The Easel

2nd May 2023

Essay: Vermeer: objectivity, intimacy

Morgan Meis | The-Easel | 2nd May 2023

What is it about Vermeer? As a painter in provincial Delft, he found limited success. Rediscovered in the 19th century, he is now wildly popular. The focus of that popularity is his tranquil scenes of household life. Why, in the 21st century, do we find them so beguiling?

“Vermeer’s images intrigue in the very way that a great photograph always intrigues. There is an uncanny objectivity to the camera eye [that] can create a powerful sense of intimacy. His Woman Reading a Letter asks, with its detachment and respect, that we not try to interpret too much. Do not step closer, says Vermeer. It is her letter, not yours. And thus, almost magically, the objectivity of the picture also lends itself to a sense of care.”

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Can’t Believe She’s Still the First

Joshua Hunt | Vulture | 11th April 2023

“Why not before?” says a Whitney curator about this first retrospective given to a Native American artist. Part of the answer is that few had thought contemporary art and indigeneity might co-exist. Smith has spent decades demonstrating such a co-existence is possible. Her work uses modernist methods – collage, oil paints, prints – to make wry commentaries on “post-genocidal existence”. “Smith is one of America’s greatest living artists, and failing to acknowledge that would be madness.”

What Uta Barth’s Images Tell Us about the Limits of Sight

Kate Palmer Albers | Aperture | 3rd February 2023

To those who say her images are out of focus, Barth responds that they are perfectly focused. The camera just happens to be focused on “an unoccupied point in space”. By recording the “envelope of information” that otherwise surrounds a central object, she draws attention to how we look, what we focus on and what we miss. This sometimes “slightly hallucinatory” focus allows Barth to show sight as an experience that is “visual, perceptual, felt, lived, subjective, flawed. And yet, coherent.”

The poor relation of the art world

William Cook | The Critic | 3rd April 2023

One view is that the art we value expresses the temper of our times. Alternatively, what is deemed ‘good’ art can be manipulated by governments or curatorial fashion. These latter factors explain why figurative art – notably landscapes – are being “driven out” of museums, especially in Britain. Villains like Stalin, Hitler and the CIA get named. All fine, except that abstraction was creeping into art even before 1900. Tranquil landscapes perhaps don’t resonate with modern viewers like they once did.

Georgia O’Keeffe before she was famous

Jackson Arn | The New Yorker | 26th April 2023

O’Keeffe, in remote New Mexico, churned out oil paintings. They have not been immune from criticism – they “reward glances, not scrutiny”. Working on paper was her foundational expertise and these works are “spectacular”. Early watercolours show she was an “intuitive, surprising artist”. Charcoal drawings feel “rash, rough, magnetic … in a word, alive”. The time she devoted to oil painting, perhaps swayed by its prestige, is a case of “a world class sprinter [who] chose to run marathons”.

What Should Contemporary Art Do for a Society?

Uli Sigg | ArtReview | 28th April 2023

The benefactor of Hong Kong’s M+ museum ponders the “use-value” of art. Chinese culture wants art to create “a sphere of beauty and harmony … without [social] dissent”. Western contemporary art is “mostly analytical and critical”, matching a curious and open society. The curators of Documenta 15, representing low-income countries in the “global south”, view art as political activism, not the creation of precious objects. Such a view is likely to “change the terms of the party.”

25th April 2023

At the ICA, a breathtaking ‘Simone Leigh’

Murray Whyte | Boston Globe | 6th April 2023

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.”

Side FX

K Allado-McDowell | Ursula | 17th March 2023

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”.

The Polanski Problem

Laura Miller | Slate | 18th April 2023

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.”

Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life review – a thrillingly odd couple

Laura Cumming | The Guardian | 23rd April 2023

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.”

Drastic like no other

Jens Jessen | Zeit Online | 17th April 2023

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””.

Anthony Caro: The Inspiration of Architecture

Veronica Simpson | Studio International | 11th April 2023

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”.

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