The Easel

22nd September 2020

Sir Terence Conran: A life for design

Roberta Mutti | DesignDiffusion | 15th September 2020

Some are a bit sniffy about commercial design. Conran was firmly in the camp that praised it as democratic. He pioneered stylish products for the younger part of a middle class weary of post war austerity. A serial entrepreneur, his innovations included flat pack furniture, retailing concepts, restaurants and architecture. Said London’s Design Museum, which he helped found, “he changed the way we lived and shopped and ate”.

The greats outdoors: Michael Andrews’ valedictory Thames paintings

Michael Prodger | New Statesman | 16th September 2020

Andrews was somewhat famous – he had famous pals (Freud, Bacon and others) and the works he laboriously produced were of the highest quality, “only masterpieces”. Mid-career, he switched from group interiors to landscapes. His last two paintings of the Thames river are “grave and mysterious”. He was dying and, as one writer puts it, “the water becomes a thing of unknowable beauty, halfway between this world and another.”

15th September 2020

Trevor Paglen Is Putting the Art in Artificial Intelligence

Cody Delistraty | codydelistraty.com | 13th September 2020

Paglen’s images of trees and flowers are pretty though, on close inspection, somehow odd. His blossoms are AI generated, reflecting a computer’s ‘training’. No matter how good this training, understanding nuance remains a huge challenge for AI systems. “Artists have a massive tradition of thinking about what “seeing” is. I think artists have the capacity to ask questions … that would never occur to engineers.” Images are here.

The future of Britain’s stately homes

Eleanor Doughty | The Critic | 6th September 2020

Britain’s stately country homes have among the greatest holdings of decorative art objects anywhere. Without visitor revenues, the National Trust (the “superpower of stately homes”) has gloomy plans for shutdowns. Denials that curatorial staff will be cut –  “we will not dumb down” – have failed to convince. Indeed, one commentator frets that the Trust intends “to ‘dial down’ its role as a major national cultural institution”.

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