The Easel

11th February 2025

Weaving a language beyond abstraction: Olga de Amaral in Paris

Giulia Zappa | stir world | 2nd December 2024

Despite having been a pioneer in fiber art for decades, de Amaral has received limited recognition. A “revelatory”, first-ever show in Paris might change that. Combining a modernist feel with pre-Columbian motifs, her work is hugely diverse– in materials, different weaving and knotting techniques, and in forms that span the architectural, three-dimensional, monumental and abstract.  One critic calls the show “the monographic exhibition of [2024], regardless of medium”. A video (6 min) is here

From kitchen wall to the Louvre: Cimabue show sheds new light on ‘father of Western painting’

Benjamin Dodman | France24 | 21st January 2025

In his 1550 book on art history, Vasari credited the Florentine artist Giotto with initiating the shift toward naturalistic painting. However, new evidence suggests that Giotto’s peer Cimabue deserves credit for this monumental shift. The change in thinking owes much to the recent discovery of a Cimabue work in a French kitchen. The Louvre claims that the painting and another recently restored Cimabue work, are together the “founding acts of Western painting” where it broke away from Byzantine iconography.

Nature’s Emissary

Brooks Riley | Substack | 1st February 2025

Surprisingly, this is Friedrich’s first US retrospective. His acclaimed Germanic landscapes, often painted at dawn or dusk, depict figures facing away from the viewer, contemplating “the empowering essence of nature”. Romanticism was all about the feelings of an individual and Friedrich’s landscapes spoke eloquently to that. As one critic expresses it, his was an “art of experience, in which what you feel has primacy over what you see”.

Etel Adnan Captured the Light of Many Suns

Natalie Haddad | Hyperallergic | 4th February 2025

Before her painting career, Adnan was a successful writer. Little surprise, then, that her paintings are sometimes referred to as ‘tone poems’. Her multicultural early life in Lebanon and Paris gave her art an “ambiguous sense of place”. Exuberant colours and abstract shapes impart a modernist feel to her paintings while her tapestries summon associations with Middle Eastern kilim rugs. Out of that cultural multiplicity, says one critic, Adnan offers “the possibility of another world”.

There: a Feeling | Gregg Bordowitz

Christiana Spens | Studio International | 24th January 2025

Maybe some art just doesn’t suit the written review. Bordowitz is cerebral – artist, writer, filmmaker, activist – with a wide-ranging oeuvre that, starting with the 1980’s AIDS crisis, addresses survival. Yet, reviewers need to spend paragraphs explaining specific works. This art isn’t easy. One critic calls Bordowitz “influential”. Impressive, but this writer struggles with works that are “fleeting … always contingent on something unseen”. Perhaps you just have to be there …

What Is AI Art?

Staff | Christie’s | 7th February 2025

Is this essay substantive or frivolous? Taking the former view, it’s a survey of active AI artists and describes different ways artists are using AI capabilities. The temptation is great, though, to take the frivolous view. Auction house revenues are way down, and AI art is one way to boost sales. Absent from the article is any art criticism, implying that AI art is primarily a novelty. Christie’s claims (hopes) otherwise. Trills one executive, “AI technology is undoubtedly the future”.

I love bird-watching and art. Here’s my gallery guide to doing both at once

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 3rd February 2025

In the many years of this newsletter, no-one has ever written about bird-watching and art – until now. Subscribers who are bird-watchers will presumably thrill at this recognition of their hobby. For the rest of us, it’s a chance to learn about the symbolism that birds add to a painting. Goldfinches, with their red colouring, prefigure Jesus’ bloody death. Magpies were thought to be “the bird of death”. And Hieronymus Bosch used owls as a symbol of the Devil. There, birds have added something to your day!

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”.

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