The Easel

30th July 2024

From Taylor Swift to Kawaii: Why Museums Are Obsessed With Pop Culture

JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview

Wanting to attract younger audiences, UK museums are mounting pop-themed shows – Taylor Swift at the V&A, Barbie at the Design Museum, kawaii at Somerset House. Boosting revenues is important but perhaps that’s not all that’s going on. Past pop culture is so easy to access that it doesn’t go away (think Bowie) leading to a merging of old pop with new. Previously the gate keepers to high culture museums now “validate the aristocracy of pop”.

A tribute to Kenneth Grange, Britain’s best kept secret industrial designer

Garfield Myrie | Euronews | 28th July 2024

Ex-Apple designer Jony Ive is legendary but was preceded by the British designer Kenneth Grange. He entered product design when post-war British industry clung to ideas of craft production. Grange drew on new industrial technologies to create iconic designs for household appliances, trains, the London cab, cameras and more. His key objective was that products be a pleasure to use. Ive has called Grange “a hero of British design [who had] an enormous impact on visual culture”. Images are here.

There is Light Somewhere at the Hayward Gallery: an emotional exploration of history and belonging

Pragya Agarwal | The Conversation | 25th July 2024

Strachan’s diverse art is nothing if not ambitious. Observing that black figures are regularly omitted from western versions of history, he creates “hidden histories” about black figures whose achievements were overlooked. Perhaps the show needs some “editing down”, as one critic complains. Still, Strachan’s creativity makes the powerful point that “if we don’t see ourselves in the pages of history … it is hard to imagine where we fit in and how we belong”.

Stained Glass Windows of Notre Dame at the Heart of Controversy

Hélène de Lauzun | The European Conservative | 18th July 2024

Should the restoration of Notre Dame cathedral include a “contemporary architectural gesture”? The French government thinks so, proposing that some less prominent windows be replaced with contemporary stained glass. The writer says this is “heritage being sacrificed on the altar of contemporary ideology”. Stained glass windows, though, are continually repaired and replaced. One writer defines the issue in similar terms to the restoration of artworks: “if all the parts have been updated, is the object still the same?”

Glamour, Glory and Gone

Ara Osterweil | Artforum | 25th February 2024

Around 1960, Marisol was a star of New York’s art scene. Not only did her bulky totemic figurative sculptures grab attention, but she also stood out as a glamorous female sculptor in a macho art world. Her works dealt explicitly with families, female roles and male privilege. International acclaim peaked in the late 1960’s and, although remaining prolific she faded from view. Her death, decades later, brought the headline the “forgotten star of Pop Art”. Art history, it seems, is now writing Marisol back in.

The inventor of the Renaissance

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 25th July 2024

Vasari is remembered not for his competent paintings and architecture but because he wrote the first “modern” book on art history. It advocated for artists to be seen not as tradesmen but as “gifted”. He launched the unfinished debate about whether colour or composition is more important in a painting. Guilty of being a gossip, and of ignoring the Northern Renaissance, his description of the Italian Renaissance is nonetheless an influential part of our intellectual inheritance.

23rd July 2024

Star Man: Vincent van Gogh’s Illuminated Nights

Michael Lobel | MoMA Magazine | 17th July 2024

An interesting pairing – van Gogh and industrialisation. From early in his painting career, van Gogh was fascinated by new forms of building and street lighting and the way it transformed “modern experience”. For him, illumination became “a full-blown artistic motif”. In his famous Starry Night, for example, celestial light is combined with lit windows throughout the village. Perhaps van Gogh was marvelling at the beauty of the night sky while the villagers marvelled at abundant gaslight and how it held the night at bay.

As Surrealism Turns 100, a Look at Its Enduring Legacy

Howard Halle | ARTnews | 24th April 2024

Surrealism is turning 100, a good excuse for lots of shows. The surrealists claimed a heritage back to Hieronymus Bosch and, via celebrated artists like Dali and Magritte, they are still influential. But what is surrealism’s current status? One critic notes, surrealism “has always been a multiplicity”, always a state of mind. The linked piece is a good primer but it seems we will have to wait for a more definitive contemporary assessment.

Toshiko Takaezu

Jennifer Krasinski | 4Columns | 31st May 2024

Takaezu is revered among ceramicists but almost unknown outside that circle. Inspired by a student job at a ceramics factory she went on to develop her acclaimed “closed form” works, vase-like forms with tiny necks. These were followed by more eccentric sculptural objects. Takaezu had no interest in “ideal form”, experimenting endlessly with ceramic imperfection and making her work almost a combination of sculpture and painting. “A stunning retrospective”.  Images are here.

Immaterial: Blankets and Quilts

Camille Dungay | Perspectives | 17th July 2024

The quilts made in Gee’s Bend in southern USA challenge conventional thinking about art. Quilters were not trying to make art works, just functional objects using worn out scraps of fabric, As they saw it, they made “pretty” (patterned) quilts or “ugly” (asymmetric) quilts. Further, unlike most artworks, these quilts were often made by a group of quilters, not a single artist. Eventually, though, they were hung in art museums, bringing the realisation that quilts, like art, can carry stories. “A quilt has many, many lives”.

The mysterious New York nanny who helped shape 20th-century street photography

Helen Stoilas | CNN | 24th June 2024

Meier’s story – the nanny with a secret passion for photography – is now well known. Does a first retrospective in the US reveal anything new about her images? Her skill at composition, her instinct for a telling detail, are evident throughout her work. Does that make her a ‘great’ street photographer like, say, Arbus? Some think so, but one writer notes that her “lifetime of anonymity persists in the work … she didn’t contribute anything uniquely her own. [Her best work] are her self-portraits”.

Old Master Encore

James Gardner | The Magazine Antiques | 7th June 2024

Lethière dodged the worst of the French Revolution, reached the pinnacle of the French art establishment, but is now mostly forgotten. A neoclassical painter, he created huge paintings that addressed conventional classical themes of love and death. One critic thinks he shows “occasional stodginess”. So why attempt a resurrection? Is it because, as someone born into slavery, Lethière suits our identity-obsessed times? Muses the writer, perhaps his real achievement was just proximity to the ruling elite.

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