The Easel

6th April 2021

Waldemar Januszczak on identity issues in the art world

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 5th April 2021

An English defence of identity politics in art. Women have spent decades pushing the art world for recognition. Now, people of colour are making similar demands. It’s “exhilarating” says this writer, because it is forcing art back to basics – “image-making, painting, storytelling”. That’s why figurative painting, especially that dealing with black lives, is currently so vibrant. Where does this leave art museums with collections that focus on white men? “In a bad place”.

30th March 2021

Alice Neel, Painter of the People

Billy Anania | Jacobin | 25th March 2021

Neel didn’t fit her times – a communist in capitalist New York, a feminist before the era of women’s rights, a figurative painter when abstraction was ascendant. Recognition was slow to arrive. Now her paintings, with their bold colours and frank depiction of people, have one critic calling her the “greatest American portraitist of the century”. Her portraits were not exercises in flattery but a “redefinition of how the human condition appears in art.”

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