The Easel

13th June 2023

Ron Mueck’s Paris show will capture the beauty and mess of humanity

Harriet Lloyd-Smith | Wallpaper | 5th June 2023

Coming to art via his family’s puppetry and doll-making business gave Mueck an aptitude for finely detailed work. His “spectacular” yet disturbing hyperrealist sculptures quickly established him as a major artist. Meticulous attention to the details of a body, replicated at disproportionately large or small scale, speaks to quintessentially human emotions – sorrow, empathy, vulnerability, hope. Says one critic “this is an art of narrative and whole-hearted emotion.”

Requiem for a Museum

Jerry Saltz | Curbed | 1st June 2023

New York’s Whitney museum has sold its uptown building – to Sotheby’s. It’s a practical decision. The opposing view is emotional and this fine essay, a lament, is not diminished by that. “Museums are great memory machines. They add to art history. Auction houses are where art loses its identity and its dignity. [Auction house exhibitions are actually] showrooms. So really, when we see art in auction houses, we are essentially saying, “Good-bye.””

Smooth operator – the seductive sculptures of Antonio Canova

Brigid von Pruessen | Apollo | 28th March 2023

Interest in Canova is on the up as indicated by a major US show (discussed here). Fine, but why has his reputation fluctuated so widely? Acclaimed in his lifetime for resurrecting classicism from the excesses of the Baroque, he was later criticized for copying classical works and for being too “sensual”. Early modernism seemed likely to bury Canova but his ideals of female beauty remain influential. His “coolly sensual aesthetic ideal continues, more popular and fraught than ever before.”

Chinese Bird and Flower Paintings

Staff | Asian Art | 26th May 2023

A “grand scale” show of flower and bird painting in New York showcases one of the major genres of Chinese painting. Within this genre, styles varied by dynasty and artist. All these works, though, are rich with symbolism. Blooms convey particular virtues – the peony links to wealth, lotus flowers denote moral integrity and plum blossoms denote perseverance. Court painters painted lush imperial blooms but most artists, not enjoying patronage, painted what was observable in “ordinary” gardens.

A New Show in London Is Exploring the Art of Forgery by Presenting Works That Are—You Guessed It—All Fake

Min Chen | artnet news | 24th May 2023

Does an artwork have aesthetic value if it turns out to be a fake? London’s Courtauld is well placed to offer an answer as its collection includes a generous number of fakes. Some of these have fooled generations of experts, leaving the show’s curators with an unenviable choice. A fake cannot carry the same meaning as a genuine work. However, if a work is sufficiently affecting, the name of the artist shouldn’t matter. Sadly, in the end, “often we see what we want to see.”

Finding common ground in street photography

Eric Vroons | Lensculture | 10th June 2023

Although this isn’t the greatest ever essay on photography it picks up an interesting topic – what defines street photography?  These are images that lack any “prescribed narrative or intention” but rather disclose “pure emotion”. They have a documentary character, describing what Susan Sontag called the “urban inferno … a landscape of voluptuous extremes”. All fine, but street photography faces the same test as its studio-based cousin – “does it make me look for more than two seconds?”

6th June 2023

A Monumental Survey of Black Figurative Painting Exposes the Limits of Representation

Nkgpoleng Moloi | Art in America | 30th April 2023

More black faces are now seen in art. A major show at Zeitz in Cape Town surveys how a “frenzy” of contemporary black figurative art expresses “Blackness and Africanness”. What are their inherent qualities, independent of narratives about colonialism? Complicating things, there are few independent African art institutions contributing to the discussion. The show has an optimistic tone, something needed at an institution with avowed but unproven continental ambitions.

The art of the inventory

Lucy Davies | Prospect | 2nd June 2023

Inventories of artists’ household effects allow a glimpse of the person behind the name. Rembrandt’s many paintings were arranged to impress guests. Degas’s huge art collection hung on the top floor of his apartment as a private pleasure. Ditto Freud who, from his bed, looked at a Corot. Vermeer’s inventory itemises many of the household effects we see in his paintings – his wife’s blue housecoat, Spanish chairs. Such objects “populate his paintings almost as actors would a cycle of plays.”

Every breath she takes: Ming Smith at MoMA

Mark Feeney | Boston Globe | 4th May 2023

Although the ‘decisive moment’ approach to photography favours image clarity, such precision can also be “the enemy of evocation”. This observation is apt given Smith’s abstract/documentary style.  A long-time chronicler of Black life, she uses slow shutter speeds to capture movements where “atmospheres alter, light shadows, souls whir”. Says one artist, she is the “absolute master of the blur”. A background piece is here and images here.

Exceptional career woman, unexceptional painter: Lavinia Fontana, at the National Gallery of Ireland, reviewed

Laura Gascoigne | The Spectator | 3rd June 2023

Art history forgot about Fontana after her death in Rome in 1614. Was that simply gender prejudice? Her recently restored masterpiece, The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, does not fare so well under scrutiny. Its women look like “a flock of swans” with their elongated necks, architectural details are “squiffy” and her paint handling “finicky”. Her nudes, unprecedented for a woman artist at the time, were a smart career move. But, as an artist – “unexceptional”.

Man Ray’s Paris Portraits: 1921–1939

Mary Ann Caws | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st May 2023

A straightforward review dissects Ray’s portraiture – inter-war Paris, famous members of its avant-garde community, his innovative aesthetic. The linked piece, by a renowned critic, better captures the ‘heady perfume” of these “astonishing” images. “How can anyone not be enticed into the wheel of the Méret Oppenheim image … with her navel appropriately exposed and the hub of the wheel making itself felt, while the printer’s ink adorning her left arm speaks loudly of [her] artistic medium”?

In a new exhibition, Hannah Gadsby takes aim at Pablo Picasso

Staff | The Economist | 2nd June 2023

Few shows get as mauled as “Pablo-matic”, curated by the comic Hannah Gadsby. It’s a small collection of paintings and etchings that, she admits, aims to “stick one up him”. One critic moans that  Picasso’s misogyny gets more focus than his pictures and likens Gadsby’s wall labels to “bathroom graffiti”. Yes, Picasso was a misogynist, but he was also “a genius … his nubile nudes are clearly meant to be devoured but also feel romantic and womanly. Gadsby’s blunt commentary seems churlish”.

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