The Easel

14th September 2021

9/11: Trials And Triumphs Of The ‘Tribute In Light’

Each year on the anniversary of 9/11, two towers of light are switched on in New York city. These “ghostly columns” shine from dusk to dawn and are a notable piece of public art. Leaving aside the squabbles about who first came up with the idea for the memorial, what stands out is the idea that, in a crisis, people wanted “a powerful artwork”. One writer, looking at the square rigs of spotlights, says ”I could not avoid the sensation that it was a church”.

A Conversation About Joan Mitchell

The abstract expressionism style clearly rubbed off on Mitchell. However, those artists didn’t believe in paintings having a subject. Mitchell did. Her enduring loves were poetry and nature and a big retrospective shows just how much they figure in her work. Not literal still lifes or landscapes, but the moods they convey. “There is no word for the territory she created … she straddles and defies both abstraction and landscape … a beautiful/ugly duet”.

With Pleasure

This exhibition of Pattern and Decoration works was praised when shown in Los Angeles. Less so in New York. The 1970’s movement opposed the austerity of Minimalism and the claimed superiority of fine art. Some works have merit, concedes the writer, but many pieces would suit “hotel gift shops”. And even Japan, with its long craft tradition, still distinguishes between that and fine art. Still, whatever you make of these arguments, “decoration is worthy of admiration”.

Pipilotti Rist’s MOCA Geffen takeover is a sensuous pleasure trip you don’t want to miss

To host a Rist retrospective, you need lots of room. In LA she has been given it, filling a “cavernous” space with videos, large scale installations, sculptures and other highlights of a 30-year career. It’s an “engulfing” experience that showcases Rist’s interest in using vivid colour and light to affect our emotions and to create shared experiences. Overall, the show “is an overdose … a welcome overdose.”

7th September 2021

‘I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer. I go anywhere’

After WW1, cameras become smaller and cheaper. Women, emboldened by education, new job opportunities and (imminently) the vote, took to photography in significant numbers. Across multiple countries, they were technically and aesthetic innovative, bringing a more nuanced approach to “social documentary” and “gender representation”. This groundbreaking exhibition has, according to one critic “the weightiness of a new definitive history” of photography.

In the Late Hung Liu’s Historical Portraits, Layers of Joy and Struggle Are Exposed

Liu grew up in the shadow of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Although later emigrating to the US, her art drew on old photos from that era, as well as Dorothea Lange’s ‘dustbowl’ portraits. What inspiration was she tapping into? ‘To show the truth, and the truth is that many people struggle … still today.” Liu died last month, just before becoming the first Asian American woman to have a retrospective at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery.