The Easel

11th October 2022

Anne Imhof: Jesters and Gestures

Cat Kron | ArtReview | 26th August 2022

Imhof shot to prominence with her prize-winning exhibition at the 2017 Venice Biennale. That work, described as “a catwalk show from hell”, was a hard-to-describe mix of music, dance, performance and installation art. Her current show is similar – high energy, a distinct uneasiness, uncategorisable. Says one critic “as an aggressive … teardown of macho physicality and wavy sexuality, it’s pretty amazing.” A good backgrounder is here if the FT paywall lets you in.

Sargent in Spain

Sarah Bochicchio | Art and Antiques | 9th October 2022

Mid-19th century Europe was besotted with timeless, high culture Spain. For Sargent, the opportunity to study Velasquez and Goya added further appeal. His early masterpiece of flamenco dancing, El Jaleo, wowed the 1882 Paris Salon. Unrelenting demand for his society portraits brought fame and considerable fortune, but Spain kept calling him back. Over many visits, often recorded in sketches and watercolours, he documented his devotion to the country and his “synthetic Spanish vision”.

Cezanne at Tate Modern review: Anyone remotely interested in art should see this show

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 7th October 2022

Reviewing a Cézanne show tends to become a cataloguing of his many radical ways. He wanted to show the “thingness” of things, portraying nature as “cylinders, spheres, cones”. He wanted to show a landscape or person with only the essential details. And he didn’t mind playing fast and loose with traditional perspective. Basically, Cézanne’s artistic mind was teeming with ideas. “A lifetime wasn’t long enough for everything he had to say about clusters of apples on tabletops”. Images are here.

Samsung Saga: The Donation of Lee Kun-hee’s Multibillion-Dollar Art Collection Has Sparked an Ongoing Debate in South Korea Over How to Show It

Andrew Russeth | ARTnews | 28th September 2022

For context, Samsung Group accounts for 20% of Korea’s GDP. Its founders, the Lee family, collect art on an equally vast scale. With the death of the most senior family member, inheritance taxes have forced the donation of their 23,000 item art collection to the nation. Its modern art holdings, at least, “certainly surpasses” the national collection. A dedicated museum is planned – likely a new art world destination – that will illustrate why, in Korea, they say “all good things go to Samsung”.

Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered

Jessica Skwire Routhier | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 20th September 2022

An odd tale. When New York’s MoMA came across Hirshfield in 1940, his eccentric, powerful images of animals, people and landscapes persuaded them to hold a solo exhibition. Despite support from the art elite, the city’s critics were appalled and Hirshfield disappeared from art world conversations. The problem, it seems, was that he was a self-taught outsider, leading the critics to accuse MoMA of a “cult of amateurism”. The artist now has a major show, having been “more or less out of sight” since 1950.

So Vermeer did not paint ‘Girl With a Flute.’ Why think less of it?

Philip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 7th October 2022

The disputed authenticity of a prized Vermeer in the US has been resolved. It’s not by him. Most likely, it was painted by someone close to him, perhaps with his encouragement. It now joins the numerous great works without a clear attribution. There are as many such works as there are great works with a firm attribution. So, should attribution be such a big deal? The museum that owns the work intends to continue displaying it. “We love art by adopting it, not by looking for its birth certificate.”

4th October 2022

Do Ho Suh’s Translucent Architectures

Lucy Ives | Frieze | 21st September 2022

“Home”, says Suh, “is what we carry with us”. That’s a neat introduction to his distinctive sculptures of house interiors and household objects that he makes with transparent polyester fabric. His pieces are often at a 1:1 scale, a rather sharp contradiction to their “diaphanous” appearance. Says the reviewer, “You feel joy being near one of Suh’s [houses], as well as a certain alarm … we recognize Suh’s structures as architecture, even as we see them as insubstantial, kite-like entities”.

Sculpture: An Art of Craft and Storytelling

Glenn Adamson | Art in America | 28th September 2022

Both mass media and abstraction, it is argued, have contributed to an “erasure” of communal narratives. As a result, sculpture, traditionally a story telling medium, lost momentum. Recently, though, sculptors have returned to traditional craft techniques – textiles, ceramics and woodworking for example – to enhance the cultural resonance of their work. Rather than a new “conservatism”, this greater use of craft is something that helps us “get our bearings [by] telling us where we’ve been”.

Berlin’s controversial Humboldt Forum is finally complete—but ‘the work inside begins now’, German Culture Minister says

Lara Bommers | The Art Newspaper | 19th September 2022

Can you spend €800m on a new museum and have misgivings? Well, consider the lavish Humbolt Forum, just opened in Berlin. Built to resemble a Prussian palace, its design, says one critic, is “like an imposing Disneyland castle minus the fun”. Inside, it’s an “ethnographic museum for the 21st century”, showing items assembled during Germany’s imperialist era. Some are viewed as looted art. One official says it is “not a conventional museum but a place of negotiation”. Indeed!

The mysteries of Mondrian

Peter Schjeldahl | The New Yorker | 26th September 2022

“Mondrian’s uniqueness” says this reviewer, made him “solitary but not lonely”. He was actually gregarious, frequenting nightclubs and jazz joints. Jazz was a particular source of inspiration, fueling an “organized looseness” in his compositions. Does an acclaimed new biography unlock Mondrian’s compositions for the viewer? Not really.  Mondrian said that the way he thought and the way he painted were different and the thoughts behind his radically modern paintings remain out of reach.

How an Architect’s Endless Pursuit of Artistic Perfection Drove Him To Despair

Charlotte Van den Broeck | Literary Hub | 26th September 2022

A love letter to the Baroque master Borromini, and to Rome. In 17th century Rome, Borromini and his fierce rival Bernini vied for architectural commissions from the Pope. Bernini got the best, producing designs of “dramatic simplicity”. Borromini, in contrast, loved “complexity”. His small San Carlino church has a geometric floorplan but a façade that is a “lusty carnival of curves”. Once it was finished, Borromini committed suicide. San Carlino is a key part of his legacy, widely seen as “the icon of the Roman baroque”.

Whistler’s ‘Peacock Room’ Open After Weeks of Restoration

Roger Catlin | Smithsonian Magazine | 29th September 2022

Asked to decorate a dining room in the house of Frederick Leyland, a shipping magnate, Whistler got carried away. What started out as a “very slight” request resulted in a “showy chamber of blue and gold”. Whistler was thrilled but not his patron. Their confrontation contributed to Whistler’s subsequent bankruptcy. Leyland learned to live with the room and it is now regarded as “one of the masterworks of late 19th-century art and design”. A virtual view is here.

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