The Easel

20th June 2023

The grand gestures of Gary Simmons

Travis Diehl | Frieze | 7th June 2023

Simmons’ comment that “no memory is a true memory” is an apt introduction to his art. He is best known for chalk drawings that he smears, creating blurry but identifiable images. Using cartoon characters or motifs drawn from popular culture, he exposes how race and class pervade America’s visual culture. More conceptual pieces likewise target America’s cultural demons. Says a curator, “how is our shared past remembered? Which histories have we been taught to forget and why?”

A genius of absorption

David Platzer | The New Criterion | 14th April 2023

Bellini’s Madonna-and-child works make him the “greatest ever painter of the maternal bond”. He was also notably eclectic and experimental. Landscape painting was learned from his father, “luminosity” from Northern Europe and realism in figure painting from fellow Venetian Mantegna. He led Venice in adopting oil painting and the expressive use of colour. All told, he helped develop a distinctly Renaissance style and his late work, The Mocking of Noah, has been called “the first modern painting”.

The artist who worships stained glass, but detests the modern Church

Isabella Smith | Apollo | 9th June 2023

Clarke apparently faces a “permafreeze of institutional apathy” from British museums. Given his reputation as the world’s preeminent stained glass artist, that’s a shame. He has an illustrious record of architecture-scale commissions and technical innovation and is excited about the medium’s future. That future, he thinks, is not in cathedrals. Despairing of aesthetic interest from the church, the future of stained glass belongs in “the secular urban fabric”. Images are here.

How New York’s Hispanic Society is reinventing itself

Torey Akers | The Art Newspaper | 17th June 2023

Reopened after a long renovation, New York’s Hispanic Society almost counts as a new art institution. Prior to its renewal programme it was a “moribund” institution, little visited and beset by operating inadequacies. What it does have is beautiful (if dilapidated) buildings and an indisputably world class collection of Hispanic art. With a revitalized exhibition schedule, the institution is ready, says the writer, to embrace “the realities of a more intersectional future”.

A striking Danish art show at the Getty unpacks what it means to be a nation in turmoil

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 15th June 2023

Early 18th century Denmark suffered military defeat, losing both territory and its monarchy. Artistically, though, some think it Denmark’s ‘golden age’. Portraiture and landscapes took on a style of “serene precision”, animated by “prominent handling of natural light”. At the end of the century came Hammershøi. His “strange and beautiful” studies of (usually) empty rooms combine “almost abstract geometric design and ethereal mood”. Images are here.

Girls, interrupted

Kristian Vistrup Madsen | Artforum | 13th June 2023

Has the Rijksmuseum’s unprecedented Vermeer show brought us closer to understanding his modern appeal? Vermeer’s famous photographic style is, in the flesh, less potent than expected. What instead comes to the fore is his portrayal of “selfhood”. Inside those busy Delft houses “there is, in the constancy of interruption, the stirring, rapturous rhythm of being a self. [Vermeer portrays] a complex and deeply familiar state of being never and always alone.”

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?”

Older links
Newer links