The Easel

27th June 2023

A Dutch mystery: Jacobus Vrel

Irina Diana Calu | Daily Art | 30th May 2023

Who was Jacobus Vrel? All we know is that he was probably Dutch and painted from about 1640 – 1660. His small output focused on humble street scenes and quiet, enigmatic interiors where female figures go about their tasks or just daydream. Sound familiar? Previously thought a mere follower of Vermeer, it turns out that Vrel preceded him by more than a decade. Vermeer, it seems, was not the first to paint “the act of looking”. Wow!

Banksy’s art is political drivel for the smug, right-thinking classes

Francesca Peacock | The Telegraph | 16th June 2023

How should you review a Banksy exhibition? Many critics, seemingly aware of his huge popularity, offer noncommittal, anodyne commentary – for example, here. The above writer shows no such restraint. Emerging from Britain’s 1990’s rave scene, Banksy was, from the start, “glib”. Although his reputation has grown, his work has not become any more interesting. “None of his works are, in any meaningful way, original … this is a publicity stunt, with little substance underneath”.

Palermo Mon Amour: Fondazione Merz

Staff | Trebuchet | 31st May 2023

Palermo has sunny skies, a long history and … the mafia. A group photography exhibition documents the city’s story with images of poverty, economic neglect and the mafia’s “industry of violence”. These are unpolished images that celebrate the “persistence of optimistic lives limited by hard circumstances. The clarity of these photographs feels urgent. They stand against … art as commodity.” Images are here.

Shapeshifting show finds optimism in bleakness

Florence Hallett | iNews | 26th June 2023

One critic deftly characterizes Weems as imagining “the kitchen table as a place of political upheaval”. Kitchen tables are relevant because a photo series shot around such tables first made her name. She has since proved to have “chameleon” qualities, working in film, dance and installation. While her early interest was expressing the black female experience, she says she now has a broader focus – “the dismantling of power.” An interview with Weems is here.

The new National Portrait Gallery review – ‘It’s the same old cocktail party’

Jonathan Jones | The Guardian | 21st June 2023

London’s National Portrait Gallery has re-opened after a long renovation. Yes, the money has been well spent, and yes, the re-hang is more inclusive. But should a portrait gallery be showing exemplary lives or exemplary art? One critic says, coyly, that the balance is “judicious”. Others disagree. “It’s still the same shoddy chaos. You can argue that representation is more important than artistic quality – but that leaves the NPG [as] a collection of notable faces with no regard for artistic depth.”

William Ince and John Mayhew: the remarkable legacy of a 40-year furniture-making partnership

Jonathan Bastable | Christie’s | 14th June 2023

In the rarified world of cabinetry, Chippendale is considered the most illustrious name. A book, 40 years in the making, proposes that there is a worthy challenger. Ince and Mayhew were their contemporaries, working in Georgian London selling to the same aristocratic client base. Equals in terms of their cabinetry, the Ince and Mayhew house style was seen as more “classical”, with elaborate use of inlaid woods and marquetry. This is cabinetry at its most spectacular.

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.”

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