The Easel

4th June 2024

Sonia Delaunay: Living Art

Staff | The Burlington Magazine | 1st June 2024

To say Delaunay was prolific is an understatement. Her output spanned painting, embroidery, textiles, couture, tapestry, graphics, mosaics and décor. She established her modernist credentials in the 1920’s by applying “singular” geometric designs to fashions such as the flapper dress. Although she moved on to painting after WW2, the peak of her career was her textile and fashion work that anticipated Pop and Op art. Delaunay noted ruefully that she had ”been born forty years too early”. Images are here.

Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Charles M Schultz | The Brooklyn Rail | 15th April 2024

A biennial is, by definition, a mélange. Good reason to expect controversy, which is kind of the point. Sadly, the commentary coming out of the Whitney show is not lively criticism, but conveys an air of weariness. The biennial itself has a feel that one critic describes as “I can’t go on/I must go on”. Another wonders whether it’s a “a grand intellectual battle, or just an insiders’ chinwag?” Says the above writer, “As we lean into what divides us—the cracks and fissures … we choose tribalism and separatism.”

28th May 2024

A Century Later, Käthe Kollwitz’s Phantoms of War Go Unheeded

Grace Byron | Frieze | 17th May 2024

Being called “the conscience of her age” sounds like a compliment. In Kollwitz’ case, it has also been a line of attack. She has been dismissed as a maker of “sentimental” work, or merely a printmaker with political views. Her refusal to be stoic in the face of war and personal loss led the Nazi’s to tag her work as “degenerate”. Now she is recognised as having made some of the most enduring images of maternal grief. “Despair should not be this beautiful”.

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