The Easel

14th February 2023

Peter Doig at the Courtauld Gallery review: magnificence among the masters

Ben Luke | Evening Standard | 9th February 2023

Doig is often called a painter’s painter, a recognition of his painterly skills and distinctive, rich imagery. His canoes floating on forest lakes or, more recently, sunny island scenes are shifting combinations of the remembered and the magical. Not infrequently, they feel vaguely unsettling. “Doig is unmatched in contemporary painting in just this equilibrium of the specific and the inchoate … of unusual colour and of unexplained but intriguing incident across the canvas.”

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s portraits that question history

Kelly Grovier | bbc.com | 17th January 2023

During a brief, covid-interrupted run, this show’s reviews mostly focused on Yiadom-Boyake as a portraitist. Second time around, attention turns to just how enigmatic her portraits are. These are imagined characters, not easily linked to a particular moment or place. Despite the “mute language and furtive glances” there is rarely a narrative. Yiadom-Boakye has taken a genre usually focused on white males and given it vitality through a new focus – “the infinite possibility of blackness”.

7th February 2023

Giorgio Morandi review – sublime still lives shimmer with mystery and joy

Jonathan Jones | The Guardian | 7th January 2023

Cezanne’s many studies of apples greatly inspired Morandi. Yet it is the Italian, this writer claims, who made the still life genre a “20th century art form”. How did Morandi do that?  Many critics note the intensity of focus he brought to his modest collections of vases, bottles and dishes. It reflects his respect for life in Bologna, as well as a personal humility. His carefully arranged bottles, so precisely observed, thus come to have a poetic quality – this is art that “aches with humanity and love”.

Dame Vivienne Westwood – the godmother of punk

Staff | bbc.com | 30th December 2022

Westwood was one of the few fashion designers to become a cultural force. She was made so by her irreverent punk and new wave designs that changed “how clothing could be used to express social and political norms”. One obituary described her designs as “rooted in the English tradition of pastiche and irony and satire”. Westwood’s own view was somewhat related: “It’s not about fashion. For me, it’s about the story. It’s about ideas”. More images are here.

A history of Spain in 150 objects

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 21st January 2023

New York’s Hispanic Society has loaned out some of its spectacular collection to help pay for renovations. In London the tapestries and ceramics of Spain’s Islamic period impress, but then Velazquez and Goya appear and their paintings carry the show. Critics tip toe carefully around Spain’s brutal colonial record, suggesting that a full reckoning is some way off. Is there a unifying theme to this “four millennia worth of artifacts”? One critic suggests “a sense of Spanish pride”.

Soul is the goal for Killip and Smith

Colin Pantall | Blind | 3rd February 2023

Thatcher’s tough economic policies in the 1980’s still remain divisive in parts of Britain. Chris Killip and Graham Smith, leading photographers of that period, captured the impact of those policies on the impoverished communities of northern England, many of which were ill-equipped to cope. This is documentary photography at its most powerful. More images are here.

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