The Easel

30th January 2024

Stéphane Mandelbaum

Johanna Fateman | 4Columns | 26th January 2024

Mandelbaum was an outsider. He died an outsider too, shot having just committed an art burglary. In his short life he produced hundreds of portraits of the Brussels demimonde. Everyone looks tired, “swollen cheeks, greasy hair … The line between victim and oppressor, innocent and guilty, gets hopelessly blurred.” There is a churn of ideas – shifting identity, war guilt, self-doubt – that is ultimately “transfixing, bewildering”. The curator agrees; “This stuff is beyond edgy,” A bio piece is here.

Tiffany’s abstract window

Karen Azoulay | Maharam | 10th January 2024

In his studio, Louis Tiffany produced a variety of stained glass objects, often with Art Nouveau styling. For his own apartment, though, he installed a unique leaded-glass window. The window’s asymmetrical pattern partly reflected his interest in North African textiles. More obviously, though, the central S curve gives it a distinctly abstract feel. This was “shockingly modern” for 1880 and pre-dated the full emergence of abstraction in painting by decades. It perfectly expressed Tiffany’s ambition to “paint with glass.” 

How “Unnamed Figures” at the American Folk Art Museum Challenges Dominant Narratives of American History

Karla Méndez | Elephant | 4th January 2024

Portraits are intended to flatter, to elevate. They can tell other stories too. In the case of 18th century American folk art they reveal Black erasure. In some cases, the absence is literal but other times Black figures are simply placed in the shadows. Focusing on the “there but not there” tendency reveals new historical narratives: Black contributors to nation building; the presence of slavery in the north; successful Black property owners – in other words, a more complete American history.

19th December 2023

The Triumph of Dana Schutz

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 30th November 2023

A modern redemption story? In 2017 Schutz was excoriated for a painting of a socially sensitive subject. Everyone has moved on – mostly – and her new work is being acclaimed. Intricate paintings, in thick oils, are allegorical, “luridly iridescent moonscapes … giant marionette-like figures with spidery limbs and oversize heads.” Somehow, the impending chaos of all this detail is kept in check by her “stately composition”. Says one critic “one of America’s best painters”.

Robert Storr, the Bad Boy of Curating, Is Back, With a Large Group of Misfits, To Induce ‘Retinal Hysteria’

David Hiroshi Jager | The New York Sun | 29th November 2023

Despairing about the world? Storr, a renowned curator and writer, is interested in art that has that vibe – works that “vibrate with panic, uncontrollable anger, out-of-control laughter, orgasmic release”. Reviewers seem non-plussed at his show of provocative, irritating artworks – presumably a sign they didn’t like it. Storr responds, “like is a relatively weak emotion to have in relation to [a piece of] art. I have noticed it, and that signals to me it is substantial and strong.” An interview with Storr is here.

This Manet portrait of Berthe Morisot is ablaze with mutual attraction

Sebastian Smee | msn.com | 15th December 2023

A deep dive into one famous painting on which the writer is an expert. Manet was a conventional fellow and married but was bowled over on meeting Berthe Morisot in the Louvre. An affair being improper, he instead settled for painting her – repeatedly. “Manet responded to the sensuous charge in things … as the very flavor of a civilized existence. Without a whisper of doting, [Manet’s Repose] is a lesson in how to love”.

William Blake was called a ‘lunatic’ in his lifetime. The Getty hails him as a visionary now

Christopher Knight | Yahoo | 12th December 2023

This writer gets straight to the point – “Blake was a bit of a nut”. While contemporaries like Constable and Turner gazed idealistically at the English countryside, Blake focused on his own “poetic imagination”. Apocalyptic though his imagery often was, he could also combine “Michelangelo’s drawing, the formal crispness of Raphael [and] Durer’s commitment to printmaking”. Such works, dismissed by his peers, are now thought “wonderfully weird”. Nutty or not, Blake is a superstar.

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