The Easel

10th November 2020

“Jordan Casteel: Within Reach” at The New Museum, New York

Mario Naves | Too Much Art | 1st November 2020

Young artists sometimes get “cradle snatched” by critics and the market. Casteel, 31, is a case in point. In the six years since her graduation, she can boast multiple solo shows, “enviable” sales and attention from critics. Is this too much acclaim for a young artist? Some think her work, mostly portraits, is conservative. The reviewer wonders whether Casteel is prescient or just trendy but doesn’t show his hand. “Let’s see where [she] takes us”.

3rd November 2020

Having His Cake and Eating It, Too

Jessica Zack | Alta | 12th October 2020

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”.

In defence of progressive deaccessioning

Glenn Adamson | Apollo | 26th October 2020

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.”

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