadelphia Tribune | 19th April 2022

Why do we know about the achievements of the 17th century Dutch “Golden Age” but not the African diaspora that, via slavery, was intertwined with Dutch history? A “landmark” show at Washington’s National Gallery tries to correct this exclusion and is full of “arresting moments”. Can such institutions use their “scholarly and curatorial superstructure” to tell such diverse stories together? “Think “histories” instead of “History.””

Inside the Glorious Art—and Fierce Rivalry—of Ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome

Erin Migdol | Getty | 7th April 2022

Ancient Greece and Rome were superpowers but, in the same millenium, so too was Persia. Despite military rivalry, these nations were culturally highly interconnected, employing each other’s craftsmen and tradesmen as well as trading actively.  This process only accelerated with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia in 330 BCE. While ancient Athens and Rome have great artistic achievements, “the art and cultures [of Persia] was every bit as sophisticated and intriguing.”

Another World

Jillian Steinhauer | The Nation | 5th April 2022

Niki de Saint Phalle lived a passionate life, describing herself as a “wild, wild weed”. Most renowned for her monumental sculptures of rotund, joyous women, she remains an uncategorisable artist. A new biography, focused on Saint Phalle’s own works and writings, provides only modest clarification. Her “child-like” artistic style was, it seems, a deliberate choice. And, rather than idealizing balance, she embraced “duality … I always felt that the Garden of Eden was right next to Hell”.

Warhol’s Mao turns fifty

Billy Anania | Art in America | 20th April 2022

Warhol had long been making celebrity images when US-China relations began to thaw. Mao’s personality cult, a “synthesis of mass marketing, political status, and stardom”, was an obvious target for pop sensibilities. Warhol’s images of Mao seem prescient given China’s subsequent integration into the world economy. They encouraged Chinese artists skeptical of their politics. Elsewhere however, these images now symbolise the “relationship between art and capital”.

Crumbling is not an instant’s act

Alexander Adams | The Critic | 19th March 2022

Architectural drawings are a niche taste, offering perspective and alluring detail but without art’s expressiveness. The Regency architect Sir John Soane was an avid collector, especially of drawings depicting “fantasies, alternative realities, and lost glories”.  Ruins were a favourite. Should we consider these “lost glories” or just ordinary structures romanticized by time? As for Soane’s own buildings, most have gone, “burned away like mist, while the ruins of Rome live on.”

Reframed at Dulwich Picture Gallery is a bracingly intelligent history of “the woman in the window”

Cal Revely-Calder | The Telegraph | 1st May 2022

A woman standing at a window is a familiar but enigmatic art motif. Sometimes it indicates a woman on display, hinting at “romantic possibility”. Other times it indicates capture – either imprisonment or someone trapped by economic circumstances. Such scenes go back aeons but how we perceive them has changed. And that, it seems, is the point of a London exhibition – to give a window onto “several things: one is these women, but another is you.”

26th April 2022

It’s Art! It’s Marketing! It’s Publicity!: Inside the Art and Fashion and Billionaire Bonanza at the Venice Biennale 2022

Nate Freeman | Vanity Fair | 22nd April 2022

WARNING – gossip! The Venice Biennale involves over 200 artists represented in 80 national exhibitions, plus another 30 collateral events. ‘Must visit’ lists are here and here. A “worst” art list is here. The Ukrainian pavilion gets special attention. Sonia Boyce won the Golden Lion for her work on the British Pavilion. Overall, it’s a “30,000-steps-a-day, five-dinners-a-night bacchanal of culture”. At some point, hopefully, someone will get around to writing about the art.

Review: Photo visionary Imogen Cunningham gets a refocus in new Getty retrospective

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 14th April 2022

Graduating in chemistry in 1907 marked Cunningham as different. And she was. Her soft-focus images of people and landscapes and subsequent sharply focused images of plants both conveyed a “warmth, intimacy” markedly different to the prevailing “commercial culture”. In the 1930’s she co-founded Group f/36 which prized “the making of a picture over merely taking one.” A current show “secures her top tier in the ranks of 20th century photography”. More images are here.

Sheila Hicks: Off Grid

Beth Williamson | Studio International | 19th April 2022

Hicks, the eminent textile artist, claims that textiles are “a crucial and essential component” across all cultures. She has walked that talk, working with craftspeople in many different cultures. What distinguishes her work, though, is how far she has gone beyond those craft foundations. Compared with her early loom-based pieces, many are now sculptural and abstract, use non-traditional techniques and incorporate diverse materials. “Simply delicious”, enthuses this writer.

Gallery chronicle

James Panero | The New Criterion | 1st May 2022

Soviet Russia in the 1920’s enjoyed creative freedom. Cinema was hugely popular leading to an explosion in poster art. Most posters lasted about a week before being pasted over, so eye-grabbing visuals were essential. Little was usually known about the film, so designers drew on avant garde art and experimented freely with lithographic techniques. Political nervousness was momentarily “overcome by the idealism of some of the greatest graphic designers of the twentieth century.”

The exquisite pottery of Richard Batterham

David Sexton | The Spectator | 23rd April 2022

How does the traditional fit into contemporary art? Working with “tide-like regularity” Batterham handmade beautiful, minimally decorated, stoneware ceramics, using just a small repertoire of designs.  One writer described his work as “for us – ordinary people – not for museums”. His valedictory show in London has received modest coverage. Says the writer, his “simple pieces can shape your sensibility more directly than less accessible fine artworks”.  A video (30 min) is here.

Kawanabe Kyōsai: the demon with a brush

Christopher Harding | RA Magazine | 2nd March 2022

The trade deals forced on Japan by Admiral Perry in 1853 were seen internally as a political and commercial “humiliation”. The consequent political upheaval fascinated Kyōsai. A “masterly” painter, he also had a “mischievous genius” for satire and used it to highlight the dilemma of wanting both Western approval and political autonomy. Today Kyōsai is “one of the best loved chroniclers of Japan’s entry into the modern world”.

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