The Easel

26th October 2021

Hans Holbein’s Portraits Defined—and Immortalized—Tudor England’s Elite

Nora McGreevy | Smithsonian Magazine | 21st October 2021

Holbein the Younger lived through the charged politics of the Protestant Reformation. As the leading painter in Henry VIII’s Tudor court, a balanced deference was required to both Church and State. His most famous works, portraits of the court’s members, are masterful character studies, full of symbolism and psychological insight. They were also a balancing act – flattery versus truth, professional identity versus the person. Says one writer, Holbein was a “political artist to the tip of his brush”.

Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel at the Barnes Foundation

Ed Voves | Art Eyewitness | 10th October 2021

In the late 19th century, artist’s models were not taken too seriously. Valadon overcame this prejudice – and her working-class background – to become a notable realist painter. Her modern appeal comes from her psychologically insightful portrayal of people – often women – as capable individuals, rather than passive figures. She revealed the domestic realm, says one critic, “beyond the expectations of bourgeois propriety … [an explorer] of interior space”.

Sword fights on canvas: Georges Mathieu at Perrotin and Nahmad Contemporary

David Ebony | Art in America | 22nd October 2021

Postwar European abstraction leaned toward the geometric which didn’t enthuse Mathieu. Visiting New York, he met Pollock and others who, like himself, were exploring gestural abstraction. Thus encouraged, Mathieu built his career on flamboyant gestural paintings, executed at top speed. A revealed liking for painting for an audience did not enhance his reputation. Neither does it diminish his role in pioneering a European expression of “testosterone-driven, postwar angst”.

19th October 2021

A new look at Walker Evans

Brian Sholis | Aperture | 13th October 2021

Evans’ crystal clear, elegant images helped establish documentary photography. Who was the person behind these “deadpan, yet astonishing” pictures? He portrayed his subjects with dignity, but seems not to have harboured any activism – one critic notes he had little of “either politics or empathy”. His interest was just the aesthetics of buildings and people. Yet that subject matter was enough for him to help “define the contours of a uniquely American culture”.

Surrealism Beyond Europe: 5 Essential Artists Getting Recognition at New Met Show

Alex Greenberger | ARTnews | 15th October 2021

Surrealism started with a bunch of Paris bros. In time, they conceded that others (women) were involved. Now, a New York show demonstrates just how much happened outside Europe. Surrealism was never a single idea. It may be better thought of as an inclination to find the uncanny amidst the day-to-day. Or, as one critic puts it, surrealism is ideas “blowing across the globe like trade winds of the subconscious”.

What quilts mean now

Kayleigh Perkov | Art in America | 15th October 2021

Despite too much jargon, this piece covers an interesting issue. American quilts were first presented as works of art in a 1971 exhibition. What kind of art are they – objects of beauty, autobiography, symbols of exploitation? Although better scholarship has dispelled the more nostalgic interpretations, quilts remain hard to read. Given their complex history, they are “multivalent things; they speak different words to different ears”.

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