The Easel

1st April 2025

Vienna exhibition of Egon Schiele’s late works hints at what could have been

JS Marcus | The Art Newspaper | 28th February 2025

Schiele packed a lot into a short life. At the start of WW1, he was 24, an art world name, living a “wild life” and had briefly been jailed for obscene drawings. With marriage in 2015, his art changed. His jerky lines becoming smoother and more classical. His colours brightened. Eroticism, previously a blinding interest, gave way to an interest in the human psyche. Military service added to an emerging seriousness. And then, quickly, death, first of his mentor Klimt, then Schiele’s wife and finally himself, aged 28.

Fra Angelico Deposition altarpiece back on display in Florence after transformative two-year restoration

Alexander Morrison | The Art Newspaper | 27th April 2025

Italy is so richly endowed with art that a restoration rarely creates news. Fra Angelico’s Santa Trinita Altarpiece (1429 – 1432), an “absolute masterpiece”, is different. This work left behind the flat Gothic style where scriptural scenes were presented without interpretation. Angelico introduced a more natural, humanistic view and in so doing, says one writer, “invented emotional interiority in art”. This seismic change paved the way not just for the great Renaissance painters but for all artists who followed.

Celia Paul faces the ghosts of her past

Matthew Spurling | Apollo | 28th April 2025

It took an effort for Paul to make Lucien Freud part of her story, rather than she being part of his. It’s a point of departure for several reviews of her new show that focuses on portraits. Paul denies being a portraitist – “if I’m anything, I have always been an autobiographer”. Presumably what she means is that her viewpoint when painting is not representational but emotional. Perhaps that means the portraits in this show are really about memory – “what you have once been close to stays with you.”.

A Light Touch in the Frick Expansion

Justin Davidson | Curbed | 25th April 2025

New York’s Frick Collection is beloved for its masterpiece-laden art that is housed in an opulent Gilded-Age mansion museum. After five years of renovation, it is verdict time. Where new spaces have been created, “the scars don’t show”. Old and new have been blended deftly, getting “the richest result from the smallest betrayal”. With its beautiful wood and brass finishes, silk and wool wall coverings and gorgeous marble, The Frick remains “a temple to the tangible”. The writer’s verdict – “phew”.

Is Art Criticism Getting More Conservative, or Just More Burnt Out?

Louis Bury | Art in America | 20th April 2025

For some time, there has been a rumbling debate (here and here) that we are experiencing “aesthetic stagnation”. The explanations are various – phone obsession, the digital world, art critics unaware of art history. This writer pushes back. We don’t know what our digital era will yet bring. Yes, “cultural platforms” have been upended by social media, but “cultural power” has been a battleground for ever. “Incredible work still happens, about as often as it always has; our jobs are … to find it”.

Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo at the Royal Academy review : ‘unnerving’

Melanie McDonough | The Standard | 20th April 2025

When Victor Hugo wasn’t writing Les Misérables etc, he sketched, drew or doodled. Most critics like his work, even though much of it “is very odd indeed”. There are humanoid mushrooms, “weirdly modern abstractions”, imaginary castles and more. Should these “competent” works be judged as if done by a “serious” artist? Perhaps not, because we are looking for other reasons, hoping for other insights. We look to see Victor Hugo, a great writer. And what do we find? Suggests one writer, “what an artist, what a soul”.

25th March 2025

Maybe the most important American artist you’ve never heard of

Sebastian Smee | Yahoo | 21st March 2025

Whitten began his art career when civil rights was a huge issue. Avoiding representational protest painting, he instead plunged into abstraction. What ensued were paintings of great variety – “carved, splattered, sprayed, scraped, hammered and excavated”. Sculptures and mosaics were treated similarly. Absent for most of his career was recognition of a remarkable talent for expressing “the dynamics of mourning and memory”. One work, says the writer, “emanates pulses of soul-ache”.

Tribute: Thomas Moser (1935–2025)

Izzy Kornblatt | Architectural Record | 9th March 2025

Few cabinetmakers reach a level where their products are thought of as works of art. Moser was one. A self-taught furniture designer and craftsman, his hand-built pieces celebrated American craft traditions with features like visible mortise-and-tenon joints. His designs were contemporary, yet their “unadorned functionalism“ owed a debt to 1920’s Bauhaus as well as 18th century Shaker designs. His acclaimed chairs were simple, elegant and strong, reflecting a life-long pursuit of “ultimate chairness”.

Edvard Munch Portraits review – smug, creepy and weird, but where’s the drama?

Adrian Searle | The Guardian | 12th March 2025

Think Munch, think Nordic angst? Pretty much, judging by a show of his portraits in London. Munch painted his wide circle of friends – artists, musicians, the well-to-do. They are an odd lot, “the smug, the arrogant, the faintly creepy”, captured with psychological acuity, sometimes in hallucinatory colour.  Some complain about the weak selection of works in this show. Why not include, asks one, the “wild portrait of the mistress who shot him”. Some people, it seems, can’t get enough angst.

A show of Chinese bronzes at the Met will help you think in centuries

Philip Kennicott | Yahoo | 22nd March 2025

During China’s Song dynasty (around 1100 CE), rediscovered Shang and Zhao dynasty bronzes from two millennia earlier sparked a revival of those styles. Art history regards the later bronzes as inferior. Is that view justified? Song dynasty casting techniques allowed more detailed, refined designs while contact with the Islamic world inspired new patterns and inlay. In other words, they were not just copies of an ancient past but innovative works in their own right. ”The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Gustav Klimt’s mysterious African prince portrait

Gaby Reucher | DW.com | 21st March 2025

Finding a valuable painting can be perilous as well as profitable. An 1897 Klimt painting has been found that captures an important stylistic shift in his work. Great! Now, the complications. Lost in 1938 when the Nazi’s took power, it features an Ora (current-day Ghana) prince who was in colonial-era Vienna as part of what we would now call “a human zoo”. Ugh! There are multiple restitution claimants and an export permit is needed. Apparently, a brave (un-named) institution is lining up to buy.

Art Institute showcases ancient Roman sculptures in unprecedented ‘Myth and Marble’ exhibit

Kyle MacMillan | Chicago Sun-Times | 15th March 2025

Having dazzled in Rome and Paris, more sculptures from the fabled Torlonia Collection have hit Chicago. Without a common language across its empire, Rome projected its power visually. Sculptures – “imperial portraits” – appeared in public baths, libraries and amphitheatres, all proclaiming “stability and prosperity through dynastic succession”. Their “artistic audacity” gives them contemporary relevance: ‘we’re surrounded by media … in the Roman world, sculpture was the medium par excellence”.

Palazzo Barberini and Caravaggio. In the bedlam of the blockbuster exhibition of the year

Federico Giannini | Finestre sull' Arte | 16th March 2025

This show is an “unfailing, unmissable Caravaggio epiphany”, a verdict confirmed by surging crowds. Yet, there is also serious work afoot. Some paintings, such as one recently rediscovered in Spain, have contested authorship and scholars want to scrutinise them next to “noisily higher quality” works. Few new insights into Caravaggio emerge, just a furious, high stakes debate over what is genuine. One might decide it is a show for the specialists, as is this review.  Images and details on 12 paintings are here.

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