Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 106
August 24, 2018
What to see this week in the UK
From BlacKkKlansman to Magic Realism, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
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August 21, 2018
‘A menace to life and limb’: the artworks that have injured – and killed
A visitor to an Anish Kapoor exhibition has ended up in hospital after falling into one of his artworks, Descent Into Limbo. But should art be slightly dangerous?
Anish Kapoor’s art installation Descent Into Limbo is a big, black hole, too deep for viewers to be able to see the bottom. Or is it merely a black circular painting? You stand on the edge of the dark nothingness, fascinated and perhaps a little tempted to reach out a foot and test it. You could call it a meditation on the sublime. Or an accident waiting to happen.
Related: Holed up: man falls into art installation of 8ft hole painted black
Continue reading...August 20, 2018
Beyoncé meets Botticelli: how tabloid photos throw new light on old masters
The Twitter account Tabloid Art History juxtaposes celebrity shots with artworks they resemble. It’s a game that works because great art is universal
Beyoncé poses with her twin babies. She is bedecked in flowers as she gazes emotionally into the heavenly distance. Do you spot the artistic echo? The creators of a Twitter account called TabloidArtHistory did. They juxtapose this photo with Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece Madonna of the Pomegranate. It is a beguiling match. Beyoncé’s maternal ecstasy mirrors Botticelli’s mystically beautiful Virgin Mary.
Continue reading...August 17, 2018
Patrick Heron soars, Dylan Thomas poses and Picasso boggles – the week in art
Picasso’s best year ever is coming to an end, Dylan Thomas is bound for Swansea and Cindy Sherman takes a good look at herself – all in our weekly dispatch
Drag: Self-portraits and Body Politics
Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Leigh Bowery and many more star in a survey of self-transformation in art.
• Hayward Gallery, London, from 22 August until 14 October.
What to see this week in the UK
From The Guardians to Pussy Riot, here’s our pick of the best film, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
August 10, 2018
Lily Cole has a ball with Heathcliff and a Brit reinvents America – the week in art
The former supermodel fills in the foundling’s story, artists have fun with animals and a Lancashire boy blazes a trail across America – all in our weekly dispatch
Lily Cole: Balls
A film about Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff, one of the most famous foundlings in literature, and how his fictional story resonates with the real lives of children who were left at London’s Foundling hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Foundling Museum, London, until 2 December.
What to see this week in the UK
From Heathers to Picasso, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
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Continue reading...August 3, 2018
Emil Nolde's lurid colour blasts and Grace Jones reinvents gender – the week in art
A superb Nolde exhibition hits Scotland’s National Gallery, while punk painter John Keane targets Putin, and Titian changes nude painting for ever – all in our weekly art dispatch
Emil Nolde
This superb exhibition is a lurid blast of colour and raw imagination shadowed by the nightmares of 20th-century history.
• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), Edinburgh, until 21 October.
What to see this week in the UK
From Hearts Beat Loud to Cold Blood, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...July 30, 2018
Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33 review – sex, death and decadence
Tate Modern, London
The artists condemned as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis really did revel in the perverse and depraved, and their sex and violence-drenched paintings still shock
In a self-portrait that he sketched in the 1930s, George Grosz is getting ready to paint a model in his studio. As she does her hair, standing with her back to him and us, naked except for a translucent green slip that half covers her buttocks, seamed stockings and shoes, he grins lasciviously, squeezing a phallic paint tube. A rag hangs from his pocket like a masturbatory spurt. What a degenerate.
I mean that precisely. In 1937, Grosz, like many of the artists in Tate Modern’s often astonishing display of early 20th-century German art, had his works held up for mockery and revilement by the Nazis in their Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art).
Continue reading...Jonathan Jones's Blog
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