Thiebaud is turning 100 and getting various celebratory shows. He still thinks his work is joyous, which it is. But it’s more. Very much the realist painter, he is attracted by colour and shape. Cakes, for example, offer a “nobility of abstract form: prisms and wedges, disks and cylinders”. Aspiring to emulate “heroes” like Morandi, his is a demanding style – “it’s actually almost ludicrous that anybody would do it”.
Amidst what seems an endless debate on deaccessioning, a pragmatic voice. Deaccessioning will happen if only because some museums need it to survive. More institutions, though, want to finance acquisitions that correct woefully lopsided collections. Critics point out that a few such acquisitions won’t correct past mistakes. True, but “no one believes undoing this legacy will be either quick or easy. The only way to begin is to begin.”
Will the pandemic prove an enduring focus for new art? What surprises in Sillman’s new show is not the “characteristically turbulent abstractions” that have brought her acclaim. Rather, it’s the uncharacteristic works – still lifes of flowers – that she made during the lockdown. “Things don’t have to be topical to be timely … Sillman’s blossoms speak not only to springtime renewal but, especially given our context, to mortality and death.”
The art world is slowly waking up to indigenous art. As that happens, authentication becomes a priority. In the case of American indigenous art, forgery seems widespread. However, it’s difficult to be sure. A “careless chain of custody” doesn’t prove a work is a fake, and sometimes artists copied their own works. It’s an unwanted problem for communities who “remain marginalized by inaccurate representations, persistent cultural appropriation”.