The Easel

11th June 2024

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, Tate Britain review – a triumph

Sarah Kent | the arts desk | 28th May 2024

Major museums are giving more exhibitions to contemporary female artists. Now, past female artists are also getting attention.  This London show demonstrates the huge revisions still needed to art history. Talented female artists were numerous, not an “exotic anomaly”. Most still await recognition – one critic notes that “for every celebrated [artist] … there are at least 10 unfamiliar names”. And these ambitious women had the agency to skilfully navigate a male-heavy art world and create great work.

Enzo Mari: Design for the people

Rakesh Ramchurn | Architects’ Journal | 29th April 2024

Mari was a giant of Italian design whose work spanned new products, graphics and art. Trained in design-intensive Milan in the 1950’s, his focus on simplifying form yielded elegant products somewhat at odds with post-war consumerism. He was also a design theorist who published widely and wasn’t afraid to express his opinion, once calling Ikea “genocide”. Among Mari’s best-known works are a calendar, a children’s puzzle and a fruit bowl made from a piece of steel I-beam.

Still life, still going

Francesca Peacock | Prospect | 5th June 2024

It was Dutch flower painting that established still life as a genre. Later, the French decided that it was the least prestigious genre – women’s art in other words. Despite its lowly status, the narrative capability of still life painting has proven to be substantial, because objects can speak eloquently to human themes like mortality, status and love. Like all great art, it has the capacity to “leave the viewer space to imagine themselves in the painting, in a different world.”

4th June 2024

Stroke of Genius: How 34-Year-Old Flora Yukhnovich’s 21st-Century Spin on Rococo Turned Her Into an Art-World Phenomenon

Hayley Maitland | Vogue | 2nd June 2024

When does a young artist become noteworthy? If they make brilliantly original work, undoubtedly. A contemporary alternative is to get huge prices at auction. Yukhnovich has done the latter and, perhaps, also the former. Her semi-abstract paintings riff on the rococo style of 18th century France, and a major London museum will hang two of these over the summer. Does that justify the triumphant headline above? Not really, but then Yukhnovich’s achievements are not nothing either. A video (2 min) is here

Sir Elton John and David Furnish talk us through their upcoming V&A exhibition ‘Fragile Beauty’

Laurie Barron | 10 magazine | 13th May 2024

Does a celebrity’s photography collection deserve a show in a public gallery? The problem is that there is a fine line between a show that celebrates great images and a show that is simply a homage to the collector. That risk is even greater when the collector is Elton John, a name that will pull in the crowds. The show is “rammed full of iconic images” says one critic. It works because its link to the singer gives it “a story, and an iconic story at that”. More images are here.

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