The Easel

4th March 2025

Leigh Bowery, as Remembered by His Closest Friends and Collaborators

Hannah Lack | AnOther | 24th February 2025

Bowery was the “emperor” of London nightclubs in the 1980’s. Designer, performance artist but mostly an unclassifiable creative, his main creation was himself. Boy George described him as “modern art on legs”. Through Lucien Freud he started to gain the art world legitimacy he craved but then came an early death from AIDS. Bowery remains an enduring influence in fashion and on the dance floor. The last word is his – “dress as though your life depends on it, or don’t bother”.

What Makes British Art ‘British’?

JJ Charlesworth | ArtReview | 20th February 2025

“Explaining” British art is complicated and as much a story about culture as about art. Over its long history it has been swayed by “invasion, migration and exchange”, as well as the “hatred of image making” during the Protestant Reformation. Local artists endured patrons with a long-standing preference for their continental European rivals. Once religious conflict subsided an authentically British art emerged around 1800 with the landscape painting of Constable and others.

25th February 2025

One of the hottest names in art has the talent of an old master

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 10th February 2025

A short review – hardly more than a memorandum – of Yiadom-Boyake’s latest show. All her paintings contain portraits of black people, “everyday city dwellers” at home, in a library or at a dance class. Some are glum, others happy so it’s difficult to find a narrative. Yiadom-Boyake seems to have an agenda, though, which is to “lift black portraiture. The privileged territory of the vulnerable inner life [familiar in white portraiture] is being claimed for the black face.”

Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark review – visions of a vanished world

Sean O’Hagan | The Guardian | 2nd February 2025

Hujar gave few interviews, seldom exhibited his work and published just one monograph. Little wonder he has been called a “lesser predecessor to Mapplethorpe”. No longer. Hujar’s portraits of his downtown demimonde are now acclaimed for their composition and “deep intimacy” between photographer and subject. AIDS may have claimed Hujar and many of his circle, but this show reveals a “towering 20th century artist”.  An interview with the curator/biographer is here.

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