The Easel

18th April 2023

Cecily Brown Destroys Time—Throughout Her Life and Now at the Met

Kat Herriman | Cultured | 4th April 2023

1990’s London had little interest in “retrograde” painting, so Brown moved to New York. Meteoric success followed including, now, a prestigious mid-career survey.  What has caught the eye of critics and the market is how, reminiscent of de Kooning, she combines abstraction and figuration. Further, her paintings address themes that were of interest to the Old Masters – still life, the nude, memento mori. Says the writer, Brown is an “aesthetic omnivore”.   Brown discusses the show here (5 min).

The exquisite pottery of Lucie Rie

David Sexton | The Spectator | 18th March 2023

When Rie fled to London in 1938, she carried with her the urban aesthetic of Viennese Modernism. It was hardly a good fit with English ceramics comfortable in the embrace of “rustic nostalgia”. As a “ravishing” exhibition shows, she not only prospered but helped elevate the status of studio ceramics. The pared back elegance of her designs, exquisite colours and different surface treatments are “astonishingly self-sufficient [and] so giving of their beauty.”

Stop making sense: Why a new Art Institute show on Dalí revisits surrealism at exactly the right time

Christopher Borrelli | Chicago Tribune | 2nd April 2023

Dali was hugely famous for decades, based on his 1930’s work that explored Freud’s “superior reality of dreams”. But even in  the 1940’s, relentless self-promotion and celebrity seeking were making surrealism an “art world freak show”. A Chicago museum is attempting a rehabilitation by focusing on Dali’s early achievements. The above piece is a decent review of this show but to get a much fresher sense of Dali as an art world conundrum, it is well worth reading this piece, written in 1945.

Evelyn Hofer: Eyes On The City

Jessica Skwire Routhier | Antiques and the Arts | 11th April 2023

Camera equipment matters. Street photography requires a camera that is easily handled. Hofer, in contrast, used a large format camera on a tripod, “slow photography” that needed collaborative subjects. It gave her portraiture a reflective, classical feel although acclaim was limited because she was an early user of colour. Today, Hofer’s reputation rests on photobooks of cities – London, New York, Florence and Dublin – mostly done in the 1960’s. More images are here.

Ernest Cole’s Rediscovered Archive

Hamish Crooks | Magnum Photos | 15th January 2023

Apartheid had many demeaning rules that governed daily life. By secretly documenting these realities – and white acceptance of the situation – Ernest Cole showed the “impersonality and righteousness that made life in South Africa monstrous”. After fleeing in 1966 he published the seminal House of Bondage, described as “one of the most significant photobooks ever made”. Cole died in the USA, destitute, in 1990. An archive of images recently found in Sweden is now on show in Amsterdam.

The Rossettis: Radical? Plain creepy, more like

Alastair Sooke | The Telegraph | 4th April 2023

In Britain’s popular imagination, the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of artistic creatives. However, a London show featuring the Rosetti family – Brotherhood stalwarts – fails to live up to this hype.  Women are depicted as femme fatales – “bee-stung lips, voluminous hair and languor”. Stylistic allusions to early Renaissance art only serve to make the art look “fogeyish”. One critic calls the show “a bloated mess”. All it offers, observes another, is “nice wallpaper”.

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”.

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