The Easel

3rd June 2025

The second birth of JMW Turner

Michael Prodger | The New Statesman | 29th April 2025

Turner’s contemporaries understood him to be a prodigy. His lovely “topographical draughtsmanship” changed on seeing the landscapes of Claude Lorrain. Not only did they convince him that landscape was an “elevated subject”, but he was seized by Lorrain’s atmospheric “ether”.  Turner became a painter of “mass, tone and light”, or as he commented “indistinctness is my forte”. His late works baffled many but, over a century before abstract expressionism, he had “redefined what landscape painting could do”.

V&A East Storehouse is a thrilling meta-museum for the future

Will Jennings | recessed.space | 30th May 2025

Most objects in museum collections rarely get exhibited. London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, for example, has 3500 pairs of shoes, most of which are in “deep storage”.  That museum has now opened a “storehouse” where the public can inspect the collection, either browsing out of curiosity or requesting items for close inspection. In the absence of curatorial logic, the ruling idea is the “primacy of the object. It is more factory than gallery, and all the better for it … a revolutionary prospect [for museography]”.

Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots

David Trigg | Studio International | 19th May 2025

Arte povera came to prominence in 1960’s Italy as a celebration of natural materials. Penone, a star of the movement, is famous for his many works – especially sculptures – featuring trees. All well and good but a London “mini-retrospective” has critics struggling to show much enthusiasm. The linked piece tries hard before admitting that the show feels “unduly modest” and many of the works are “underwhelming”. The show, says one writer, is “a beautiful idea but with underpowered results.”.

27th May 2025

The British Museum’s Hiroshige exhibition will restore your faith in art

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 28th April 2025

The Japanese artist Hokusai had a major influence on 19th century European art but so too did Hiroshige. His landscapes depicted real vistas and were filled with a riot of colours – “seas like sapphire, skies on fire, acid reds and oranges”. Their expressiveness, done in the fiendishly difficult medium of woodblock printing, won van Gogh as a fan. Hiroshige can fairly be considered a “great precursor to the Impressionists”.

National Gallery Rehang: First Pleasure, Then Politics

Bendor Grosvenor | Art Review | 9th May 2025

Who cares about the re-hang of London’s National Gallery? Many people were, worried about that its Eurocentric, masterpiece-laden collection might be hijacked to tell some new curatorial story. They needn’t have worried. Works largely follow a chronological sequence and downplay today’s cultural battles. Works mostly tell the stories of their times and their presentation strikes a balance between “education and entertainment”, even though the male gaze remains strong.

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