The Easel

15th October 2024

‘A painting to hear loud and clear’: Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half

Mark Rozzo | Christie’s | 14th October 2024

Driving from LA to visit his family in Oklahoma City, Ruscha had ample time to contemplate the “impassive iconography of the road”. He published a book of photos of what he saw – “yammering signage and cheapo architecture”. Seeing no apparent reaction, he picked one photo that he made into an acclaimed painting. Its bold diagonal angle gave it a “surging velocity”. Said Ruscha, “Once you pick the object and reproduce it faithfully … you want to instill a thing with some earth-shaking religious feeling.”

The de Young presents the first major American retrospective of Art Deco icon Tamara de Lempicka

Sharon Anderson | The Voice of San Francisco | 8th October 2024

It doesn’t hurt in the least for an artist to be in the right place at the right time. In de Lempicka’s case, that meant glamorous, pre-revolutionary St Petersburg and, after 1917, Paris. Developing a style that “blended classicism and modernism, her portraits of the 1920’s and 1930’s brought fame and fortune. Such images, rendered in geometric shapes and metallic hues, epitomize the aesthetic of the Machine Age. De Lempicka is now seen as embodying the “independence of the new woman”. Images are here.

8th October 2024

Mike Kelley, Ghost and Spirit review: American artist’s conceptual art was trashy, visceral and hilarious

Mark Hudson | The Independant | 1st October 2024

When looking at Kelley’s work, says the writer, just “[go] with the flow”. A product of working class Detroit, Kelley adopted the persona of the disgruntled adolescent.  His influential conceptual art is diverse – performance to video, sculpture to drawing, sewing and stuffed toys – full of ideas and, at times, “wilful crassness”.  “Whether he was a perverse genius or a slightly creepy provocateur (likely both) this show has incredible energy, a sense of the mess and confusion of real life blasting through it.”

Confederate and Colonialist Monuments Are Finally Being Toppled, But Few Can Agree on What Goes in Their Place

Emily Watlington | Art in America | 2nd October 2024

Debate about the purpose of public art has yielded little consensus. What then of the many statues commemorating leaders of the US Confederacy? Their removal has been difficult, but so too is deciding what replaces them. A celebration of abolitionist leaders? A commemoration of slavery’s victims?  Something apologetic? There is a view that “history needs new monuments” and that artworks “allow more people in”. Yet “spectacle is not repair.”

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