Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 117
January 22, 2018
Charles I: King and Collector review – majestic collection fit for an unfit king
Royal Academy, London
This blockbuster show is chock-full of masterpieces. So why is our critic calling for revolution?
Just for a moment the tapestry of grandeur parts to reveal the brutal truth. Armies clash on an English field in a chaos of smoke and horses. From under a furled flag peers the grey, dead face of the monster Medusa, snakes writhing on her severed head. This hideous face and the armies behind it suggest all is not well with the British monarchy. In the foreground stands the young crown prince, Charles I’s eldest son. Still barely a teenager when this was painted in the early 1640s, he is portrayed by William Dobson with the proud bearing of a war leader. The painting prophesies that he will become a fearsome fighter. Like Medusa’s head that turned those who looked upon it to stone, his royal eye will petrify his enemies.
That, of course, is not what happened. Charles I was a catastrophic king who alienated his people and parliament so totally that by 1642 he provoked civil war in England, not to mention big trouble in Scotland and Ireland. Defeated and captured, in 1649 he was beheaded. His son fled abroad, and England became a republic until 1660.
Mantegna's Triumphs hang in a glorified garden shed at Hampton Court. They should be part of the national imagination
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January 20, 2018
What to see this week in the UK
From Coco to Andreas Gursky, here is our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance in the next seven days
Continue reading...January 19, 2018
The rural bites back, Gursky triumphs and Bridget Riley keeps it trippy – the week in art
Capitalism’s great chronicler stuns the Hayward, it’s a carnival of the rural in Somerset, and the Bayeux tapestry is coming – all in your weekly dispatch
Andreas Gursky
Sublime images of the capitalist world by an epic artist of modern life. Gursky raises photography to the level of history painting.
•Hayward Gallery, London, 25 January to 22 April.
Bayeux tapestry: a brag, a lament, an embodiment of history's complexity
This remarkable artwork is coming to Brexit Britain and can teach us all something about what nationhood means
It is a miracle of cooperation across borders that brings two peoples, two cultures together and reveals they are the same, after all.
I’m not talking about the news this week that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has given the go-ahead for the Bayeux tapestry to visit Britain. I am describing the tapestry itself.
Related: The Bayeux tapestry: is it any good?
Related: Emmanuel Macron: a modern master of the diplomatic gesture
Continue reading...January 17, 2018
Bridget Riley review – a blast of pure psychedelic energy
David Zwirner Gallery, London
In her new show Recent Paintings 2014-2017, the great shapeshifter rediscovers the hallucinogenic power of her youth, with dizzying works that turn perspective inside out
To walk into Bridget Riley’s exhibition of new works – everything here, with a couple of exceptions, has been created in the last four years – is to see a mighty brain fizzing away with ideas that blow away all the sentimental cobwebs from art. Riley is a philosopher who is interested in perception – and nothing else. For her, a work of art is not a picture nor a political comment nor a splurge of self-expression. It is a way to explore seeing. If it does not leave you with your sense of the visible world shaken and reborn, what’s the point of it?
In the early 1960s, she took on the epic sweep of American art and gave it a sharp scientific twist. Jackson Pollock’s paintings absorb the beholder in poetic tangles and forests of colour. Riley liked the scope and sweep, yet she put it all in a more solid psychological basis. The curves and eddies, twists and vortices of her early black and white paintings such as Hesitate (1964) are mathematically calculated. Their discombobulating effects are precisely planned. They turn perception inside out as you find spaces move and melt, shapes materialise in front of the canvas, reality itself burst open to reveal new dimensions. In the decade of psychedelia, Riley invented a legal hallucinogenic.
You could set these paintings beside a cubist masterpiece from 1910
Continue reading...The Bayeux tapestry: is it any good?
The epic portrayal of the Norman invasion of 1066 is bound for Britain. But does it really live up to its reputation as a great work?
If you want to know why the Bayeux tapestry truly matters, why it is one of the world’s great works of art and not just a corny bit of British heritage, the place to start is not the famous scene of Harold getting it in the eye at the Battle of Hastings, or even the wondrous image of Halley’s comet that was embroidered 600 years before Halley, but a far more unsettling detail: a depiction of a war atrocity.
As the Normans establish a beachhead on the south coast, two men are setting fire to a Saxon house. You can tell from their dull disengaged eyes they are only following orders. In front of the blazing building, on a smaller scale than the burly arsonists, a woman holds her boy’s hand as she asks for humanity with a dignified, civilised gesture.
The Bayeux tapestry is a graphic depiction of the Norman buildup to, and success in, the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In a series of scenes told in 70m of coloured embroidery and Latin inscriptions, it shows how William the Conquerer crossed the Channel to seize the English crown from King Harold.
Related: Emmanuel Macron 'agrees to loan Bayeux Tapestry to Britain'
Continue reading...January 13, 2018
Culture highlights: what to see this week in the UK
From the Starcrawler to William Blake, here is our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance in the next seven days
Continue reading...January 12, 2018
Bridget Riley dazzles, Turner is a winter wonder and Damien goes dotty ... again – the week in art
The abstract artist unveils brilliant new work, Hirst’s spot paintings invade a Palladian mansion and Turner’s watercolours bring magic to Edinburgh – all in your weekly dispatch
Bridget Riley
Britain’s most brilliant abstract artist returns with new works created in the past four years. Riley’s intelligence is a marvel to behold.
• David Zwirner gallery, London, 19 January to 10 March.
January 6, 2018
Culture highlights: what to see this week in the UK
From the Cribs’ new tour to the theatrical revival of Amadeus, here is our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance in the next seven days
Continue reading...January 5, 2018
Yorkshire revolts and Doig paints a cracking Caribbean dreamworld – the week in art
Tracey Emin’s My Bed is down to its last weeks in Margate, Peter Doig is on great form and Yorkshire Sculpture Park mans the barricades – all in your weekly dispatch
Revolt and Revolution
Protest art from the Arts Council collection brings a radical start to the year on the rolling dales of Britain’s grandest sculpture park.
• Yorkshire Sculpture Park from 6 January until 15 April.
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