The Easel

11th April 2023

Little big things

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 3rd April 2023

Sze is renowned for her intricate assemblages – mundane objects assembled to create a “total choreography”. Not everyone is a fan, some seeing her work as “obsessive-compulsive magpie art”. A new installation in a New York museum is a classic – ladders, hardware store odds and ends, art materials, video images – that present as “cities … whole solar systems”. At least for this writer, the show is a success, because it gives the building “something like a consciousness”.

This once enslaved 17th century artist was misunderstood for centuries. A new exhibition rewrites his story

Jacqui Palumbo | CNN | 7th April 2023

As slaves go, Pareja was lucky. Enslaved to Velazquez, superstar of the baroque, his decades as a studio assistant allowed him to learn how to paint. After he was freed, he became a successful artist in Madrid, enjoying the renown created by Velazquez’ celebrated portrait of him. Compared to Velazquez, Pareja’s works are “not remarkable” says one critic “but Velazquez [makes] just about anyone look second tier”. And the message of this show – “history must restore what slavery took away”.

4th April 2023

An artist’s fantasy or the real world?

Sebastian Smee | Washington Post | 22nd March 2023

Even before Admiral Perry hove to in 1853, Japan’s middle class was growing. Mimicking the wealthy, they developed a taste for art, including titillating paintings of the pleasure district at the edge of Tokyo city. This “floating world” was, in truth, mostly imagined because Japanese society was not especially permissive. Most likely, these works offered an escape from the daily realities facing the middle classes – “the fixed world of social obligation and feudal hierarchy.”

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