Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 122
October 18, 2017
Domestikator is nasty public art. The Louvre was quite right to reject it | Jonathan Jones
In a gallery, obscenity is one thing. But in a public space where people of all ages will see it without choosing to do so? That’s bullying
The other day I walked into a Brussels art gallery where a colossal bronze woman was swooning in sensual ecstasy. In case of any confusion about its sexual content, this new sculpture by Tracey Emin is called All I Want Is You. I couldn’t help telling the artist she should erect it in a London park. “Erect” is the right word, for she jokes that from one angle it looks like a giant cock.
Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout’s Domestikator, a model of a modernist building that happens to be shaped like a man penetrating a dog, makes me worry that I offered the wrong advice. Raunchy art in the adult and sophisticated context of a gallery – if necessary with warnings about its content – is one thing. Obscenity in public space where people of all ages will see it without making any choice to do so is another.
Related: 'Obscene? Pornographic?' – Louvre deems sexually explicit sculpture too risqué
It is the glibness and complacency of Domestikator’s use of sex that makes it repulsive
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October 17, 2017
Soutine’s Portraits: Cooks, Waiters & Bellboys review
These vivid, fleshy paintings of restaurant and hotel staff in 1920s France reveal the brutalised souls beneath the uniforms
The Butcher Boy looks like a killer who has bathed in blood. His black eyes are full of trouble. One of them is a horrible round hole in the pink, red and white hunk of flesh that is his face. The same crimson gore that streaks it saturates his once-white smock. Behind him there is more blood, a sea of red. He is a man of meat, a glaring golem of animated flesh.
Chaim Soutine painted this meat monster in Paris in about 1919-20. The first world war had left the French art world exhausted. Soutine’s Butcher Boy might be an image of the war’s psychological effects – perhaps this brutalised youth has come back from the front full of violence – yet for art dealers craving the latest new thing, Soutine’s directness was also a commercial godsend. For in 1919 the latest new thing was that old thing, unpretentious figurative painting, free from the taint of the avant-garde. The dealer Paul Guillaume cashed in on this conservative mood when he found a market for Soutine’s “traditional” portraits.
A terrifying trip to the USSR's dark heart – Ilya and Emilia Kabakov review
Tate Modern, London
With its harrowing echoes of repression, deprivation and murder, the Kabakovs’ art is a magnificent, moving monument to the millions crushed by communism
She was born in 1902 and died in 1987. She lived through the Russian revolution, the civil war that followed and the famine of 1921-22 that killed her father. Then there was the second world war and finally, at the end of her life, glasnost and perestroika. Her name was Bertha Urievna Solodukhina and her life was a constant struggle, just to survive. In what was supposed to be an equal society, she endured antisemitic abuse, homelessness and a string of precarious jobs as she tried to raise a son alone.
That son would preserve her memory in a unique work of art. In fact, in Ilya Kabakov’s 1990 installation Labyrinth (My Mother’s Album), he can be heard singing sad old songs from his childhood. Yet it is the voice of his mother that is preserved in the most moving way by this masterpiece of modern art. A few years before she died, Kabakov persuaded her to write a memoir. As you explore this seemingly endless installation, turning one corner then another, only to find yet another corridor, typewritten excerpts from her harrowing autobiography grip your attention.
Continue reading...October 15, 2017
Culture highlights: what to see this week in the UK
From the return of St Vincent to Dr Seuss on stage, here is our pick of the best films, gigs, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance in the next seven days
Continue reading...October 13, 2017
Opera in space, Russia after the revolution and Wim Wenders' snaps – the week in art
Wenders bears all via Polaroid, Susan Philipsz strands some astronauts, and Rebecca Warren puts the quirk in Cornwall – all in your weekly dispatch
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into the Future
The aftermath of Russia’s October 1917 revolution is explored in some of the most haunting installations ever created.
• Tate Modern, London, 18 October-28 January.
October 11, 2017
Rebecca Warren review – a creepy comic carnival on the edge of Cornwall
Tate St Ives
Warren’s sculptures are sensile, tactile and frequently terrific. But they seem strangely unable to fill the Cornish gallery’s uplifting new modernist extension
The sea and sky are the first rivals any artist exhibiting at Tate St Ives has to reckon with. A big, bold view of both fills its beach-facing galleries. In the spectacular new concrete-roofed extension that opens this week, there are no views, just lots of bright natural light streaming in from above. Then again, instead of views, there are the works of all the 20th-century artists who settled in Cornwall and created the strand of British modernism that led to this museum’s existence.
The airy paintings of Peter Lanyon and the organically orotund casts and carvings of Barbara Hepworth have never looked better than they do in the reborn Tate St Ives. Even for a sceptic like me, who doesn’t believe British abstract art ever rivalled the likes of Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock, the union of this art with the seascapes that inspired it is compelling.
Continue reading...October 7, 2017
Culture highlights: what to see this week in the UK
Introducing our regular roundup of the best films, gigs, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance, including Blade Runner 2049, Little Mix and Dalí/Duchamp
Continue reading...October 6, 2017
The Chapmans do Goya, Gary Hume keeps it banal and the Tate swings – the week in art
Swingers invade the Turbine Hall, two geniuses team up at the Royal Academy and a high-spirited surrealist comes to Margate – all in your weekly dispatch
Dalí/Duchamp
A fascinating trip to the most exciting era of modern art in the company of its two greatest entertainers, this exhibition showcases the best of Dalí and the genius of Duchamp.
• Royal Academy, London, 7 October to 3 January
October 4, 2017
Frieze 2017: Judas, Bourgeois and Mary Beard storm the hyper-capitalist hothouse
Regent’s Park, London
Jeff Koons rips off Giotto, Mary Beard opens a fake museum and Lucy and Jorge Orta peddle Antarctica passports. But is this Frieze fairground really the best in new art?
The kiss of Judas is the first thing you see at Frieze. It is striking, this great image of the betrayer of Christ bringing his lips close to his leader’s as their eyes meet in a devastating moment of truth. But this is not exactly new art, having been painted by Giotto about 700 years ago. Have I blundered into Frieze Masters, the art fair’s more historical companion event, by mistake? Has some art dealer prised this famous fresco off the wall of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua? No – on closer inspection, this makes a kind of insane sense.
Tired of basing his art on ads or kitsch puppy photos, Jeff Koons has remade one the most eloquent paintings in history. At least Giotto isn’t around to cry plagiarism or complain about the fact that, into the yellow robes of Judas, Koons has inserted a shiny blue mirror ball that reflects everything around it.
Related: Sex Work: a riot of body fluids, condom balloons and Day-Glo dick aliens
Continue reading...October 3, 2017
My three days at Tracey Emin's mountain hideaway on the Cote d’Azur
Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones has not always been kind about the work of Tracey Emin. So what happened when the artist invited him to stay at her bolthole? And why was she so keen get him in the water?
I’m scared of heights. I’m scared of snakes. These were just two of the fears that Tracey Emin challenged when I spent three days alone with her on top of a French mountain.
Related: Tracey Emin: 'The stone I married is beautiful and dignified – it will never let me down'
Related: Tracey Emin is still the real thing – and that's why we love her
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