The Easel

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.

18th February 2025

Linder’s trailblazing work at the Hayward Gallery

Pendle Harte | Absolutely | 5th February 2025

Dada, the art movement that responded to WW1 horrors with absurdism, found a peerless exponent in Linder. Emerging in punk era Liverpool, her photomontages deliver a lethal view on consumer culture and identity. Yes, feminist issues have moved on since the battles of the 1970’s. Yet her images are so potent, using such an economy of elements that they still resonate. Says she “I find that my old montages feel like prophecy. My idea of voluptuous, overblown lips suddenly [has] been normalised”

Noah Davis at the Barbican: long overdue, emotional and timely

Amah-Rose Abrams | Wallpaper | 7th February 2025

This “beautiful” retrospective speaks to unfulfilled potential. Davis died young, just as he found his painterly voice. Drawing on family photos and scenes from TV, he painted “impeccably composed” scenes of Black life. What sets them apart is their uncanny, “dream-like” quality. A man rides a unicorn. Figures, with blurry faces, are set in dreamy scenes. Yet his early death is omnipresent. Says one critic “Davis is forever a young artist on his way … when everything seemed possible.”

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