The Easel

20th August 2024

The Fury and Failings of a Nicole Eisenman Survey

Debra Brehmer | Hyperallergic | 31st July 2024

The positive but not effusive reviews of Eisenman’s show when in London, are repeated now it is in Chicago. Noting the jumble of ideas and styles, the writer complains that Eisenman’s paintings “never quite resolve”. A more positive view is that Eisenman’s varied styles reveal her to be a “connoisseur of textures and coloured patterns”. In the last decade, she has become “very, very good” at articulating “an expanded repertoire of how to feel alive and… the possibilities of who we might be”.

The Neue Galerie Pays Homage to Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Mother of German Expressionism

Sandra Bertrand | Highbrow Magazine | 6th August 2024

Modersohn-Becker, prodigiously talented, spent her early career moving between a restrictive marriage in Bremen and artistic freedom in Paris. She died young, soon after childbirth. Two things make her story distinctive. First, her many self-portraits are now seen as boldly modern and done in a style that anticipates expressionism. Secondly, her early death leaves the perpetual question, “what if”.

13th August 2024

How the Hirshhorn Museum stays fresh at 50

Glenn Adamson | Apollo | 10th August 2024

What starts as a museum anniversary note morphs into something more interesting. US museums are struggling to rebuild visitor numbers after the pandemic. The Hirshhorn faces such challenges too, even though it is located on Washington’s National Mall and offers free admission. Populist shows have drawn people in while it considers bold ideas to be more than a museum – “a performance stage, a broadcaster and, at times, a public sculpture.” Somewhere amongst all that, one presumes, is the art.

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