The Easel

28th March 2023

Gagosian’s DALL-E–Enabled Art Exhibition Throws Us Headfirst into the Uncanny Valley

Shanti Escalante-De Mattei | ARTnews | 24th March 2023

This writer hurries to shout ‘crisis’, mentioning it in her second sentence. Do image generating algorithms like DALL-E comprise a crisis? Beeple (remember him?) and crypto art emerged in 2021 and the sky hasn’t fallen in. Images from DALL-E are more sophisticated, but have we crossed a “digital Rubicon”?  Irrespective of any crisis, the idea of “authenticity” needs re-thinking. We already live in “an era of unreal-ness. Since when is “realness” [in art] a metric?”

21st March 2023

Posed Riddles

Max Norman | The Drift | 28th February 2023

We can’t seem to leave Diane Arbus alone. Since her death in 1971, much has been written about her ambiguous photography. Susan Sontag complicated things by accusing Arbus of exploiting the subjects she drew from society’s margins. Arbus supporters have been fighting this charge ever since. “[We will never fully] disentangle seeing from staring. There is no way of looking that isn’t, in some way, ghoulish. But turning away from that ambivalence would be ghoulish, too.”

Myrlande Constant: Drapo

Ann C Collins | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st March 2023

Before art, Constant made wedding dresses. Those embroidery skills were redeployed when she began making drapo Vodous, Haitian flags that traditionally depict ethnic or religious symbols. Portraits and genre scenes glitter with sequins, tassels, ribbons and beads, making figures “sway and dance “. This is trailblazing art, says one critic, taking the drapo tradition and “blowing it open into a narrative art”. “Pictorial magnificence“ says another; it belongs “on the walls of major museums”.

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