The Easel

10th November 2026

Yoshitomo Nara’s Big-Headed Girls Are Taking Over New York

Erin Ikeuchi | Hypebeast | 8th November 2026

The volume of Nara merch is so big, one reviewer comments, that it can obscure his artistic achievements. He does not try to satirise Japanese consumer culture but offers cuteness as “an expression of authentic feeling”. Over the years, those feelings ranged widely – anger, loneliness, “punk insouciance”. Now, his girls are a little mellower and show a social conscience. New sculptures also seem softer, painted metal with contours like soft ice-cream. “Nara is an artist of a generation”.

At MoMA, Brancusi Is Lost in Space

Aruna D’Souza | Hyperallergic | 5th November 2026

With Centre Pompidou being renovated many of its Brancusi works are showing in New York. They are “glorious” when seen firsthand. Up close, says one critic, he comes across as “less a purist … than a craftsman enamored of the sweaty satisfactions of cutting stone and wood.” And bases mattered to him. Compared to his polished modernist sculptures they sometimes seem “gloriously mismatched”. Ever the visionary, Brancusi was demonstrating the potential in disjunction and dissimilar textures.

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