The Easel

28th June 2022

What Sally Mann’s Work Says About Art and Motherhood

Whitney Otto | Literary Hub

In 1992, Mann’s photobook Immediate Family, created a storm. It included images of her infant children nude, raising issues of informed consent and sexualizing children. Decades later, now things have calmed down, this writer offers a quite different take. These famous images show that raising kids is “as unsettling, and thorny, and as important as any other aspect of human experience. [Her photos show] the pleasure in simply allowing life to unfold and having the mastery to capture evanescence”.

Visual artist Sam Gilliam has died at 88

Anastasia Tsioulcas | NPR | 27th June 2022

The tale goes that Gilliam saw washing on a washing line and adapted the idea. What he produced was his signature “drapes” where unstretched canvasses were soaked and painted with brilliant swathes of colour. Hanging  from hooks on a wall, they are mid-way between painting and sculptures. After representing the USA at the 1972 Venice Biennale, the art world mostly forgot about him for 40 years. And then, suddenly, acceptance. A review of his final survey show is here.

Cecilia Vicuña’s Guggenheim exhibition captures the lost art of the Quipu

Salomé Gómez-Upegui | W Magazine | 28th May 2022

Vicuña is known mainly as a poet, but also produces paintings and woven sculptures that highlight Chilean indigenous knowledge and spirituality. Suddenly, she is being feted with prizes, exhibitions and more Why now? Is it art world guilt for ignoring her “quiet eco-spiritual sensibility” for so long? One critic admits that “puzzlement permeates the show …[have] these institutions discovered something profound or … developed a sudden need for an oracular sage?

Forget the masters, this artist’s work is breathtaking. We need more shows like it

John McDonald | The Sydney Morning Herald | 21st June 2022

Shiota’s work presents a challenge to the critic. Can her other-worldly installations be linked to Duchamp, or maybe Marina Abramović? Or are they just the workings of an offbeat imagination? Whatever, her large intricate “webs” of coloured wool are arresting visualizations of the relationship between mind and body. Having previously been featured at the Venice Biennale, her work combines “high theatricality with a sense of intimacy [while] the shadow of death is everywhere”.

The women’s lips are pursed; the men’s are kissable: Glyn Philpot at Pallant House

Laura Gascoigne | The Spectator | 25th June 2022

The writer reads Philpot’s repressed sexuality like a book. Philpot had replaced Sargent as London’s favoured society portraitist, but lacked Sargent’s swagger. There is “a chill about his paintings of women”. Where he really excelled was painting the men in his artistic milieu. By 1930 the world had moved on and his “silken party people” were no longer so silken. A late shift toward modernism was cautious, leaving the question “would [he] have dropped his guard if he’d been able to come out as gay?”

“William Klein: Yes” Takes the Artist’s Work Beyond Qui Êtes Vous, Polly Maggoo? and the Pages of Vogue

Laird Borelli-Persson | Vogue | 2nd June 2022

In Paris as a student, Ferdinand Leger directed Klein toward photography, saying “be part of the city”. Back in New York, Vogue was attracted to his images that didn’t seem too concerned about sharp focus. The resultant career spans documentaries, feature films and, most importantly, the many modes of photography. Says the curator, “artists like Klein, who avoided specialism, are key to understanding the culture of the last century”. An interview with Klein is here and images here.

21st June 2022

Taste, Figures, Images

Dean Kissick | Spike | 8th June 2022

Perhaps this writer was triggered by last month’s speculation-driven art auctions. Whatever, he gradually loses some writerly cool. All art is now experienced on computer screens. Because bad taste no longer exists, “high art” blurs into general image making. And much image making is “pitched against nature, against beauty, aesthetics, against the real.” Rembrandt, he protests, “never painted a raccoon”. If you don’t know what Imagen is, you definitely should read the essay.

Mighty brave

Lynne Cooke | Artforum | 1st June 2022

In 1911, Delaunay’s cubism-influenced abstractions made her a noted modernist. Applying these designs to textiles put her ‘serious’ art reputation at risk. Delaunay insisted there was “no gap” between her art and her “so-called decorative work” and described her dresses as “living paintings”. Still, a century later, a “rehabilitation” is apparently needed to win back recognition for her pioneering colour abstractions and “visionary practice” as a cultural entrepreneur. Images are here.

At the Serpentine Pavilion, Theaster Gates Offers Monumental Intimacy

Chris Foges | Architectural Record | 13th June 2022

Given the sought-after Serpentine pavilion commission, Gates has responded with a “minimalist” silo-like structure built from low cost timber paneling and roofing materials. The polymathic Gates seems unfazed by those who think it dull, confident that its qualities as a “sacred space” for public events will be apparent to audiences. It reminds the writer of a “simple shed”, but he admits “when reverberating with song, the chamber should be spectacular.” It will be dismantled at the end of summer.

The birth of Gothic: building heaven on earth

Emma Wells | The Past | 20th June 2022

The first identifiably gothic structure was the church at St Denis, north of Paris. Its components – pointed arches, flying buttresses and rib-vaulted ceilings – already existed but when used together, proved distinctive. Soon, ambitious 11th century churchmen everywhere wanted what only gothic could provide – height (at least 100m. please) and light. Itinerant stone masons were happy to share the new technology and, across Europe, religious architecture had its most defining era.

Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe

Lauren Dyer Amazeen | Ocula | 25th May 2022

Asawa was taught as an art student to respect the integrity of her materials. She tried painting, producing leaf shapes and blobby biomorphic forms, before discovering wire and its potential to be woven into expressive sculptural forms. Early recognition in New York faded once she moved to the west coast, some no doubt sensing a “craft” element in her unconventional work. Now resurrected, her work is featured prominently in this year’s Venice Biennale. A recent biography is reviewed here.

Uffizi sells digital works. And the Ministry intervenes to block everything

Desiree Maida | Artribune | 25th May 2022

The Uffizi, like many museums, owns the rights to images of the works in its collection. Reportedly, it sold an NFT attached to a Michelangelo. Considerable hyperventilation has ensued. Far from risking cultural heritage, the Uffizi has merely sold a digital copy that has limited uses. No wonder other Italian museums are following suit. All of which prompts one despairing writer to add “nobody needs to control these images.” (Google Translate)

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