The Easel

14th October 2025

Peter Doig Turns Serpentine Into A Living Soundscape With ‘House Of Music’

Nargess Banks | Forbes | 10th October 2025

Can you have an exhibition where music gets nearly equal billing to the art? Doig paints to music and in this museum show, he wants it to feature prominently. Some of his paintings are hung in warmly-lit rooms where huge vintage speakers play Doig favourites. These paintings have a mysticism that make them, says one writer, “assuredly musical … ambiguous”. Says another, the music “will change, in the best way possible, how and what you see,”

Nigerian Modernism in London: ‘A bold new language for art’

Alastair Smart | Christie’s | 2nd October 2025

At last, a survey of modernist African art! This particular London show focuses on Nigeria, and it tells a complicated story. Independence created a sense of cultural “emancipation” but, in a country with 250 ethnic groups, the art that has emerged is hugely diverse. One critic thinks some of it is “folksy”, but perhaps that’s part of the story. It is a parochial story and should not, says the curator, be viewed through a “pan-African lens. It ought to be understood on its own terms”.

Inside the V&A’s Marie Antionette Style with curator Dr Sarah Grant

Staff | The Cultivist | 20th September 2025

A show about Marie Antionette’s legacy is probably more culture than art. Joining the French court aged 14, dress was one way for her to project “feminine power”. The few pieces of original fabric that survive, together with reconstructed dresses, signal that this was a life of performance. Muses one writer, what carries most impact is less the eye-popping jewellery than an appreciation of Antoinette’s very human dilemma. She was being set up, and we, “caught up in looking … [are unwittingly] a part of a mob.”

How Hans Ulrich Obrist Became the World’s Most Influential Curator

Emily Steer | AnOther | 3rd October 2025

Obrist has a “terrifying” work ethic, networking, curating shows, appearing at art events, interviewing artists and/or posting to Instagram. Few curators can match his art world influence. His new memoir is busy with forthright views: nothing can replace one-to-one, in-person encounters; he wants to combine disciplines – certainly art and architecture, but also art and science; artists should be given jobs in government; art requires looking and looking and looking; he doesn’t cook.

7th October 2025

Gilbert & George review, 21st Century Pictures: Hayward Gallery exhibition is quite hectically of the moment

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 6th October 2025

As art students Gilbert and George sang pre-war songs, their faces painted bronze. Since then their endlessly provocative work has addressed sex, money, race, the tabloids and (particularly) religion. They have become, says a writer, the “scabrous chroniclers of London in the tradition of Hogarth”. Some think their act has become formulaic but it is still “quite hectically of the moment.” A curator discusses some of their works here.

Theatre Picasso review, Tate Modern – Familiar works transformed by a bold, atmospheric setting

Mark Hudson | The Independent | 15th September 2025

Are there new ways to exhibit Picasso? A London show tries, showing him in a theatrical setting, as if to focus on his love of play acting. One critic likes this approach, saying the show is “riveting, [giving the art] a jumpy energy.”. Other critics, though, are lukewarm.  “The exhibition mixes together a lot of chaotic ideas” is a common theme.  The above writer complains about the convoluted wall labels, admitting that it “isn’t quite the epic blockbuster we’d hoped”.

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