The Easel

4th February 2025

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith dies at 85

Sandra Hale Schulman | ICT | 30th January 2025

When one of her paintings was acquired by Washington’s National Gallery in 2020, Smith asked “why is it the first”? Over a long career she had, in fact, posted a series of firsts for a Native American artist. In particular, she was one of the first to represent contemporary Native life by combining contemporary American imagery with Native icons such as canoes and buffalo. On achieving national prominence in her old age, she marvelled “I’m a miracle, and any Native person is a miracle.”

The G.O.A.T. – Diego Velázquez – Comes To Los Angeles At Norton Simon Museum

Chadd Scott | Forbes | 13th December 2024

This writer (like the editor) is a total Velazquez fanboy. Velazquez’ “extraordinary” portrait of Queen Marianna is on loan to the Norton Simon Museum. The work is a case study in art being used to declare the power of the Hapsburg throne. “Velazquez is a virtuoso in terms of how he handles brush strokes … you get this sense of flamboyance [and] seriousness; he’s able to capture the nuances of a person in a way that feels modern. Artists like Velázquez changed Europe’s opinion of the [art] profession.”

Is Luxury Fashion Supporting the Arts or Subsuming Them?

Emily Watlington | Art in America | 11th December 2024

Big brands frequently use artworks or artists in their ads. Carrie Mae Weems’ iconic ‘kitchen photographs’, repackaged for the Bottega Veneta brand is a recent example. Some fret that this degrades the fine art reputation of photography. Accusations that the artist is “selling out” nowadays seem outdated, as is the assumption that fashion ads lack aesthetic merit. Mass media imagery has long provided inspiration for artists. Let’s defend artists’ scope to engage in “experimentation, weirdness and uselessness”.

Art and all that is in between at the Islamic Arts Biennale in Saudi Arabia

John McDonald | The Nightly | 31st January 2025

Saudi Arabia is pouring huge resources into its post-oil future. The Islamic Arts Biennale is but one example of that agenda. There is a contemporary section, but most works are historical and of “staggering quality”. Besides exquisite items on loan from the Vatican and elsewhere, there is also last year’s kiswah – the cloth that covers the holy shrine in Mecca. The over-riding aim of the Biennale is to increase the status of Islam. As the writer notes “if you want to achieve wonders, you’ve got to have faith,”

In Your Wildest Dreams: Ensor Beyond Impressionism and Ensor’s States of Imagination

Joe Lloyd | The Burlington Magazine | 1st January 2025

Living in coastal Ostend, Ensor would keenly observe the town’s annual carnival. While disapproving of the bourgeoise revellers he was so captivated by their ghoulish masks that they overtook his paintings and eventually made his name. Placing ensembles of colourfully masked figures in mundane settings made them even more disturbing, leading some critics to acclaim him as a “proto-surrealist”. Sadly he stayed with mask motifs too long – what was “sinister” in 1890 was, by the new century, “tame”.

La Vie en Rose

Norma Clarke | Literary Review | 1st February 2025

Pink may be a “half colour” but it boasts a long history. Florentine lawyers in 1345, when implementing a luxury tax, documented the shades of pink in upper class wardrobes. Most popular – with both men and women – in the 18th century, it gradually feminised and, by 1900, was mostly used for women’s underwear. The barbie doll has revived its fortunes somewhat. The meaning we ascribe to pink has shifted over time. It’s not an “eye-brain” thing; “It is society that ‘makes’ colour [and] gives it meaning”.

28th January 2025

Jean Tinguely

Veronica Simpson | Studio International | 11th November 2024

Tinguely was “stuck” in a painting career until discovering Calder‘s ideas about movement. That inspired a career of making mechanical assemblages that lacked any discernible purpose. Sometimes these machines used found objects – pots and pans, barbie dolls, petticoats. And often, they made noises – “clicking, whirring, grinding, rotating, clanging and rattling.” These works are pioneering, inventive, either with a serious point to make, or else “just a delightful prank”.

The Henri Cartier-Bresson of South Korea

E Tommy Kim | The New Yorker | 18th January 2025

When a city emerges from a ruinous war, where should a photographer aim his camera? Seoul in the late 1950’s was beset by deprivation and hardship. Rather than showing its devastation, Han Youngsoo chose to highlight the “minute, insignificant traces of life”. His images of working class life are unembellished, similar to Cartier-Bresson (in Paris) and Helen Leavitt (in New York). “His pictures tell us what it felt like to survive, and move on … They are portraits of chaos and dreams.” Images are here.

The birth of modernism in Brazil: ‘A young, ambitious nation trying to express itself’

Alastair Smart | Christie’s | 23rd January 2025

Modernist thinking, once thought exclusively European, was, at the start of the 20th century, also happening elsewhere. Brazilian artists, facing a conservative art establishment, engaged with Europe’s avante garde and began developing a modern visual identity. Given Brazil’s diversity, its art is complex, limiting its international profile. At least one critic dislikes this London survey of 10 major artists but even he concedes that they have given modernism “funk and fun”.

Once Upon a Time: Art Before the Internet

JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview | 25th January 2025

This show was overed in a pre-Xmas newsletter, but this piece better highlights changing attitudes to digital art. Since 1960, artists have shown a fascination for two main themes. Will technology be a “utopian enabler” of human communication? And will technology produce new aesthetic experiences? Notwithstanding mass computing, and now AI, the prevailing view seems to be that “machines can’t see like humans can”. A “revolutionary fusion of aesthetics, technology and society” doesn’t seem imminent.

Secret passageway through one of Italy’s most famous cityscapes opens to public for first time

Julia Buckley | CNN | 31st December 2024

Besides writing the first history of art, Giorgio Vasari designed Florence’s Vasari Corridor. Built in 1565 for the Medici’s, the exclusive passageway connects the Uffizi (formerly a palace) to government offices, crossing the Arno atop the Ponte Vecchio. Over centuries, it has amassed a large collection of portraits. Mussolini showed it to an admiring Hitler and Ponte Vecchio was the only Florentine bridge to survive WW2.

The architect and the artist

Leah Singer | Ursula | 25th January 2025

Attracted by Le Corbusier ambitious plans for Chandigarh, Nek Chand, a humble road inspector, joined the project. Soon after, he began secretly building a rock garden in a nearby forest. Over decades it accumulated thousands of concrete sculptures of people and animals, its acres of winding paths connecting a series of chambers that mimic a typical Punjab village. Its popularity now protects it from demolition and, together with the city, is regarded as a “vast urban experiment”.

Art sales slump

Michael Prodger | The Critic | 19th December 2024

Is the tide going out on fine art? Sales volumes have been flat-ish for some years, buoyed up by top-end works. Now,, art auction sales of the top four auction houses – the pinnacle of the market – totalled $4.7bn in 2024, down from $7.4bn in 2022. That’s a whopping fall, seemingly highlighting the folly of classifying fine art as a financial asset. “The demand for masterpieces remains strong”, purrs one auction executive. Admits another, the “price yardstick” of a masterpiece was $50m but is now merely $20m.

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