The Easel

21st June 2022

Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe

Lauren Dyer Amazeen | Ocula | 25th May 2022

Asawa was taught as an art student to respect the integrity of her materials. She tried painting, producing leaf shapes and blobby biomorphic forms, before discovering wire and its potential to be woven into expressive sculptural forms. Early recognition in New York faded once she moved to the west coast, some no doubt sensing a “craft” element in her unconventional work. Now resurrected, her work is featured prominently in this year’s Venice Biennale. A recent biography is reviewed here.

14th June 2022

Polymath Artist Frank Walter’s Paintings Shine at David Zwirner Gallery, Curated by Hilton Als

Annie Levin | Observer | 9th June 2022

When it first participated in the Venice Biennale in 2017, Antigua featured landscape artist Frank Walter. His landscapes are “off kilter”, taking the perspective of “an insect or a person who is lost”, implying that nature should be “a part of us”. They differ sharply from the European tradition of man ascendant over Nature. Walter’s works have been treated as “outsider art”, a categorization that is quite unhelpful. Judge art solely on its aesthetic merits, argues one writer – “would this be the worst thing?”

A stolen, horribly damaged De Kooning gets the Getty treatment

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 31st May 2022

No wonder this epic tale has been turned into a film. De Kooning’s Woman-Ochre was taken by thieves in 1985 and serendipitously recovered in 2016. Substantially damaged during the theft, a restoration of nearly three years has returned the work to a “state of remarkable cohesion”. Now back on display, debate over the alleged misogyny of the work will probably resume: “Woman-Ochre will return to being its troublesome self – a picture loaded with sexual anxiety”.

Rejecting the Standard

Barbara MacAdam | Art and Antiques | 1st June 2022

As “dashingly radical” modernist art raced ahead in early twentieth century Europe, many American artists liked what they saw. Here were new ways to express the exuberant social change happening around them. Plenty of their works were “duds”, says one critic, too reliant on following Europe’s example. Overall, though, a show covering this period, with its roll call of overlooked artists, has real charm. It portrays a “less-than-coherent time” that saw “the ascendancy of abstraction” in a nation becoming modern.

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