The Easel

18th October 2022

The Waning Years of Edward Hopper

Richard Lacayo | Literary Hub | 13th October 2022

By his late 60’s, Hopper – “the virtuoso of American solitude” – was being showered with accolades. His art, though, wasn’t exactly celebratory. He was conscious of the passing of time and his own “inevitable slow fade”. Ideas for new paintings were becoming scarce and even the profusion of awards did little to lift his mood. A friend visited while he was painting an image of a sunlit but empty room and asked the aging artist “what he was after in that picture. Hopper shot back. “I’m after ME!””

Why Art Was Such a Powerful Tool for England’s Tudor Monarchs

Meilan Solly | Smithsonian Magazine | 11th October 2022

With a tenuous claim to the English crown, the volatile Tudors needed to boost themselves. Art was one way to do it and they spent grandly on paintings, tapestries, precious objects, anything that emphasised power and entitlement to rule. Holbein’s portraits of Henry VIII are classic images of kingly virility. Elizabeth I tried to convey power by emphasising ageless beauty. “Elizabethan art isn’t naive. It’s not provincial. It’s the result of conscious choices.”

Now you see it, now you don’t: the blockbuster exhibition that’s not really there

Aviva Lowy | Plus 61J Media | 18th October 2022

Having staged a popular sculpture show, Jerusalem’s Botanical Gardens has followed up with an augmented reality exhibition. It features internationally recognized artists whose works appear on a smartphone as the viewer moves through a garden. Most works do not exist IRL. Does it work? “You walk inside [the Ai Wei Wei piece] … When you’ve had enough you can walk away. But people don’t. They go back to the exit. They continue walking around as if they are trapped inside”.

Diane Arbus was accused of exploiting ‘freaks’. We misunderstood her art

Sebastian Smee | The Washington Post | 26th September 2022

Arbus was not a big name until a 1972 posthumous retrospective unleashed a fierce debate about her work. A re-creation of that show, on its 50th anniversary, again stirs the pot. Arbus said she celebrated “differentness”, but some accused her of voyeurism or of exploiting her subjects. That criticism now seems silly. “What artist isn’t interested in the gaps between … our private selves and the selves we present in public. Arbus was simply one of the first to recognize the camera’s unique way of revealing them”.

Lucian Freud: New Perspectives, National Gallery review – a powerful punch in the gut

Sarah Kent | the arts desk | 5th October 2022

Yet another show of Freud portraits has one writer asking, “how much is too much?” Both curators and critics try to prioritise his paintings over retelling his colourful private life. So, what gives Freiud works their power? “Nearly all his encounters in the studio seem full of tension; there’s a power struggle going on. Who is in control?” One suggested answer – Freud was less interested in realism than the painting process: “the act of creation was more vital and rewarding than the end product”.

The irresistible cool of Bernice Bing

Jonathan Griffin | Apollo | 26th September 2022

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has long focused on its collection of ancient Asian works. Only now is it holding its first show of a contemporary Asian American female painter. Bing’s story began with a turbulent childhood in post war California, followed by an adult life as part of an ignored minority and a nearly invisible career as an abstract artist. Her “cohesive” works indicate she was able to “reconcile the separations in her selfhood”, but so late in life that she left a “fragile legacy”.

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.”

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