The Easel

23rd July 2024

Toshiko Takaezu

Jennifer Krasinski | 4Columns | 31st May 2024

Takaezu is revered among ceramicists but almost unknown outside that circle. Inspired by a student job at a ceramics factory she went on to develop her acclaimed “closed form” works, vase-like forms with tiny necks. These were followed by more eccentric sculptural objects. Takaezu had no interest in “ideal form”, experimenting endlessly with ceramic imperfection and making her work almost a combination of sculpture and painting. “A stunning retrospective”.  Images are here.

Immaterial: Blankets and Quilts

Camille Dungay | Perspectives | 17th July 2024

The quilts made in Gee’s Bend in southern USA challenge conventional thinking about art. Quilters were not trying to make art works, just functional objects using worn out scraps of fabric, As they saw it, they made “pretty” (patterned) quilts or “ugly” (asymmetric) quilts. Further, unlike most artworks, these quilts were often made by a group of quilters, not a single artist. Eventually, though, they were hung in art museums, bringing the realisation that quilts, like art, can carry stories. “A quilt has many, many lives”.

The mysterious New York nanny who helped shape 20th-century street photography

Helen Stoilas | CNN | 24th June 2024

Meier’s story – the nanny with a secret passion for photography – is now well known. Does a first retrospective in the US reveal anything new about her images? Her skill at composition, her instinct for a telling detail, are evident throughout her work. Does that make her a ‘great’ street photographer like, say, Arbus? Some think so, but one writer notes that her “lifetime of anonymity persists in the work … she didn’t contribute anything uniquely her own. [Her best work] are her self-portraits”.

Old Master Encore

James Gardner | The Magazine Antiques | 7th June 2024

Lethière dodged the worst of the French Revolution, reached the pinnacle of the French art establishment, but is now mostly forgotten. A neoclassical painter, he created huge paintings that addressed conventional classical themes of love and death. One critic thinks he shows “occasional stodginess”. So why attempt a resurrection? Is it because, as someone born into slavery, Lethière suits our identity-obsessed times? Muses the writer, perhaps his real achievement was just proximity to the ruling elite.

16th July 2024

Bill Viola, artist and navigator, left a world drenched in beauty

Phillip Kennicott | The Washington Post | 13th July 2024

Viola saw earlier than most the artistic potential of video. Starting as an audiovisual assistant, he pioneered the development of video art, doing more than anyone to bring it into the cultural mainstream. He was especially interested in Old Masters works and their themes of life, death, love and spiritualism. Among his favoured techniques was slowing footage down to emphasise the passing of time. “Time and the unfolding of awareness is the real subject of a lot of old master paintings”, he said,

‘Eva Hesse: Five Sculptures’: Humanity and Otherworldliness in the Artist’s Late Work

Daniel Felsenthal | The Village Voice | 17th June 2024

If minimalism was all about the impersonal, pristine object, post-minimalism was an attempt to re-introduce emotional expressiveness. Using materials like latex and fibreglass, Hesse was a star of the movement. In one work, rubberised canvas was used to create “ghostly wrinkled bedsheets”. Other works “bear the curves, asymmetries, and blemishes of flesh, even if they aren’t figurative”. Sadly, her materials have become brittle and are now falling apart. As Hesse said, “life does not last, art does not last.”

Arts and Sciences

Roberta J Olsen | The Magazine Antiques | 8th July 2024

Famous in ornithology, Audubon should also be regarded as America’s first great watercolourist. Self-taught, he reputedly was immune from the influence of other artists. A comparison of his work against Rembrandt and (particularly) the French artist Oudry, suggests otherwise. Yet he went further, showing the drama of movement amidst “the fierce beauty of the natural world.” Says the author, Audubon was “a nineteenth-century American Leonardo da Vinci, who married art and science.”

How Images Make the Objects We Desire Seem Irresistible

Jesse Dorris | Aperture | 18th June 2024

Product photography first appeared in catalogues in the mid-1800’s. Those early images, compositionally influenced by the still life genre, exploited the “truth claim” of photographs. In 1920’s Paris, product photos expanded the “visual language” of modernism. And, by the 1940’s, the distinction between product photography and fine art photography had blurred completely. After more than a century of change, though, the challenge is still “what makes you pay attention?” Images are here.

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