The Easel

14th December 2021

Van Gogh Experiences: Immersive Art in the COVID Era

Rachel Teukolsky | LA Review of Books | 11th December 2021

“Immersive Van Gogh” is a multimedia extravaganza of “projected visuals, animation, music [and] sound.” Such productions “are not art”, protests one museum director, “they are entertainment”, reflecting a view that beauty should not be judged on the basis of “primitive physical pleasure”. This logic has contributed to the elitism and “inhospitable gatekeeping” many associate with museums. The writer’s verdict – “It was … ideologically suspect in numerous ways, and — I won’t lie — I loved it.”

Francesca Woodman: The eerie images of a teenage genius

Andrew Dickson | bbc.com | 13th December 2021

Genius can announce itself early. In Woodman’s case, even as a teenager she was creating images of “sophistication and deliberation”. Critical discussion of her work has tended to obsess over her early death. Work newly released from her estate shows “just the right balance between control and improvisational freedom. Whatever Woodman’s photographs evoke … it’s not remotely straightforward”. A backgrounder by a former classmate is here.

The Hot Market for Toppled Confederate Statues

Kriston Capps | Bloomberg Citylab | 10th December 2021

Last year, US cities removed over 90 Confederate statues. It turns out that they are in considerable demand. Some become accoutrement – golf course decorations – or are melted down. Others, more interestingly, are wanted by curators precisely because of their odious symbolism – the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy. They are being sought for use in juxtaposition to black contemporary art. Even after demolishing the object work is still needed to demolish the idea.

7th December 2021

“We Carry Our Younger Selves Around”: Gillian Wearing on Life, Art and Time

Osman Can Yerebakan | AnOther | 17th November 2021

Well before social media arrived, Wearing was making performative portraits – photographs of people in masks or holding cue cards that describe their thoughts. All addressed her core fascination – who are you? Given her view that people tend to live “in their dreams”, is the image we project who we really are or the person we wish we were – or both? The possibility that her approach will appear forensic is moderated by an evident empathy. Ultimately, she says “everyone is interesting”. Images are here.

Fabric of impulse: fiber artist Olga De Amaral melds artistic spontaneity with slow craft

Glenn Adamson | Art in America | 2nd December 2021

One might expect Amaral, “a weaver”, to be methodical and structured. Instead, her long career has involved the pursuit of intuitive abstraction. This journey has yielded large, sculptural, fibre works that “hang freely in space”. By also incorporating diverse materials – plastics, gold leaf, paint – her distinctive works have brought renown in her native Latin America and beyond. Amaral’s aspirations though, sound just like those of a weaver: “I wanted to make the thread and the knot more visible”.

Fine Prints

James Panero | jamespanero.com | 2nd December 2021

Vast social changes unfolding in the early decades of the 20th century produced some distinctive art. In Britain, the Vorticists celebrated the onrushing modernism of life. Their favoured medium was the humble print, which “exists somewhere between art object and art product”. Being inexpensive, printmaking opened up new possibilities for showing art: “The art galleries of the People are not in Bond Street but are to be found in every railway station.”

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