The Easel

6th June 2023

Every breath she takes: Ming Smith at MoMA

Mark Feeney | Boston Globe | 4th May 2023

Although the ‘decisive moment’ approach to photography favours image clarity, such precision can also be “the enemy of evocation”. This observation is apt given Smith’s abstract/documentary style.  A long-time chronicler of Black life, she uses slow shutter speeds to capture movements where “atmospheres alter, light shadows, souls whir”. Says one artist, she is the “absolute master of the blur”. A background piece is here and images here.

In a new exhibition, Hannah Gadsby takes aim at Pablo Picasso

Staff | The Economist | 2nd June 2023

Few shows get as mauled as “Pablo-matic”, curated by the comic Hannah Gadsby. It’s a small collection of paintings and etchings that, she admits, aims to “stick one up him”. One critic moans that  Picasso’s misogyny gets more focus than his pictures and likens Gadsby’s wall labels to “bathroom graffiti”. Yes, Picasso was a misogynist, but he was also “a genius … his nubile nudes are clearly meant to be devoured but also feel romantic and womanly. Gadsby’s blunt commentary seems churlish”.

30th May 2023

Liu Xiaodong with Barry Schwabsky

Barry Schwabsky | The Brooklyn Rail | 1st May 2023

Liu’s neo-realist paintings are large scale, unidealized, renditions of people and places. He chooses a town about which he knows little and, after getting to know the place, chooses subjects pretty much at random. This “casual” approach yields portraits that are impartial yet also empathetic. Liu claims he doesn’t “wish to investigate and tell some truth about a place”. Except, perhaps he does anyhow – in the face of modernization, these are portraits of “local ways of life”.

Are We Asking Too Much of Public Art?

Seph Rodney | Hyperallergic | 25th May 2023

A statue of a female has been installed atop a New York courthouse. A blessed relief to the ubiquitous patriarchal statuary, right? No, say some advocates for womens’ rights because it insufficiently “interrogates the concept of justice”. So how do we judge a piece of public art? “Public art often reflects our values, but also demonstrates the limits of our civic imagination. Our culture is too bound to the idea of the static, unchanging hero. What if we made no public monuments to people?”

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