The Easel

9th August 2022

A work of dispute

Thomas Schmidt | Zeit Online | 3rd August 2022

Positive responses to Documenta15 in Germany have soured amid accusations that some works are “antisemitic”.  Was the event’s experiment with decentralized “free” curating – previously seen as innovative – a mistake? Are the offending works actually antisemitic or just expressing views about Middle East politics? Would closing the whole exhibition be censorship? Rather inconclusively, the writer notes that artistic freedom is “framed by ethical standards [that derive from] good manners”.

Black photographers founded Kamoinge Workshop in 1963. Now their biggest show hits the Getty

Christopher Knight | Yahoo news | 28th July 2022

Mass media images in 1960’s America reflected stereotypical – and often unfavourable – white views of Black lives. In response, a group of 14 Black photographers formed with the goal of highlighting the “positiveness and beauty” of their community. The group maintained their individual styles but collectively focused on neglected aspects of Black lives, to “speak of our lives as only we can”. Says one critic, this development is “crucial to understanding postwar American photography”.

Sibylle Bergemann’s striking photographs of postwar Germany

Camila McHugh | Aperture | 26th July 2022

Living in East Berlin, Bergemann experienced first-hand the intrusion of politics into everyday life. What surprises is how her images slipped past East Germany’s censors. Compared with the grandiose propaganda of the state, her images are human scale, often focused on the diverse identities of women. Yet, in subtle ways, they “quietly transcend the parameters of her commissions”. Her objective, she said, was to “bring reality into the picture”. She did.

A tortured existence

Sean McGlynn | The New Criterion | 5th August 2022

In the 1880’s, early in his career, Munch had a significant dalliance with Impressionism and Pointillism. Those influences came and went quickly – by 1892 the characteristic bold strokes and sombre purples and blues of his “soul paintings” had emerged. Some critics find the earlier works “patchy”, so “at odds” with his later style as to provide limited insight. Does that matter? One critic notes that viewers want “the torment, the anguish, the darkness, the big emo, and there’s plenty of it.“ Images are here.

Everything You Should Know About Islamic Art

Irina Diana Calu | Daily Art Magazine | 7th August 2022

A toe in the water on a big topic, but no less interesting because of that. Islam forbids artists creating images of living beings, so its art features floral motifs, calligraphy and intricate geometric patterns. The patterns often repeat endlessly, conveying the message that Allah is infinite. Ornamental designs reflect an intrinsic understanding of geometry and science, two of the glories of the Islamic world. If you feel inspired, more background is here.

England’s Coronation tapestries: the right royal story behind the lavish, 500-year-old textiles

Thomas Campbell | The Art Newspaper | 5th August 2022

Apparently, Henry VIII had an eye for art. He collected around 2500 tapestries, the best of which used extravagant amounts of gold and silver thread. The Story of Abraham, told in 10 tapestries, was woven in Brussels at huge expense and is Britain’s “most impressive set”. They carried political intent – Henry wanted Abraham’s story, by analogy, to position him as the “nation’s patriarch”. The tapestries were “a mirror for princes … readily understandable to everyone in Henry’s circles.” Images are here.

2nd August 2022

Jennifer Bartlett, Titan of the New York Scene Who Forged a New Path for Painting, Dies at 81

Alex Greenberger | ARTnews | 26th July 2022

Bartlett loved the grid pattern, not so much for its aesthetics but because she “liked to organize things”. Squares were coloured using a maths program, yet somehow this austere-sounding approach produced paintings that retained emotional, and sometimes figurative qualities.   Her epic work, Rhapsody (1976), comprising 987 steel plates painted in enamel, was described by one critic as “simultaneously landscape, object, and map”. Bartlett, he said “thought, painted, and lived large”.

New York: 1962-1964 at the Jewish Museum, New York City

Ed Voves | Art Eyewitness | 26th July 2022

New York eclipsed Paris in the early 1960’s with a torrent of new art and artists. Rauschenberg, Johns, Warhol, Lichtenstein and many more responded to the social change of the time with “a new sense of beauty [arising from] the disorder of city life”. Accolades for Rauschenberg at the 1964 Venice Biennale confirmed New York’s art world ascendancy. Peter Schjeldahl’s elegant (but less informative) personal recollection is outside the New Yorker paywall here.

The Modern’s sensational ‘Women Painting Women’ exhibition aims to balance the scales

Matthew Bourbon | The Dallas Morning News | 23rd June 2022

Aware of the underrepresentation of women in post-war figurative art, a “magnificent” Texas show comprises just works of women, by women. As one would expect, women’s “realistic complexity” is revealed in states of “realness, abjection, beauty, complications, everydayness”. Not all these works are factual – “anytime an artist depicts a human being there is fiction involved”. It’s just that we can see a diversity of fictions, “outside of male interpretations of the female body”.

The Clamor of Ornament, Drawing Center — Unnecessary Desires

Staff | News of Canada | 30th July 2022

Ornamentation can get caught in the debate between traditional tastes for decoration and modernism’s zeal for clean, uncluttered lines. The writer suggests that ornamentation reflects “a global need for abundance and complexity.” Ornaments all “start locally” but centuries of borrowing ideas from everywhere means that claims of ownership are dubious. Except, that is, for designs from indigenous populations, which have regularly been ignored.

Human bones, stolen art: Smithsonian tackles its ‘problem’ collections

Peggy McGlone | The Washington Post | 27th July 2022

The recent repatriation of Benin bronzes from the Smithsonian and elsewhere suggests that the restitution debate is over. Perhaps not. Past museum acquisition policies allowed “a whole bunch of, like, crappy behaviour” of which the bronzes were obvious examples. Smithsonian wants to engage with communities on restitution issues, a huge task given its 155m item collection. One official admits “there is a limit to our capacity”. Another adds “there’s unfortunately no tag that says ‘stolen’”.

John Berger on What the West Can Learn from Indonesian Art

John Berger | ArtReview | 22nd July 2022

Appreciating art from other cultures is a challenge. Work by the “genius” Indonesian artist Affandi has features we find strange – unstretched, rough canvasses, bright colours, lesser quality in some works. This reflects his attitude to art which is an art “of participation rather than contemplation”.  Writing in 1952, Berger argued that “aesthetics have triumphed over vitality” in Western art. Affandi, in contrast, has a “complete, unselfconscious loyalty” to Indonesians that outweighs his concern for “Taste”.

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