The Easel

11th April 2023

How good, really, was Pablo Picasso?

Sebastian Smee | Washington Post | 3rd April 2023

On the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, his daughter claims he is “still the number one reference point”. If only it were that simple. Beyond his peak years of cubism, his huge output (13,500 paintings!) demonstrates “astonishing visual pyrotechnics”. But where is the emotional core of his work? His misogyny and narcissism made his work emotionally “narrower”. Still, the writer admits that after each Picasso show he comes away “shaking my head in wonder”.

‘Revered above painting’: the art of Islamic calligraphy

Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam | Christie’s | 4th April 2023

It may be that, like the editor, you know virtually nothing about calligraphy. If so, consider this piece merely a toe in the water. The Qur’an was written in calligraphy, explaining why the Islamic world reveres it above all other art forms. There are two main styles, angular and curved, with the former traditionally reserved for religious and architectural texts. Revered calligraphers created text that shows elegant individuality, a fact not lost on the art market.

Little big things

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 3rd April 2023

Sze is renowned for her intricate assemblages – mundane objects assembled to create a “total choreography”. Not everyone is a fan, some seeing her work as “obsessive-compulsive magpie art”. A new installation in a New York museum is a classic – ladders, hardware store odds and ends, art materials, video images – that present as “cities … whole solar systems”. At least for this writer, the show is a success, because it gives the building “something like a consciousness”.

Global art market ‘beginning to cool’, according to latest Art Basel/UBS report

Anny Shaw | The Art Newspaper | 4th April 2023

The art world’s scorecard. Art and antiques sales in 2022 totaled nearly $68bn. Once this figure is discounted for the effects of inflation, it’s yet another year of negligible overall growth. Wherever one looks – auction houses, high priced art, private galleries – the biggest fared best. The US remains, by far, the biggest national market. Online sales fell as did art related NFT sales.  Says the report’s author, 2022 was expected to be “back to normal [but] the market is markedly different.”

This once enslaved 17th century artist was misunderstood for centuries. A new exhibition rewrites his story

Jacqui Palumbo | CNN | 7th April 2023

As slaves go, Pareja was lucky. Enslaved to Velazquez, superstar of the baroque, his decades as a studio assistant allowed him to learn how to paint. After he was freed, he became a successful artist in Madrid, enjoying the renown created by Velazquez’ celebrated portrait of him. Compared to Velazquez, Pareja’s works are “not remarkable” says one critic “but Velazquez [makes] just about anyone look second tier”. And the message of this show – “history must restore what slavery took away”.

4th April 2023

Gerhard Richter’s gift to Berlin now on show

Stefan Dege | DW.com | 1st April 2023

Looking to his legacy Richter has permanently loaned 100 works to a Berlin museum. A hugely valuable gift, its centerpiece is the Birkenau cycle, four abstract paintings inspired by photographs secretly taken inside Auschwitz-Birkenau. One critic describes these works as “something of a German national treasure” being an artistic response to the Holocaust and its horrors. Digital duplicates of the cycle hang in Germany’s Reichstag.

Joshua Reynolds ‘Portrait of Omai’is a national treasure. Why is Britain struggling to keep it?

John Gapper | Financial Times | 23rd February 2023

A breathless tale, so read this piece while the FT paywall lets you. (An alternative is here.) Precious few paintings are “must haves” for the top museums but Reynolds Portrait of Omai is one. It has it all – exquisite rendition, glamorous back story, the subject a person of colour, a touchy seller and a monster price. After 20 years of wrangling, two museums (one British one American) will acquire it jointly. In a fundraising video (3 min) Simon Schama calls it “one of the greatest things British art has ever produced”.

Gilbert & George on their new art centre in east London: ‘We all want to live forever, don’t we?’

Harriet Lloyd-Smith | Wallpaper | 28th March 2023

Gilbert & George – two men, one artist – have opened a museum in East London dedicated to their own art. Why? They claim that museums are too busy being “woke” to include them. Needless to say, that hasn’t gone down well. The museum, a renovated former brewery, is a tasteful, “expensive remake of old grot” and its first show is a group of brightly coloured works of fruit, leaves and flowers. All this, says the artist(s), is in the cause of “art for all”. A discussion with the duo (24 min) is here.

Goya’s Coded Love Letter to the Duchess of Alba

Michael Glover | Hyperallergic | 2nd April 2023

An appreciation of Goya’s great portrait.  When he visited her estate in late 1796, the Duchess of Alba was 35, a noted beauty and recently widowed. Goya, by then famous, places her against a hazy landscape. She is tall and, while dressed in mourning black, has a “potentially frisky” air. He captures in crisp detail the embroidery on her dress and her “slithery, snaky mantilla”. And, of course, she is pointing to his name drawn in the sand, a gesture that betrays “Goya’s impotent howls of yearning”.

An artist’s fantasy or the real world?

Sebastian Smee | Washington Post | 22nd March 2023

Even before Admiral Perry hove to in 1853, Japan’s middle class was growing. Mimicking the wealthy, they developed a taste for art, including titillating paintings of the pleasure district at the edge of Tokyo city. This “floating world” was, in truth, mostly imagined because Japanese society was not especially permissive. Most likely, these works offered an escape from the daily realities facing the middle classes – “the fixed world of social obligation and feudal hierarchy.”

Jewelry as a Pure Art Form

Staff | Art Aurea | 16th February 2023

Jewelry was once a way to display wealth. The came Lalique who, through his use of glass, showed that preciousness didn’t require expensive materials. “Art jewellery” is now a recognized category of museum interest. Pieces are now “carriers of emotion”, using whatever materials best tell the story that the piece intends.  A good review of a prestigious Munich show is here and coverage of the prizewinning piece here.

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