The Easel

5th July 2022

In the Black Fantastic review: A beguiling survey of Afrofuturism

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 30th June 2022

Black Fantastic, says the curator, is not a movement but a way of seeing. He is referring to black artists who use “speculative fictions” to address racial inequality and the legacy of slavery. Noting the plentiful surrealism at the current Venice Biennale, the writer suggests “the fantastic” is “an emerging generational sensibility”. The show’s exuberance can be a bit much, at which point one can’t help but focus on “the hard and tangible realities beneath”.

28th June 2022

The women’s lips are pursed; the men’s are kissable: Glyn Philpot at Pallant House

Laura Gascoigne | The Spectator | 25th June 2022

The writer reads Philpot’s repressed sexuality like a book. Philpot had replaced Sargent as London’s favoured society portraitist, but lacked Sargent’s swagger. There is “a chill about his paintings of women”. Where he really excelled was painting the men in his artistic milieu. By 1930 the world had moved on and his “silken party people” were no longer so silken. A late shift toward modernism was cautious, leaving the question “would [he] have dropped his guard if he’d been able to come out as gay?”

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