The Easel

9th December 2025

Frank Gehry, masterful architect who transformed L.A.’s urban landscape, dies at 96

Christopher Hawthorne | Yahoo news | 6th December 2025

Twentieth century architecture thought “less is more” but not Gehry. A childhood spent tinkering with appliances gave him an affection for “mechanisms that spill their guts for all the world to see”. Starting with his own house, Gehry pioneered a “more expressionistic architectural language”, inspiring his profession to move beyond the pristine modernist box. Sometimes criticised for “architectural sculpture”, his best work combines “balance and elegance” with “boisterous energy”. Images are here.

2nd December 2025

Robert Therrien’s smashing retrospective is among the year’s best museum solo shows

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 25th November 2025

In the Broad Museum in LA, a 26 foot long table with matching 10 foot chairs is a hugely popular work. The key to this most acclaimed of Therrien’s works is not its size but what it evokes. Made exactly to scale, it reminds the viewer of “narratives and memories from childhood”. Similarly, a gigantic pile of plates forms a teetering sculpture that triggers our anxieties about plates breaking. Says a curator Therrien’s uncanny skill was to tap into the tension between “what an object is and what it means”.

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