The Easel

18th August 2020

Marvelous Millet, in St. Louis

So, here’s the issue – Millet mattered 100 years ago but does he matter now? His strongest works depicted peasants sympathetically, reminding city folk of the nobility of rural life. His influence was broad – Degas, Pisarro and van Gogh. Then, the rupture of modernism. Suddenly Millet looked dated, “part of the furniture of civic life … an artist whose great work sits passively on the sidelines, inspiring nothing beyond nostalgia.”

The modern African art of Malangatana

Malangatana was raised in rural Mozambique where witchcraft was part of daily life. That influence shone in his work, “allegorical, a dense assembly of phantasmagoric depictions of animals, humans” One might hesitate about claims that he helped define an “Africanist aesthetic” but Malangatana was undoubtedly a pioneer for contemporary African art. A review of his Chicago show is here.