The Easel

1st June 2021

More than four decades into her trailblazing career, Lorraine O’Grady finally has the world’s attention

Jillian Steinhauer | Vulture | 2nd March 2021

O’Grady must be quite a talent – trained in economics, then a writer, photographer and a conceptual artist. At 86, after a career as a “gate crasher”, an outsider, she is getting a first retrospective. It shows a career expressing an “unshakable sense of self”. Her fascination with performance and with binaries – male/female, black/white, insider/outsider – have allowed her to “find out who I was and to make it clear to everyone else what that meant.” 

Breaking Ground for a Landscape in Light

Elizabeth McGoey | Art Institute Chicago | 25th June 2021

In 1917, a grieving widow commissioned the “pre-eminent” Tiffany to create a memorial stained glass window. A century later the window barely rated a glance in its church setting, despite being an exceptional example of a “stained glass landscape”. It has been gleefully acquired by a Chicago museum and installed atop a grand staircase. A curator describes the piece as “Dazzling. Luminous. Monumental. Unparalleled. Transformative”. Perhaps gleeful is an understatement.

Two Paths for Erotic Sculpture

Sophie Madeline Dess | The New Republic | 18th June 2021

Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke entered the art world in the 1960’s when minimalism was under challenge. In different ways they sought to break away from its “rigid, inorganic geometric forms”. Both used unconventional materials – latex, fiberglass, plastics – to achieve a more organic and textured aesthetic. Critics point to the eroticism of their work but is it any more noteworthy than the “phallo-centricism” of their male contemporaries? More images are here.

25th May 2021

Nan Goldin Gets Your P.A.I.N.

Christian Viveros - Faune | The Village Voice | 21st April 2021

“Flashbulb memory” characterises Goldin’s diaristic photography – a way of remembering what happened the night before. A “vast” show of new work draws not just on the drug-addled 1980’s but also on more recent photography. Her work blurs into her anti-opioid activism but this does not stop them adding significantly to “the requiem-like power” of her oeuvre. Showing the “wonder and untold dangers” of addiction is a “reason the camera was invented”.

How Yoshitomo Nara’s Manga-Inspired Paintings Tap Into Universal Feelings of Anxiety

Angelica Villa | ARTnews | 27th April 2021

Resist comparing Nara to Japanese “Neo-Pop” artists like Murakami. Yes, both have a cult following and both sell cute, manga-influenced works for millions. However, Murakami’s “superflat” paintings are about consumerism while Nara is focused on expressing emotion. Nara’s figures tap into a universal sense of angst, a mood that, over time, seems to be darkening. Says one critic “one of the most egalitarian visual artists since Keith Haring”.

Stephen Shore: “Photography Isn’t Very Good at Explaining”

Brigitte Ollier & Jonas Cuénin | Blind | 11th May 2021

Shore came to prominence with images of “what American culture looked like”. That led to a project photographing steelwork towns in the Rust Belt. The resultant series gave a face to large scale industrial decline and the “deaths of despair” that it brought. Shore’s acclaimed deadpan aesthetic captures a sense of sadness among the affected workers who “seem to question the photographer, as if in the hope of a miracle solution”. More images are here.

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