The Easel

10th June 2025

Cartier: Jeweler of Kings, King of Jewelers

Jeannine Falino | The Magazine Antiques | 9th June 2025

In the pecking order of the decorative arts, the look-at-me jewellery of Cartier is hard to beat. A London show of its pieces, drawn from aristocratic collections and Cartier’s archives, is “astonishing”. It profiles many aesthetic trends and tells cultural stories such as the Indian maharajahs bringing their ancestral jewellery to Cartier for re-setting. Yet it’s hard to resist the view that although exquisite, this is bling, made irresistible by the marriage of celebrity and great wealth.  Images are here.

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.”.

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