The Easel

26th September 2023

Very Veritas: Barkley L. Hendricks – Portraits At The Frick

James Balestrieri | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 12th September 2023

Hendricks’ portraits are acclaimed because he painted black subjects in the grand style of the Old Masters that he so admired. This fell flat with late-1960’s American audiences, but times change. New York’s Frick, with its rather “white” collection, has hung Hendricks’ works amongst its own. Their portraits by Van Dyck communicate “a single idea, ‘attitude is armour’, and it’s precisely this idea Hendricks portraits appropriate”. Background to the show is here and images here.

Tetsuya Ishida: My weak self, my pitiful self, my anxious self

Cecelia Alemani | Gagosian Quarterly | 11th August 2023

Japan’s dizzying postwar economic success abruptly stopped in 1991 and was followed by stagnation. Ishida belonged to that “lost generation” of young adults whose dreams were not met. Ignoring the cute aesthetic of mass culture, he adopted a surreal/realist style, depicting anonymous workers who convey “a sense of estrangement and rupture”. This is a “society of tiredness and fatigue … a world lost to reason”. More images are here

19th September 2023

The deadpan precision of Ed Ruscha’s L.A. sensibility

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 8th September 2023

What is it about Ruscha’s word paintings? Their lineage goes back to Picasso and Braque who put advertising text in their collages. Ruscha’s works feature deadpan phrases plucked from the “clamour of American life”. Sometimes, their meaning is so literal, so obvious, that the viewer doubts themselves. Such works are like “billboards that are empty of sentences but have plenty to say.” Little wonder the writer calls Ruscha the “genius of Pop Conceptualism”.

Is Keith Haring’s Art for Everybody?

Jonathan Griffin | Frieze | 16th June 2023

Haring’s graphics were so effective that, decades later, the style he developed is integral to our visual environment. He saw no fixed meaning in his own work, believing instead that art is inherently social. His immense influence owes much to self-promotion, his egalitarian media – subway drawings, for example – and the “strength” of his line. Says the writer, “ the enormity and impact of Haring’s output is awesome … never boring”. Images are here.

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