The Easel

18th October 2022

Why Art Was Such a Powerful Tool for England’s Tudor Monarchs

Meilan Solly | Smithsonian Magazine | 11th October 2022

With a tenuous claim to the English crown, the volatile Tudors needed to boost themselves. Art was one way to do it and they spent grandly on paintings, tapestries, precious objects, anything that emphasised power and entitlement to rule. Holbein’s portraits of Henry VIII are classic images of kingly virility. Elizabeth I tried to convey power by emphasising ageless beauty. “Elizabethan art isn’t naive. It’s not provincial. It’s the result of conscious choices.”

Diane Arbus was accused of exploiting ‘freaks’. We misunderstood her art

Sebastian Smee | The Washington Post | 26th September 2022

Arbus was not a big name until a 1972 posthumous retrospective unleashed a fierce debate about her work. A re-creation of that show, on its 50th anniversary, again stirs the pot. Arbus said she celebrated “differentness”, but some accused her of voyeurism or of exploiting her subjects. That criticism now seems silly. “What artist isn’t interested in the gaps between … our private selves and the selves we present in public. Arbus was simply one of the first to recognize the camera’s unique way of revealing them”.

11th October 2022

Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered

Jessica Skwire Routhier | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 20th September 2022

An odd tale. When New York’s MoMA came across Hirshfield in 1940, his eccentric, powerful images of animals, people and landscapes persuaded them to hold a solo exhibition. Despite support from the art elite, the city’s critics were appalled and Hirshfield disappeared from art world conversations. The problem, it seems, was that he was a self-taught outsider, leading the critics to accuse MoMA of a “cult of amateurism”. The artist now has a major show, having been “more or less out of sight” since 1950.

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