The Easel

3rd June 2025

Lewd, Problematic, and Profoundly Influential

Jeremy Lybarger | The New Republic | 20th May 2025

Robert Hughes called R Crumb, the cartoonist, “the Brueghel of the last half of the twentieth century”. Once a sub-culture illustrator, he is now seen as a widely influential artist. “Technical virtuosity and imaginative range” explain this change as well as the “ruthless introspection” of his personal oddities. It’s a mindset well suited to illustrating “modern American psychoses”. His candid graphics, once seen as over-the-top, now appear, according to his biographer, “profoundly articulate, thoughtful comics”.

A refreshed Rockefeller Wing reopens with a bang at The Met in New York

Ellie Stathaki | Wallpaper | 31st May 2025

New York’s Met has re-opened its wing that houses art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas – what was once called “primitive” art. Apart from the meticulous architecture, what you see seems to depend on what you think. One critic sees a jumble of unrelated objects that perpetuates “colonialist” attitudes while another swoons at the newly respectful and scholarly displays. Few will disagree with the judgement that this is “some of the most moving art, old or new, you’ll ever see.” Images are here.

See the Flower Paintings of Rachel Ruysch, Whose Stunning Still Lifes Are Finally Getting the Attention They Deserve

Eli Wizevich | Smithsonian.com | 25th April 2025

Ruysch has been flying under the radar for centuries. Her “sumptuous” floral still lifes were painted when botanical samples from the Dutch empire were flooding into Amsterdam. Although still life painting was not prestigious, she painted such a variety of plants and with such accuracy that they seemed akin to (manly) scientific inquiry. Such was her virtuosity that she commanded higher prices than Rembrandt. After her death, Ruysch was more or less forgotten. This is her first solo retrospective ever.

27th May 2025

The Splintered Beauty of Jack Whitten’s Paintings

zoe Hopkins | Frieze | 11th April 2025

Such was Whitten’s facility with manipulating paint that one writer wonders if some of his paintings are sculpture. Other works have a resemblance to photographs due to the “precision” of the images. And then there are paintings that are mosaics. Whitten was happy to “follow his materials over the edge to the not-yet-known,” the end result being abstractions of the highest order. Whether his works carry specific meaning is unclear. “He’s not asking us to make sense of it. Just dwell there”. A video (12 min) is here.

As the Met’s Gorgeous New John Singer Sargent Exhibition Proves, There’s Much More to Madame X Than That Scandalous Strap

Stephanie Sporn | Vogue | 24th April 2025

A favourite art world story. As an early career artist in Paris, Sargent was working hard to establish his reputation. An audacious portrait of “Madame X” for the 1884 Salon suited not only his career ambitions but also the desire of his subject to enhance her social position. These plans came unstuck with scandal erupting over the portrait’s supposed immodesty. Sargent soon left Paris for London where it quickly became evident that his career prospects were undimmed. A video (22 min) is here.

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