The Easel

8th July 2025

The elephant in the room: India’s cultural influence takes centre stage

William Dalrymple | The Observer | 25th May 2025

India’s story is illuminated through the devotional art of its great religions – Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. This art has amazing longevity – beginning about 2500 years ago – and boasts a sphere of influence right across Asia. Its sophisticated “cultural and linguistic apparatus” transformed cultures and yielded painting, sculpture, Zen meditation, haiku, Japanese ink wash landscapes as well as Ankor Wat and Borobudur. ” One of the most thought-provoking and aesthetically satisfying shows for years.”

1st July 2025

Anselm Kiefer takes on Van Gogh, with results both heroic and absurd

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 24th June 2025

It sounds a good idea – putting van Gogh alongside Kiefer, the German artist who is such an admirer. Parts of the show work –dour late van Gogh’s rhyme with Kiefer’s bleak landscapes. However, the Kiefer works, huge and sometimes bombastic, are shown up by the subtlety of the smaller van Goghs. And van Gogh did have sunny moments. Kiefer, in contrast, is solid “Teutonic angst”. But let’s make allowances. Van Gogh died in peaceful 1890; while Kiefer has painted with two wars weighing on him.

Yoshitomo Nara review: cutesy terrors swear, smoke, play guitar and burn down houses

Eddie Frankel | The Guardian | 9th June 2025

When this show was in Bilbao, it attracted the praise one might expect for a highly successful artist. Yet, there was a hesitation – perhaps Nara’s art is straightforward fun and lacks the “profound emotional depth” that some claim. Now it has opened in London, this writer has a view on thar. For years Nara has produced “cutesy kitsch with a vicious edge. I quite like it. [Yet} I’ve never encountered a show less in need of explanatory wall texts, or more resistant to artsy over-intellectualising.” Images are here.

Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, and Eva Hesse delve into art’s ‘uckiness’ at The Courtauld

Katie Tobin | Wallpaper | 22nd June 2025

A 1966 sculpture exhibition in New York featured work that was breaking away from minimalism for something more sensuous. It earned the title ‘eccentric abstraction’. That sensibility has endured and appears in a London show via works that focus on body parts and textures. Erotic it is not, with “bulging, drooping sculptures” and “various turdlike piles and unpleasant growths and cavities”. It’s more a confrontation with “bodiness” – the works are “very tempting to touch”. A video (4 min) is here.

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