The Easel

17th September 2024

Lucian Freud’s Sitters

Celia Paul | London Review of Books | 12th September 2024

A fascinating essay. Paul was one of Freud’s many lovers. She writes with a candour informed by their romantic relationship and subsequent long “complicated intimacy”. Reviewing Freud’s portraits of his lovers, she diagnoses the trajectory of those relationships at the moment of painting and the substantial impact they had on his art. Paul is also candid about Freud. There was an “enduring love and trust that Lucian could feel for men. He never trusted his female lovers to the same extent.”

The great French painter who had no time for France

Artemis Cooper | The Spectator | 7th September 2024

Gauguin is firmly one of art’s “bad boys”, courtesy of misdeeds in Polynesia. However, his memoir, re-discovered in 2020 and now a ‘scintillating” new biography, complicate this narrative. When he went to Tahiti, his relationships with Tahitian girls were acceptable within Tahitian culture, and he fought doggedly for Polynesian rights against French colonialists. Allegations that he spread sexual disease are in doubt. Who, then, was Gauguin? He was “a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach.”

Hannah Höch: Assembled Worlds

Christiana Spens | Studio International | 16th September 2024

Dada arose from the trauma of WW1 and, in 1920’s Berlin, Höch was one of its leading lights. A publishing job gave her access to printed imagery, which she used to make witty and elegant photomontages, pioneering a new artform and a new form of political commentary. Shut down by the Nazi’s, her art after WW2 took on a more surrealist quality. Höch’s legacy includes her “electric” portrayal of Weimar Germany, an articulation of a feminine sensibility, and photomontage itself. Images are here.

Style Is Nothing’: How Ralph Steadman Transformed Cartooning Into High Gonzo Art

Min Chen | artnet news | 10th September 2024

Steadman’s anarchic illustrations that accompanied the 1970’s writings of Hunter S Thompson are deservedly famous. He started with a training in technical drawing, but then discovered Dada, Duchamp and German expressionism. From there, his offbeat cultural perspective took over. His artistic range now covers political cartoons, sculpture, children’s books and paintings of extinct animals. Why these things? “I felt I had to be useful. Not just an artist doing a thing, but creating some of the useful kind of art.”

Impressionism is a war story. But also a love story.

Sebastian Smee | MSN | 13th September 2024

A new book on Impressionism considers what Manet’s portraits of Berthe Morisot reveal. She was his most frequent subject. Despite preferring subjects to have a neutral expression, his many portraits of her are “private, engaged and almost extravagantly expressive”. Her own painting was flourishing, yet she put it aside to pose for him. “They are paintings of intimacy, which is neither a subject nor an object but a charge enlivening the psychological space between two subjects.”. Morisot eventually married Manet’s brother.

George Stubbs (1724–1806): Hero of the turf

Toby Keel | Country Life | 30th August 2024

An appreciation of Stubbs on the 300th anniversary of his birth. In his twenties, he studied equine anatomy and, armed with a portfolio of horse studies, moved to London. He accumulated a clientele of racing aristocrats smitten by his life-like horse portraits. Some works verged on the melodramatic but all showed a respect for anatomical fidelity and an admiration for animals. Stubbs’ popularity faded after a time, but lovers of the genre view his horse portraits as having “never been surpassed”.

10th September 2024

The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale

Barry Schwabsky | The Nation | 4th September 2024

Among the most thoughtful assessments of this year’s Venice Biennale. Good literature can come from almost anywhere, so why don’t we think the same way about art? Our view of contemporary art still adheres to a European-centric story around modernism and abstraction. That narrative excludes Indigenous art that articulates “cultural continuity and an ineradicable connection to place”. Perhaps a perspective that embraces all forms of art will come in to focus, but that has yet to happen.

The weird reflections of Jean Cocteau

Craig Burnett | Apollo | 26th June 2024

Cocteau described himself as a poet but to that we can add playwright, novelist, filmmaker, visual artist and probably Nazi sympathiser. Prodigiously talented as a draughtsman, he often paired text and image in drawings, portraits and posters. Inspired by Greek mythology, he somehow introduced characters like Orpheus into many of his activities. He was “a polymath, a protean conjurer of worlds”. Said Cocteau, whose favourite motifs were the mask and the mirror, “I am nothing – “another” speaks in me.”

Rijksmuseum acquires controversial early botanic book on Suriname

Senay Boztas | The Art Newspaper | 3rd September 2024

Even as a teenager German-born Meriam was interested in science and art. In 1699, middle age and divorced, she travelled to Suriname and spent two years studying its insects. The resultant book, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, was her masterpiece, a scientific landmark and a high point of Dutch publishing. Its back story and 60 illustrations make it, says a Rijksmuseum librarian, “one of the most fascinating books in natural history”.  Background on Meriam and more illustrations are here.

Megan Rooney on painting: ‘You must dig it all up before you can find what it actually is’

Jessica Lack | Christie’s | 5th September 2024

This review illustrates the difficulty of assessing a new artist. Rooney had her first solo show just three years ago, meaning there is little existing work on which to base critical comments. Each new show carries a lot of “news” about her developing approach. She is a “thoroughgoing abstract artist”, says one writer, inspired by 1950’s abstract expressionism. A group of paintings in the show are “magnificent”. Is that critical or commercial enthusiasm? It should be clear within a decade.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan

Robyn Schiff | Artforum | 1st September 2024

Japan’s Meiji period (1868 to 1912) saw dramatic cultural change as international trade commenced. Consumers were drawn to “the idea” of European luxury in consumer goods, advertising and fashion. Japanese art suddenly depicted modern tableaux – a woman browsing a shopping catalogue or making a phone call. From there it was but a short step to propaganda, with European imperial pushiness being matched by Japanese aspirations to become a modern state, and global power.

Why ‘Art & Science Collide’ is a risky theme for the Getty’s new PST festival

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 29th August 2024

The wealthy Getty Foundation plans its PST art festivals big. These occur every five years or so and have previously focused on the art history of LA. This year’s “extravaganza”, involving over 70 exhibitions and innumerable supporting programs, addresses the “collision” of art and science. No-one is quite sure if all the events will address this theme, nor whether art and science are, in fact, colliding. Still, it’s a popular topic (think AI) at a time when museum attendances are still anaemic, post-COVID.

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