The Easel

30th July 2024

Glamour, Glory and Gone

Ara Osterweil | Artforum | 25th February 2024

Around 1960, Marisol was a star of New York’s art scene. Not only did her bulky totemic figurative sculptures grab attention, but she also stood out as a glamorous female sculptor in a macho art world. Her works dealt explicitly with families, female roles and male privilege. International acclaim peaked in the late 1960’s and, although remaining prolific she faded from view. Her death, decades later, brought the headline the “forgotten star of Pop Art”. Art history, it seems, is now writing Marisol back in.

23rd July 2024

Toshiko Takaezu

Jennifer Krasinski | 4Columns | 31st May 2024

Takaezu is revered among ceramicists but almost unknown outside that circle. Inspired by a student job at a ceramics factory she went on to develop her acclaimed “closed form” works, vase-like forms with tiny necks. These were followed by more eccentric sculptural objects. Takaezu had no interest in “ideal form”, experimenting endlessly with ceramic imperfection and making her work almost a combination of sculpture and painting. “A stunning retrospective”.  Images are here.

Immaterial: Blankets and Quilts

Camille Dungay | Perspectives | 17th July 2024

The quilts made in Gee’s Bend in southern USA challenge conventional thinking about art. Quilters were not trying to make art works, just functional objects using worn out scraps of fabric, As they saw it, they made “pretty” (patterned) quilts or “ugly” (asymmetric) quilts. Further, unlike most artworks, these quilts were often made by a group of quilters, not a single artist. Eventually, though, they were hung in art museums, bringing the realisation that quilts, like art, can carry stories. “A quilt has many, many lives”.

The mysterious New York nanny who helped shape 20th-century street photography

Helen Stoilas | CNN | 24th June 2024

Meier’s story – the nanny with a secret passion for photography – is now well known. Does a first retrospective in the US reveal anything new about her images? Her skill at composition, her instinct for a telling detail, are evident throughout her work. Does that make her a ‘great’ street photographer like, say, Arbus? Some think so, but one writer notes that her “lifetime of anonymity persists in the work … she didn’t contribute anything uniquely her own. [Her best work] are her self-portraits”.

Old Master Encore

James Gardner | The Magazine Antiques | 7th June 2024

Lethière dodged the worst of the French Revolution, reached the pinnacle of the French art establishment, but is now mostly forgotten. A neoclassical painter, he created huge paintings that addressed conventional classical themes of love and death. One critic thinks he shows “occasional stodginess”. So why attempt a resurrection? Is it because, as someone born into slavery, Lethière suits our identity-obsessed times? Muses the writer, perhaps his real achievement was just proximity to the ruling elite.

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