The Easel

28th July 2020

What Is Lost With the Closing of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

The announced merger of the “deeply influential” Gavin Brown’s Enterprise into the “semi-mega” Gladstone Gallery has led to some amount of wailing. Mourning the loss of an innovative gallery? Apprehension that widespread gallery mergers could rob the art world of its air of romance? Says Gavin Brown, “there needs to be something more … to imagine [galleries] can all start again with business as usual is a collective delusion.”

21st July 2020

Revisiting a Revolution of Mexican Art in America

A personal take on an important, previously reviewed, show. Mexican artists who came to the US in the late 1920’s were innovators, cognizant of modernism but charting a different course. Little wonder they inspired Jackson Pollock, among others. Many enjoyed early success but, due to their communist politics, ended up with lives “of unexpected obscurity”. The social justice ideals that animated their art are now glossed over, seeming “quaint or merely pretty”.

The Art World’s Erasure of a Revolutionary Japanese-American Artist

In its excitement about abstract expressionism and Pop, the US art world for a while neglected other goings on. One of those neglected was Amino, a sculptor working in resin and wood. In a career full of experimentation, his most distinctive works were coloured shapes held within a transparent block. Completely unnoticed, Amino had entered “wholly new sculptural territory.”