The Easel

28th October 2025

How a polka-dotted pumpkin became the world’s most coveted art installation

Kelsey Ables | Yahoo | 27th October 2025

In praise of Kusama’s pumpkins. They first appeared in her paintings as a teenager and later in the 1990’s as sculptures. Now they are spreading around the globe. Their attraction to museums is obvious – immensely popular, non-controversial and having an authentic connection to the artist’s aesthetic. Her dotting emerged from childhood hallucinations while the “generous unpretentiousness” of the pumpkin is a kind of “self-portrait” for Kusama who cannot “[conform] to social standards”.

Meet the Gods and Goddesses in the Met’s ‘Divine Egypt’

William Van Meter | artnet news | 16th October 2025

A major New York show spotlights Egyptian deities that carry stories just as wonderful as Tut or Cleopatra. Amun-Re, king of the gods, governed creation, life and re-birth. Falcon-headed Horus was god of the sky. The sky goddess Nut swallowed the sun each night and gave birth to it each dawn. And then there was Osiris, the chief god of the underworld. His domain wasn’t really about death, but about transition to the afterlife, about: “overcoming death [and] living forever”.

Dismantled or Not, Confederate Monuments Still Have Power. This New Landmark Exhibition Grapples With It.

Cat Dawson | Cultured | 23rd October 2025

Public statues that celebrate Confederacy leaders and white supremacist values have recently been removed in some US cities. A selection has gone on display in Los Angeles. Once placed at eye level in an art space, their “malignancy dissolves” and their scale “feels goofy and graceless”. The curator admits “it’s a very strange show … [decontextualising] takes away some of that power to harm”. Another writer calls it “thrilling … Nothing like it has ever been done before.”

5 Things to Know about the Friendship of Manet and Morisot

Staff | Fine Art Museums San Francisco | 9th October 2025

So, were the 19th century artists Manet and Morisot romantically linked? Probably not, although he painted her many times, they collected each other’s works and there is some suggestive correspondence. More consequentially, Morisot was far more than Manet’s student or muse. She embraced Impressionism early; later, his style also loosened.  She followed his idea of figures on a balcony while his work of a woman before a mirror closely resembled hers. Perhaps, says a writer, the key dynamic was “mutual regard”.

Fra Angelico

Ben Street | Gagosian Quarterly | 20th August 2025

Art history has viewed Angelico as an inspired cleric but separate from the art world. Yet he helped pioneer the new ideas that came to define Renaissance painting. His figures did not float in space but were positioned architecturally. They were not portrayed with “stylized perfection” but shown as people with personality and emotions.  Angelico’s work thus had an ability to communicate the here and now. Says one writer “both profoundly sacred but also staggeringly beautiful”. Images are here.

One painting at a time: ‘The Third of May 1808’ by Francisco Goya

Simon Tolkein | Prospect | 14th October 2025

An homage to Goya’s great work, The Third of May 1808. The Peninsula War, where Spain ousted the French occupiers, was brutal. Most artists would have shown an idealised version of events. Not Goya, who painted war as an act of “unmitigated cruelty”. Killers and victims were shown in close proximity to amp up the emotional impact. Dramatic lighting increased it further. The victim’s spread-arm gesture excites “our pity and our terror.” It’s little surprise that many claim this is the first modern painting.

21st October 2025

Wayne Thiebaud’s slices of Americana

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 15th October 2025

Thiebaud was never taken by “preachy” abstraction. He knew from working as an illustrator that his real love was the still life. That genre has a strong tradition in Europe leading this writer to emphasise that Thiebaud was addressing the classic still life problems – “lighting, colour, structure”.  Cezanne, one of his heroes, had declared that art should “treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone”. Thiebaud, with his hot dogs, toffee apples and slices of cake, obliged.

Taking a dance through Cecil Beaton’s fashionable world

Amy de la Haye | Showstudio | 16th October 2025

Photographers can achieve fame because of their images or their glamour subjects. Beaton did both as well as becoming a celebrity himself. A “neo-romantic”, he conjured the glamour of English aristos and Hollywood stars, influencing fashion, photography and design – usually through the pages of Vogue. Beaton’s narrow view of fashion makes him somewhat anachronistic today with one writer admitting that “the artificiality of it all [is] wearying”. A piece about the giddy thrill of what goes with what is here.

The Turner prize is the cockroach of art

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 7th October 2025

For some, art is a vehicle for protesting about social ills or proclaiming on identity issues. Not this writer. The target of his ire, not for the first time, is Britain’s bewildering Turner Prize. Like some other writers he wearies of “political” art that it favours. One work, “a mess”, turns out to be the work of an autistic artist. “Who is right, the “critic judging the evidence …or the Turner judges showing compassion? Are we really here to choose the best artist or to be morally improved by … right-on social politics?”

A Night at Max’s Kansas City: Seeing and Being Seen in the 1970s NYC Art World

Pat Lipsky | Literary Hub | 9th October 2025

Montmartre was the art world’s epicentre in 1890, In the 1950’s it was Max’s Kansas City bar in New York. “You’d see handsome Bob Mapplethorpe with … Patti Smith. Their plans already incorporated the power shift we couldn’t quite feel taking place under our feet. [There was] acknowledgment: [Andy] had found this surprising and direct route to money. A moment when the wheels came off and the chassis sat there and you realized the art world was a small place bounded by compromise and disappointment.” 

Renoir’s drawings showcased in major exhibition, the first of its kind in over a century

Jane Levere | CNN Style | 17th October 2025

Berthe Morisot thought Renoir’s drawings were great, but Gauguin was less enthused. The difference might be because Renoir had a casual view of his drawings. Some were preparatory studies for a painting but others were spontaneous and more finished. They profile his evolution, from early drawings that show his “rigorous academic training “ to subsequent “brisk on-the-spot” sketches and finally softer, more intimate works.  A “distinguished collection” says one writer. A detailed view of ten drawings is here.

New York’s Biggest Monet Show in 25 Years Is a Revelation

Alex Greenberger | ARTnews | 10th October 2025

Brooklyn Museum has been castigated for its superficial exhibitions. A show of Monet’s paintings from a reluctant visit to Venice in 1908 gets a more positive reception. Monet, noticing the changing autumnal weather and shifted “closer to abstraction”. The real consequence of that was evident when, on returning to France, he resumed work on the Water Lilies series he had been unable to finish. Feeling renewed, his lilies became swirls of pink and red paint, ever “farther from legible figuration”. Critics were delighted.

British Museum starts fundraiser to save rare gold pendant of Henry VIII

Redazione | Finestre sull’Arte | 16th October 2025

Found in 2019, the “Tudor Heart” enamelled gold pendant commemorates Henry VIII’s first marriage. Its rarity owes much to its fine condition and the fact that many such objects were destroyed once the royal marriage foundered. Designed as a tournament prize, it was apparently intended to be worn by a woman and to project “magnificence”. The British Museum head – who wants to buy it – gushes “one of the most incredible pieces of English history to have ever been unearthed”.

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