The Easel

23rd July 2024

Toshiko Takaezu

Jennifer Krasinski | 4Columns | 31st May 2024

Takaezu is revered among ceramicists but almost unknown outside that circle. Inspired by a student job at a ceramics factory she went on to develop her acclaimed “closed form” works, vase-like forms with tiny necks. These were followed by more eccentric sculptural objects. Takaezu had no interest in “ideal form”, experimenting endlessly with ceramic imperfection and making her work almost a combination of sculpture and painting. “A stunning retrospective”.  Images are here.

The mysterious New York nanny who helped shape 20th-century street photography

Helen Stoilas | CNN | 24th June 2024

Meier’s story – the nanny with a secret passion for photography – is now well known. Does a first retrospective in the US reveal anything new about her images? Her skill at composition, her instinct for a telling detail, are evident throughout her work. Does that make her a ‘great’ street photographer like, say, Arbus? Some think so, but one writer notes that her “lifetime of anonymity persists in the work … she didn’t contribute anything uniquely her own. [Her best work] are her self-portraits”.

16th July 2024

‘Eva Hesse: Five Sculptures’: Humanity and Otherworldliness in the Artist’s Late Work

Daniel Felsenthal | The Village Voice | 17th June 2024

If minimalism was all about the impersonal, pristine object, post-minimalism was an attempt to re-introduce emotional expressiveness. Using materials like latex and fibreglass, Hesse was a star of the movement. In one work, rubberised canvas was used to create “ghostly wrinkled bedsheets”. Other works “bear the curves, asymmetries, and blemishes of flesh, even if they aren’t figurative”. Sadly, her materials have become brittle and are now falling apart. As Hesse said, “life does not last, art does not last.”

How Images Make the Objects We Desire Seem Irresistible

Jesse Dorris | Aperture | 18th June 2024

Product photography first appeared in catalogues in the mid-1800’s. Those early images, compositionally influenced by the still life genre, exploited the “truth claim” of photographs. In 1920’s Paris, product photos expanded the “visual language” of modernism. And, by the 1940’s, the distinction between product photography and fine art photography had blurred completely. After more than a century of change, though, the challenge is still “what makes you pay attention?” Images are here.

Older links