Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 123
October 2, 2017
Dalí/Duchamp review – surreal bromance between art's odd couple
Royal Academy, London
With their dirty jokes, sly puns and decadent eroticism, these subversive provocateurs have more in common than you might think – but there’s no doubt who was the greater artist
In a note on a piece of scrap paper, Marcel Duchamp explained why he adopted the name Rrose Sélavy for his female alter ego, who gazes out from a sultry black and white photo taken in the 1920s. The name of his drag persona is, he explains, “an easy pun”. Rrose Sélavy sounds like “Eros, c’est la vie” – meaning “Eros, that’s life.”
This exhibition could easily have the same pun as its title, for that belief is what connects the two most subversive provocateurs of the 20th century. Salvador Dalí’s life’s mission was to revel in base lusts. Men and women masturbate copiously in his work, most notably in his 1929 painting The First Days of Spring, in which a grey-faced man collapses on a woman’s breasts. At first sight, a display of some of his most straightforwardly pornographic drawings near some of Duchamp’s most revered readymades seems a bizarre coupling, yet among the latter’s objects is Please Touch, a book cover adorned with a fake rubber breast. Both artists seem enthusiastically depraved, which is what makes this exhibition such a delight.
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What a picture – Boris Johnson and the Sun’s editor, running out of power | Jonathan Jones
Why are they running and where are they going? Like naked mole rats scurrying endlessly in a plastic burrow, foreign secretary Boris Johnson and the Sun editor Tony Gallagher are photographed together. They’re seemingly in the belief that the Conservative party and its media allies have a destination, somewhere to get to, something urgent to do – other than wait for the tide of history to engulf them.
Gallagher seems more aware of the futility of it all than Johnson, who keeps going like a puffed-up hamster. That’s right, keep turning the wheel, there’s a treat in store. Gallagher meanwhile appears not just breathless but depressed. He looks tired, tired of it all – not just the jogging but the lies, the distortions, the greasy pole. Perhaps this picture reveals Johnson’s latest move in a campaign to undermine Theresa May – is the Sun about to publish his latest manifesto for a pure clean Brexit? If so, the tabloid editor seems less than inspired by the machiavellian game.
Continue reading...September 29, 2017
Caped crusaders hit town and a felt-tip conquers the universe – the week in art
Danish superheroes fly in, the Frieze frenzy builds, Waqas Khan keeps it cosmic and Raphael reveals the wonders of wooden furniture – all in your weekly dispatch
Superflex
The latest superhero in the Marvel universe becomes fantastically bendy after an industrial accident and is soon signed up by the Avengers … No wait, it’s a socially engaged intervention by Denmark’s coolest art collective, your friendly neighbourhood Superflex.
• Tate Modern, London, 3 October to 2 April.
Superflex and Waqas Khan: this week’s best exhibitions in the UK
The Danish collective take over the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, while the visionary Pakistani artist brings his abstract, web-like works to Manchester
Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall may seem custom-made for spectacular sculptures by Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, but in recent years its installations have stressed participation and engagement. That continues with this intervention by the Danish collective Superflex, whose diverse projects propose alternative commercial models. Their activism ranges from challenging copyright laws to creating a political opera. Be ready for anything subversive.
Tate Modern, SE1, 3 October to 2 April
September 28, 2017
Reflections: Van Eyck and the Pre-Raphaelites review – not worth a look
National Gallery, London
This is a sham of a show comparing the clumsy daubs of a group of mediocre pseudo-intellectuals against great artists such as Van Eyck and Velázquez
The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood are the most successful frauds in art history. These mediocre Victorian painters knitted together a pseudo-intellectual style from bits of John Ruskin’s theories, quotations of popular poems and pretentious artistic references. Their very name reveals their heavy handed historicism, as they claimed to rescue the pure art of the early Renaissance from the refined classicism of Raphael. A dusty debate to be sure.
Continue reading...September 27, 2017
Waqas Khan review – a message of love gently invades Manchester from outer space
Manchester Art Gallery
Intricately crafted using millions of pen marks, the Lahore artist’s epic, shimmering drawings capture stars, galaxies, mountains and moons. He is worthy of comparisons with Rothko and Mondrian
‘Khushamdeed” means “welcome”. This Urdu word, also recognised in Persian and Arabic, has gently invaded Manchester, glowing in neon at the entrances to three of its museums. Waqas Khan, who created this public artwork, hopes it will reassure people there is nothing to be scared of in Manchester’s cultural sanctums. Even if you don’t read Urdu, you somehow understand it is a message of love.
So accept the welcome. Pass under the Khushamdeed sign and enter Manchester Art Gallery, where Khan’s first solo show in Britain is a visionary voyage to the ends of the universe and the depths of the soul. Stars and galaxies, moons and mountains shimmer in his extraordinary drawings – or do they?
Continue reading...September 22, 2017
May's Florence speech venue represents European unity, not division
Santa Maria Novella is church with rich links to the Renaissance, a movement based on ideas that Brexit clearly rejects
The most charismatic of Santa Maria Novella’s artistic ghosts left no visible trace there. In 1503, Leonardo da Vinci was handed the keys to a set of rooms off its cloisters, where he lived for the next few years at the expense of the Florentine Republic; thinking, inventing and occasionally working on the Mona Lisa. He even seems to have built a flying machine there. The same rooms adjacent to the church were the venue for May’s Florentine address.
Related: Theresa May proposes two-year 'period of implementation' after UK leaves EU - live updates
Continue reading...Jasper Johns' hot wax, Big Tom's geometry, and the strangest surrealist ever – the week in art
The great America unfurls his flags, targets, maps and beer cans, an old master called Big Tom reveals some weird geometry, and the Turner prize hits Hull – all in your weekly dispatch
Jasper Johns
The intellect and emotion of the objects and paintings, prints and assemblages of this exquisite artist put him at the centre of the art of our time. Flags, targets, maps and beer cans – Johns has done them all with unequalled wit. He managed to invent pop art, conceptual art and minimalism all in one go when he started to make an American flag out of waxy paint layered over newspaper collage in 1954 and has been meditating with the same serious irony about objects and their meanings ever since.
• Royal Academy, London, from 23 September to 10 December.
Jasper Johns and the Turner prize: this week’s best UK exhibitions
The world’s greatest living artist gets the blockbuster treatment he deserves, while four nominees for the coveted award exhibit their work in Hull
The world’s greatest living artist gets the blockbuster treatment he deserves. In 1954, Johns began painting an American flag in waxy layers over newspaper clippings. What was he saying about the US? Ever since, this enigmatic and highly intelligent artist has ploughed a furrow between art and life. Together with Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, he has created the most subtle, profound art of the past 60 years.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, 23 September to 10 December
September 21, 2017
The striking feminist art of Louise Bourgeois – in pictures
The often provocative work of the French sculptor is being celebrated in a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and shines a light on some of her lesser-known print pieces that focus on issues of patriarchy, sexuality and womanhood.
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