The Easel

14th October 2025

Rauschenberg’s New York and the problem of seeing only surfaces

A spate of exhibitions mark Rauschenberg’s 100th anniversary. The fact there are so many shows is testimony to his diversity – painting, photography, collage, assemblage. Not all this work was of high quality, but it was always inventive. His photography, for example, was skilful but really stood out when incorporated into his complex, layered work. In that aspect, Rauschenberg was prescient, his fragmented urban imagery anticipating today’s “civic crisis”.

7th October 2025

Lee Miller review, Tate Britain – Seeks to rescue the artist from her role of iconic beauty and muse

Miller was seen as a 1930-ish glamour girl until the posthumous discovery of her photography archive. It revealed that she was an accomplished photographer. When working with Man Ray in Paris, the “presiding spirit” of their work seems to have been his. After that, though, she emerges as a “high end, classic modernist”. Working as a war photographer, her cool eye produced some of that century’s most distressing images. For her, says one writer, “beauty and brutality had equal weight.”