Besides being an acclaimed comedian and satirist, Humphries was a knowledgeable supporter of the visual arts. Normally, this would be insufficient to attract the attention of The Easel. However, Humphries’ deft essay on sitting for a David Hockney portrait provides a suitable opportunity to mark the passing of a great talent.
Having starred in Venice last year, Leigh is now getting a career survey. It highlights her longstanding interest in the intersections of different cultures. She spotlights racial equality but also honours the work of women, their inner lives, their agency. The symbolic quality of her pieces gives them a quiet eloquence, a quality emphasized by the use of humble materials like clay and raffia. “Walking from room to room, I had the sense of watching greatness unfold.”
Skeptical about the impact of AI on art? If so, read this. At present, most AI generated images resemble “online-adjacent pop surrealism”. This will change. AI systems are effectively a “neural prosthesis” that will yield new aesthetics. AI will “colonize the human imagination” so that art is no longer the exclusive domain of humans. AI in art is a “toxin” whose effect depends on “dosage and constitution”.
Lurking amidst the current Picasso commemorations is a problem – can we love his art given the “stain” of his odious behaviour? A new book, described by its author as an “autobiography of the audience”, doesn’t offer a clear-cut answer. Genius should not get “special dispensation” to behave as it pleases, and neither should art lovers idolise an artist. One reviewer observes “the best art shows the human touch; the catch is that it also has to be made by humans, who are inherently a mess.”
A show directly comparing Mondrian and Af Klint sounds risky and so it proves These artists’ personal stories have some parallels – both were fascinated by the natural world before rach developed spiritually influenced abstract styles. But few critics see much commonality in their art. Af Klint’s art is “strangely inert … you are constantly trying to understand the systems of belief. With Piet Mondrian, you are witnessing the evolution of art.”
An ambitious and renowned painter in late 15th century Ghent, Van der Goes suddenly moved into a monastery, continued painting for some years, developed a mental illness and died. A first-ever solo show gives little evidence he was a “mad genius”. Rather, his works were carefully composed and emotionally expressive, sophisticated “status objects” intended for members of the elite wanting to display both wealth and piety. Says one writer, their “timeless modernity surprises and grips””.
Caro called his work “sculpitecture”, reflecting his interest in scale and volume. The overlap goes only so far – architecture is so much about planning whereas the modernist abstract beauty of Caro’s sculptures is anything but planned. They inhabit an “in between zone” says one reviewer, a mix of found and manufactured components that have “the vernacular of the construction site”. So, does Caro’s work sing or scream when placed next to harmonious architecture? “A bit of both”.
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).
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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”.