The Easel

3rd September 2019

Richard Serra Is Carrying the Weight of the World

Deborah Soloman | The New York Times | 29th August 2019

A critic has suggested that Serra’s minimalist sculptures work primarily via anxiety – the worry of being crushed. If it’s not his “lighter” plate steel works causing the anxiety, it’s his immense forged steel blocks. Serra himself doesn’t seem to connect with this reaction – “deal with the work in and of itself and its inherent properties”, he suggests. True to his word, he notes “this is my heaviest show ever”.

Making the case for late Manet

Rachel Cohen | Apollo | 29th August 2019

Art history says there are several Manet’s. The painter of the prostitute Olympia had razor sharp social awareness, whereas the older Manet was “weak and flashy”. Recent scholarship, reflected in an “unusual” Chicago show, disputes this story. Manet was expressing in his late works the same social awareness he showed, decades earlier, with Olympia – an admiration of women with “self-possession”, modern women with agency.

Roy DeCarava in New York: A Jazz Photographer in Subject and Technique

Michael Irwin | Ocula | 30th August 2019

The African American Gordon Parks was famous for his documentary photography. Roy DeCarava was different, adopting an artistic approach. His spontaneous images of 1950’s Harlem are distinguished by a “painterly aesthetic” and a sympathetic eye for his subjects, “[casting] loose the norms of preparation, clarity, and stark black-and-white contrasts”. Images are here.

27th August 2019

The Artist at Home with Her Art: Ruth Asawa

David Ebony | YaleBooks | 20th June 2019

The craft / fine art distinction is an idea that just won’t die. Asawa studied under Josef Albers, absorbing his Bauhaus view that the artist is an “exalted craftsman”. Her beguiling knitted wire sculptures exemplify that view – a humble material transformed by manual effort. Recent exhibitions evidence growing critical engagement and endorsement. A background video is here.

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