Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 105
September 11, 2018
The Clock review – 'The longer you watch it, the more addictive it becomes'
Christian Marclay’s epic work – a clock created from film clips that tells the actual time – ought to be bleak. But time really does fly when you watch this 24-hour miracle
It’s 8.10am and I’m late for my appointment at Tate Modern. I watch the faces of passengers as the train pulls into London Bridge. It’s a Monday and the time is going too fast. One man sweats as he checks his watch. On his way to a bank heist, perhaps.
I didn’t think any of that on my train at the time, though. I revisited my journey after sinking into a white sofa and watching The Clock, Christian Marclay’s epic montage of film clips featuring clockfaces that tells the actual time. Only then, gazing at the cinema screen that’s been built at Tate Modern, did I understand that everyone on a rush-hour train is united by something magical: we’re all sharing the same instant in time.
Related: 'It's impossible!' – Christian Marclay and the 24-hour clock made of movie clips
You slow to the pace of a stopped train or speed to the ticking of a time bomb
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September 7, 2018
The ticking Clock, Asians looking west and Orlando today – the week in art
Conrad Shawcross intrigues Mayfair, Brazil is dealt a blow and new sculptural work dances into Kettle’s Yard – all in our weekly dispatch
The Clock
Christian Marclay’s timely masterpiece of contemporary art uses film clips to magical and hypnotic effect.
• Tate Modern, London, 14 September to 20 January.
What to see this week in the UK
From American Animals to Surreal Science, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...September 6, 2018
Famous Women/Orlando at Charleston review – the fundamental daftness of Grant and Bell
Charleston, East Sussex
A jokey Famous Women Dinner Service and a faint celebration of Woolf’s novel Orlando are lightweight openers for the Bloomsbury Group shrine’s spacious new galleries
Supportiveness and community can be dangerous things in visual art. The Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals that formed in Britain before the first world war is a sobering reminder of that. Artists who are always telling each other how great they are don’t challenge themselves. The results are all over the walls, fireplaces and window sills – painted decorations that are bright and fun but become insufferable in their self-satisfaction.
These decorations are by Vanessa Bell and Duncant Grant, the Bloomsbury painters who moved into Charleston in 1916 and made it the kind of English bohemian gathering place that inspires television dramas. You are shown the worn patch on the dining table where Bell’s sister, Virginia Woolf, rested her elbows when she was arguing and the comfy chair where John Maynard Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919.
Surely the contemporary relevance of Orlando’s defiant fable of gender and sexuality doesn’t need stressing?
The new Charleston galleries open on 8 September.
Continue reading...September 4, 2018
A naked triumph: why the male nude is – thankfully – back in the limelight
For decades, the male nude was sidelined by patriarchal possessors of the female form - from Picasso to Magritte. Now, the RA’s spring exhibition will celebrate it once again
I can’t help smiling at the Royal Academy’s avowedly radical announcement that its exhibition The Renaissance Nude next spring will aim for “parity” of naked men and women in response to #MeToo. It is nice PR, but all the curators are doing is reflecting the history of the nude in art. From the classical era to the Renaissance and beyond, the male body was disrobed as enthusiastically as the female – if not more so. It is a fact that has never escaped souvenir sellers in Florence, who plaster the cock and balls of Michelangelo’s David on everything from calendars to kitchen aprons.
This makes The Renaissance Nude a timely exhibition, but not because it will “correct” the Renaissance view of the human body to today’s standards. On the contrary, the Renaissance can correct us. Imagine if the RA had made a similar announcement about an exhibition called The Modern Nude. For the period from 1900 to the 1960s, it would have had to falsify the extremely unequal facts. Picasso and Matisse were among the most patriarchal possessors of the female form in the history of art and Klimt, Schiele, Dalí and Magritte all shared that focus. Only in more recent times have the male nudes of Bacon, Hockney, Mapplethorpe and Freud moved us towards parity.
Continue reading...September 3, 2018
'Joyless in the extreme' – I Object: Ian Hislop's Search for Dissent review
British Museum, London
The Private Eye editor has scoured history in search of objects and images that express dissent. But where’s the satire?
You know a joke’s in trouble when the audience needs to be told to laugh. Canned laughter would probably be going too far in a British Museum exhibition, so instead an enormous speech bubble, placed next to an 18th-century portrait of Louis XVI wearing a red liberty cap, gives us Ian Hislop’s assurance that it is funny.
“The saying ‘Ridicule kills’ is usually an exaggeration,” says the Private Eye editor. “Not for Louis XVI. They have taken a well-known picture of the king and shoved a revolutionary hat on it. The effect is comical as the great Louis XVI is made to look as if he is a supporter of the revolution. Not so funny for him though.”
Related: Ian Hislop on dissent: 'It's cathartic to say, "This is rubbish"'
Continue reading...August 31, 2018
Pollock storms into London and Banksy dials up the dissent – the week in art
Joe Tilson invades Venice, Helsinki unveils a subterranean culture hub and the prestige art scene finds no takers for Nigel Farage – all in our weekly dispatch
I Object
Subversive art from Gillray to Banksy, ancient Egyptian obscenity to a suffragette song, dug up in the British Museum by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop.
• British Museum, London, 6 September to 20 January
What to see this week in the UK
From Cold War to Barry Manilow, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...August 26, 2018
Dreamers and disrupters: the best art and architecture of autumn 2018
August 24, 2018
Witches, skeletons and black holes – the week in art
The Ashmoleon is conjuring up dark magic, Anish Kapoor is tricking the eye and the cosmos reveals its unfathomable beauty – all in our weekly dispatch
Spellbound
A delve into the dark world of magic and witchcraft, full of strange and curious objects including the paraphernalia of Elizabeth I’s conjurer Dr John Dee.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 31 August to 6 January.
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