The Easel

11th June 2019

Francis Bacon: Couplings review – a taboo-busting opus of sizzling flesh

Jonathon Jones | The Guardian | 7th June 2019

Superb, museum-quality shows like this are rarely seen in private galleries. On top of this, the reviewer thinks Bacon’s already lofty reputation warrants further elevation. Works portraying sexual battle showcase his style of being both “precise and ungraspable”. “This exhibition makes a great case for Bacon as [Picasso’s] true heir: the only artist who could add to Picasso’s metamorphic lexicon of the human figure.”

Natalia Goncharova, Tate Modern review – a prodigious talent

Sarah Kent | the arts desk | 5th June 2019

Can an artist be too diverse? Goncharova’s vast output was surely, in part, a reflection of her life. Raised in not-quite-modern Russia she made folkloric-styled modernist paintings and books. Her later life in avant garde Paris brought acclaim for her costumes and sets for Ballets Russes. “Everything she did was fully realised and extremely powerful, yet … she remains enigmatic.”

Faith Ringgold @ the Serpentine Gallery

Simon | astrofella | 6th June 2019

Ringgold’s work is political, intense. It thus surprises how often it is called colourful – even “pretty”. She started with painting and posters but moved to “populist” quilts, a form women have long used for story telling. The art world can be sniffy about textiles but they suited Ringgold, their textures and colours expressing her “exuberance and optimism” in the face of angry subject matter.

4th June 2019

Lee Krasner: Will Gompertz reviews the 20th Century’s unsung artist

Will Gompertz | bbc.com | 1st June 2019

Krasner’s marriage to Jackson Pollock slowed her art because, it is suggested, she carried “two loads of self-doubt, his and hers”. But there were also benefits, coming from their critical engagement with each other’s work. At her first retrospective a critic noted some of Krasner’s work was “touched with real grandeur”. Decades later, that judgement seems affirmed.  Images are here.

Frank Bowling, an overlooked star of British art’s golden generation

Michael Prodger | New Statesman America | 22nd May 2019

Bowling’s first retrospective has critics puzzled as to why he has been so long ignored. Is it race (he is from Guyana), his unfashionable abstractionism, or perhaps his avoidance of a signature style? Recognition from the London art establishment has been scant – New York has been more welcoming. Not that Bowling has been put off at all – “I still get a lot of juice out of abstraction.”

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