The Easel

16th September 2025

Stephen Shore’s ‘Early Work,’ with Pictures He Shot at Age 13, Is Anything but Amateur

Emmanuel Iduma | Art in America | 5th September 2025

Shore was hugely precocious, photographing New York street scenes when he was 13 and, only a year later, selling some of those images to MoMA. With his instinct for composition, he understood very early that “a camera doesn’t point, it frames”. While still a teenager he spent several years at Warhol’s Factory before moving into then unfashionable colour photography. Even in his 20’s his signature style was clear – “an attentiveness to the American surface”.

How a tiny stone from a warrior’s tomb is shaking up ancient Greek art at Getty Villa

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 10th September 2025

Ancient art history. Roman sculpture had its foundations in the Classical Greek (480 BCE onward) and Hellenistic (331 BCE onward) eras. That aesthetic focused on the ideal male form, harmonious proportions and expressive movement. A recent excavation in Greece has yielded a stone carving of a naturalistic male coming from the much older Bronze Age cultures of Minoa or Mycenae. Whatever the carving’s origins “long-settled art history has gotten a jolt”. A backgrounder is here.

Just how controversial was Banksy’s new Royal Courts of Justice piece?

Will Jennings | Wallpaper | 10th September 2025

Banksy latest image, a judge beating on a demonstrator, has appeared on the wall of London’s main law courts. The writer dismisses the work as vague – Banksy “wants to be seen as [a commentator] but not make any meaningful comment”. Another writer seems quite relaxed, noting that art works have been altered and erased for centuries. Elon Musk has posted that he approves of the work. Says Banksy, “it’s better if you treat the city like a big playground, you know? It’s there to mess about in.”

Man Ray and the dreams of objects

Staff | Kolapse | 7th September 2025

Man Ray was always chasing the next new idea. In 1921 he placed objects on or near light sensitive paper and then exposed them to light. Voila, the rayogram was created! It led to a decade of experimentation and a dalliance with the surrealists who loved anything that resembled dream imagery. Perhaps the reason the linked piece has such a ‘try hard’ tone is that, with hindsight, the rayogram has proven to be more whimsical historical footnote than enduring idea.

Seeing double: Vermeer painting and its mysterious ‘twin’ go on show

Gareth Harris | CNN | 2nd September 2025

Vermeer’s The Guitar Player hangs in London, was signed by the artist and is beautifully preserved. Its doppelgänger hangs in Philadelphia, unsigned and in poor condition. They are presently showing side by side to help settle a century-old debate about the authenticity of the Philadelphia version. Perhaps Vermeer made the copy but he was not known for doing that. Says a curator “if someone else painted it … they’re too good to have just done the one painting”. An excellent summary of the technical analysis is here.

9th September 2025

From the Hindenburg to the DMZ, contemporary artist Lee Bul’s latest exhibit explores failed utopias

Lee Jian | Korea JoongAng Daily | 1st September 2025

Bul, the eminent Korean artist, started out in performance art but as international acclaim grew she moved into sculpture, installation, and painting. The centrepiece of this retrospective is a huge Zeppelin-shaped balloon, emblematic of “failed utopian dreams”. A tall structure reflects her view that architecture is an expression of “our hopes, our vision”. Such works, she hopes will “come off as somehow familiar, accessible, [but also with] a hint of something a bit strange”. A profile of the artist is here.

Francis Newton Souza — the ‘enfant terrible’ of Modern Indian art

Nishad Avari | Christie’s | 1st September 2025

For Indian art to emerge from under the British influence, it needed strong characters. Souza was one. Co-founding the Progressive Artists Group in 1947, he aspired to create something both modern and Indian. His broad strokes, figurative distortions and “dark exploration” of religion and sex were seen as disruptive, and he moved to London. It was there, ironically, that he produced a torrent of strong work that now underpins his reputation. Says one writer, “Souza created the visual language of modern India”.

Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings

Nolan Kelly | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st September 2025

Yuskavage knows that her impolitic paintings give her a “bad girl” image. She trained in the “highbrow” European figurative tradition but married that with a “lowbrow” vulgar sexuality from popular culture. That contains a tension that attracts much attention, creepy figures depicted with great technical proficiency. She references how women have been portrayed in western art, but the final product still leaves viewers uneasy – is this “the straight-A student [or] the back-of-class troublemaker”?

Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry – Le Château de Chantilly

Staff | Salterton Arts Review | 23rd July 2025

A book of hours was a prayer book that set out religious observances. Written and illustrated by hand, such books were among the most precious of Gothic artworks. The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry, completed in 1416, shows “jewel-like landscapes, toiling peasants and frolicking nobles”. Both the commissioning Duke du Berry and the illustrators died when the book was nearing completion. “Absolutely magnificent … better than the Mona Lisa”.

Van Gogh and the secret meanings of plants

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 1st September 2025

A new book describing the symbolic meaning of plants and flowers in art. It emphasises happy connotations. Flowers have variously signalled purity (lily), love (rose) and wisdom (iris). Yet less happy associations abound. Van Gogh painted the poisonous oleander as a warning of danger. The palm, common is medieval art, signalled the choice of death over a pagan marriage. And mushrooms living in the dank undergrowth represented “sinfulness at the base of humanity”. Not quite a breezy summer read.

Secrecy, Leverage, and Power: The Art World’s Economy of Truth

Orlando Whitfield | Literary Hub | 15th August 2025

The art market thinks of itself as a refined l place, but is described by one writer as “commerce dressed up as culture”. Inigo Philbrick, a young art dealer jailed in 2022 for fraud, personified this characterisation. The linked piece, a description of how Philbrick and his offsider engineered the sale of a Paula Rego painting, fits firmly in the category of a ripping yarn. Philbrick is now out of prison, has participated in a BBC documentary and plans to return to art, saying “I was a great art dealer.”

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