The Easel

19th July 2022

Remembering Claes Oldenburg

Siri Engberg | Walker | 18th July 2022

A critic once called Oldenburg “the thinking person’s Walt Disney, the most inventive of the Pop artists”. His small 1962 sculpture “Two cheeseburgers, with everything” (see this video) epitomized a keen eye for the self-contradictory. This interest emerged in his later public artworks of prosaic objects such as a clothespeg, made strange by their monumental scale and impracticality. Such works speak loudly to Oldenburg’s love of art that “does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.”

In Chicago, there’s no unseeing the world Cezanne left us

Philip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 15th June 2022

The critic Barbara Rose said that every Cezanne painting asks the question “is this what I see?” His still-lifes largely ignore perspective – we don’t see a bowl with 12 apples, we have the impression of a table full of fruit. The writer notes “how little information Cezanne gives the viewer”. Perhaps he intended his paintings to only provide essential “visual data”, leaving the viewer to recognize the image. No wonder he is seen as “the patron saint of the 20th century and abstraction”. More images are here.

Milton Avery: conversations with colour

Kelly Grovier | Royal Academy | 11th July 2022

Avery came to art late – he made his “breakthrough” work at 60 – but then produced work of “astonishing resplendence”. Was he a quirky follower of Matisse or someone who saw more radical uses of colour? The above piece definitely thinks the latter but other opinions vary. Avery only painted “things seen”, observes one critic. The more radical step – using colour to “evoke thoughts and feelings rather than to describe the visible world” – had to await the next generation.

Larry Bell saturates senses and bends perception at Hauser & Wirth London

Harriet Lloyd-Smith | Wallpaper | 23rd May 2022

A casual job at an art framing studio taught Bell that glass absorbs, reflects and transmits light. That inspired his art career. Glass panes, coated with chemicals to alter its colour and reflectivity, are assembled into geometric shapes that create “sensory saturation, a collision of right angles, colors and planes”. Bell’s acclaimed large standing works “exist in in-between worlds; their currency is their illusion; how volume can be so heavily implied, without needing to exist”. More images are here.

Finding the forgotten

James Balestrieri | Art and Antiques | 1st July 2022

Once Spain established colonies in the New World, it became for some centuries the world’s dominant power. The “provincial” art from its Spanish-American empire expressed a hybrid Christian-Indigenous culture that, to European eyes, implied a “pliant” indigenous attitude to Spanish rule. Yet, because the “vitality and energy” of these works equaled anything in Europe, they comprise a “subtle form of cultural subversion … a thumb in the eye of authority”. More images are here.

12th July 2022

Medieval Treasures from the Glencairn Museum at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Ed Voves | Art Eyewitness | 28th June 2022

For non-specialists, the question to be asked is whether medieval art can resonate with contemporary audiences. Perhaps it can. This art reflected a mindset that the biblical past was not past but very much alive. The best of these works are the “brilliant” stained glass panels that offer “narrative inventiveness and emotional intensity”. A few record the artist who created the work. These are the distant origins of contemporary Western art, an individual’s expression of what it means to be alive.

Käthe Kollwitz’s Self-Portrait en face

Starr Figura | MoMA Magazine | 30th June 2022

Better representation of women artists in MoMA’s celebrated collection happens slowly – one acquisition at a time. Kollwitz came to prominence with a realist style indifferent to the growing interest in abstraction. Her 1904 self-portrait reflects this determination to forge her own path. It shows her in a “powerfully assertive frontal pose … confident, candid, and unfettered by conventional notions of the feminine … unabashedly asserting herself on behalf of women”.

Thomas Eakins: an American oddity

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 6th July 2022

Reviews from the 1980’s extoll Eakins as perhaps the greatest American realist painter of the 19th century. That lofty judgement seems unchanged, especially regarding his portraits that show “unnerving acuity”. Except now there is a caveat, his “inappropriate behavior” – a prim acknowledgement that he was a sexual predator. Does this make his work morally tainted? The writer doesn’t go that far but previously adoring Philadelphia now keeps Eakins very much at arm’s length.

Hard truths: should a ‘serious artist’ stoop to make NFTs?

Chen & Lampert | Art in America | 7th July 2022

The above piece takes an optimistic view, encouraging an artist to get into NFT’s because “paintings are the original NFTs”. (Well, not really) The daunting reality is that NFT sales have “fallen off the cliff”. Some trading platforms have gone bankrupt. Others are tainted by claims of counterfeiting. To top it off, an expert explains that many of the artworks attached to an NFT are not stored securely and may simply disappear.  Incredibly, one executive claims “It’s about the art now, not the speculators”.

Medieval fantasia at the Getty

William Poundstone | LACMA On Fire | 27th June 2022

The medieval period (500 – 1500CE) was a long, long time ago. In contrast to its dismal reputation, it had an active cultural life in which illustrated manuscripts had a central role. Their aesthetics – flat images, big blocks of colour – and images of castles, knights and dragons hugely influence contemporary fantasy culture.  So why does this distant era remain so influential? For centuries, it has been a “misunderstood epoch [that has] became a blank slate for the Western imagination.”

The hidden images found in masterpieces

Jo Lawson-Tancred | bbc.com | 29th June 2022

A case of ‘good AI’ versus ‘bad AI’? AI programs can be trained to create completely new images. Researchers are adapting the idea for research on actual artworks. In some cases, AI is used to assemble overpainted images revealed with X-ray analysis. Another application is having AI “predict” missing parts of a painting. Might such analytics provide “excessive artistic licence”? No, reassures a researcher, they simply “provide more curatorial opportunities to think about interpretation”.

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