The Easel

20th August 2024

The Fury and Failings of a Nicole Eisenman Survey

Debra Brehmer | Hyperallergic | 31st July 2024

The positive but not effusive reviews of Eisenman’s show when in London, are repeated now it is in Chicago. Noting the jumble of ideas and styles, the writer complains that Eisenman’s paintings “never quite resolve”. A more positive view is that Eisenman’s varied styles reveal her to be a “connoisseur of textures and coloured patterns”. In the last decade, she has become “very, very good” at articulating “an expanded repertoire of how to feel alive and… the possibilities of who we might be”.

Peter Kennard’s five-decade retrospective of political art and activism

Dalia Al-Dujaili | British Journal of Photography | 9th August 2024

Kennard’s retrospective is explicitly about political art. For some, this will recall the activism of the Thatcher years. But one might wonder if “DIY photomontage” has a late twentieth century print aesthetic. Political battles have moved substantially online. Will future Kennards be displaced by AI? Or will our image-saturated age simply deny such “knock-out” images the cut-through that they once had? Might we already know the future face of dissent … Banksy?

Leonora Carrington: The female surrealist Britain never understood

Florence Hallett | iNews | 23rd July 2024

Surrealism advocated that art should reflect the unconscious mind. As a result, surrealist art is very personal, leading to a focus on artist biography rather than the art. Carrington is an example – much emphasis on her dramatic early story but not so much on her art. Famous in Mexico but overlooked in Britain, her work is “hard to love, and her weird, chilly inventions [are] resistant to interpretation”. Says another critic “Carrington’s mythological beings are irresistible … technically radical yet entrancing”.

The Neue Galerie Pays Homage to Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Mother of German Expressionism

Sandra Bertrand | Highbrow Magazine | 6th August 2024

Modersohn-Becker, prodigiously talented, spent her early career moving between a restrictive marriage in Bremen and artistic freedom in Paris. She died young, soon after childbirth. Two things make her story distinctive. First, her many self-portraits are now seen as boldly modern and done in a style that anticipates expressionism. Secondly, her early death leaves the perpetual question, “what if”.

A Scientist’s Quest to Decode Vermeer’s True Colours

Adnan Khan | The Walrus | 22nd July 2024

Chemical analysis of the colour pigments in a painting can yield insights about the artist. Vermeer is a case in point. Using a remarkably limited palette – about 20 colours – he painstakingly layered multiple colours to produce his muted Delft interiors. And he seems to have had clear pigment preferences, notably expensive ultramarine blue and two different types of lead white. “As a painter of the prosaic …[Vermeer] implores us to slow down and look at the world in all its minute glory.”

Kasper König, Legendary Curator, Dies at 80

Staff | Frieze | 13th August 2024

Although he worked mainly in Germany, the flood of obituaries for König attests to his global influence. He curated his first museum show at 23 and was, for decades, a freelance curator with an omnivorous interest in contemporary art. Involvements in the Venice Biennale, Manifesta and other global art events ultimately led to appointments as a museum director and art professor. A magazine once commented that “Kasper König doesn’t have a CV so much as a catalogue of bragging rights.”

13th August 2024

I. M. Pei: A life in architecture

Thomas Tsang | Art Basel | 25th July 2024

When Pei was studying architecture the Beaux Arts style was giving way to international modernism. It was an apt initiation for an architect famed for combining multiple influences. His most illustrious commission, the Louvre’s glass  pyramid, is acclaimed as a masterpiece in reconciling a modernist element with the museum’s traditional features, while also enhancing public space. Like many of his influential designs, it “connects past and future”. Images are here.

Start here: Michael Craig-Martin

Staff | Royal Academy | 9th August 2024

A quick summary of Craig-Martin’s acclaimed work. He chooses to draw only those objects that are instantly recognisable. Once chosen, he renders them in a pristine, exact style, using familiarity to have us think the object is, say, a chair even though it’s not, it’s a drawing of a chair. This is, he admits, an “extreme form of representation” – things may be familiar even when not drawn realistically. ”Images are a form of language”, Craig-Martin says, and there is “slippage between idea and language and object”.

How the Hirshhorn Museum stays fresh at 50

Glenn Adamson | Apollo | 10th August 2024

What starts as a museum anniversary note morphs into something more interesting. US museums are struggling to rebuild visitor numbers after the pandemic. The Hirshhorn faces such challenges too, even though it is located on Washington’s National Mall and offers free admission. Populist shows have drawn people in while it considers bold ideas to be more than a museum – “a performance stage, a broadcaster and, at times, a public sculpture.” Somewhere amongst all that, one presumes, is the art.

Banksy’s phoney street art

Josiah Gogarty | The New Statesman | 9th August 2024

New Banksy works are popping up in London, leading to this grumpy piece against his street art. The problem appears to be the “relentless lionisation by middlebrow media” who should instead focus on more authentic graffiti. Street art, Banksy-style, is a “lowest common denominator of hip” whereas graffiti has “genuine conceptual power”. As a way to show the human spirit, “graffiti does that far better than a stencilled goat.” But isn’t it possible that Banksy is just having “a great brat summer”?

Have Memes Ruined Art?

Brooks Riley | Art at First Sight | 11th August 2024

A new Substack newsletter that’s worth a look. The writer’s first post describes the visceral reaction that an original artwork can have on a viewer. Her second, more light-hearted, post looks at the contrasting problem of over-exposure – do we ruin famous artworks by turning them into memes? “No” seems to be the answer. We may roll our eyes at the way the Mona Lisa is “dishonoured”, but its meme-ification testifies to its prominence in our culture. “Memes cannot ruin art.”

Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look review: Just three paintings? Exquisite

Florence Hallett | iNews | 7th August 2024

This show – pairing one Hockney painting with two Piero works – has attracted multiple reviews, but what is it about? Is it admonishing gallerygoers to look more closely at works of art? Is it about artists referencing each other’s works? Perhaps it is simply Hockney’s fascination with Piero, a key Renaissance artist. The writer suggests one further idea – this is Hockney suggesting that artists should do more drawing, an activity he thinks is a foundational form of human expression. Take your pick.

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