Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 126
August 18, 2017
Giacometti and Rashid Johnson: this week’s best UK exhibitions
One of the true greats of modern art is celebrated at the Tate Modern, while the New Yorker takes his meditation on race to the English countryside
This outstanding presentation of one of the true greats of modern art manages to combine an exquisite layout with abundant in-depth selections from all periods of the Swiss-born sculptor’s evolution to create a genuine blockbuster. It starts with an entrancing display of the human face, from Giacometti’s earliest realistic busts to the elongated caricatures of his late years, leading on to his experiments in surrealism and the second world war, when he rethought the role of the modern artist.
Tate Modern, SE1, to 10 September
August 13, 2017
From Arcade Fire to Angels in America, neon is having a moment in the spotlight
Neon lighting has moved from vulgar Vegas to some of our most beloved art. Andy Warhol was right – it’s one of ‘the great modern things’
Neon is up in lights, again. The gaseous element whose glamorous glow has been appropriated by one artist after another since the 1960s is now crossing from contemporary art into every cultural field going. It pulses in the National Theatre’s hit Angels in America, shines ethereally white in the artwork for Arcade Fire’s Everything Now and gleams a sleazy violet in ads for Netflix’s wrestling comedy Glow.
Once neon symbolised vulgarity, sleaze, Las Vegas. Now it symbolises art. Artists have made luminous commercial signage so much their own that the new wave of neon in popular culture consciously apes that artiness. Arcade Fire’s album cover resembles Martin Creed’s white neon conceptual statement EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT. Ripoffs of – sorry, homages to – Tracey Emin’s confessional neons are also appearing everwhere: the other day I did a double take at the Old Vic theatre because the bar was full of Eminesque pieces of neon poesy. You have probably seen these increasingly omnipresent signs saying whatever someone pays a signmaker to say in shops, restaurants or your kitchen.
Continue reading...August 11, 2017
Whale brains, flying robots and Cindy Sherman the selfie queen – the week in art
The Natural History Museum journeys to the bottom of the sea, Caravaggio dazzles in Edinburgh and Sherman reveals some distorted self portraits on her Instagram account – all in your weekly dispatch
Whales: Beneath the Surface
Continue reading...Cézanne unmasked: the shattering portraits that blew Picasso and the Paris avant garde away
He painted his wife without lips. He painted his friend with a spinal deformity. And he painted himself as a ghost in a top hat. Paul Cézanne’s unflinching portraits, coming to Britain this autumn, didn’t just astonish Picasso and his disciples. They changed art for ever
In Paris at the dawn of the 20th century, a generation of young artists changed everything. They visited the dusty yet magical galleries of the Ethnography Museum in the rambling Trocadéro and some started their own collections of African masks. This fascination with non-European art helped them break with hundreds of years of tradition. Pablo Picasso completed a portrait of his friend Gertrude Stein by giving her a mask instead of a face. He then painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon with its wildly cavorting masked prostitutes. Modern art was born in those bold years, in a glamorous atmosphere of absinthe, drugs (Picasso and his friends dabbled in opium) and sex in the red light district of Montmartre.
There is just one problem with this exhilarating story of the birth of modern art. It is not true.
His wife's face becomes a porcelain mask – it is almost perfectly oval
Instead of concealing his friend's frailty, Cézanne emphasises it
Why does he keep coming back to his own image? Because he can't find what he's looking for
Continue reading...Soul of a Nation and Raphael: this week’s best UK exhibitions
The Tate excels itself with an incredibly rich study of black American art, while the Ashmolean will transform how you think about the Italian genius
Hilarious and provocative conjunctions of word and image make Davis a powerful feminist artist. Her arresting videos include a surreal remix of a 1960s documentary about the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The pretentious narration is undermined by images of the banality and boredom of housework and suburban life. Intelligent, enjoyable stuff.
Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, to 8 October
August 10, 2017
Jim Carrey's art is proof Hollywood stars should avoid the canvas | Jonathan Jones
The comic actor’s short film about his paintings is painful viewing, but he’s not the first star who has tried, and failed, to moonlight as an artist
This is not a scientific law, probably, and I cannot suggest what causes the phenomenon, but the most embarrassing and talentless of all celebrities who try their hand at art tend to be Hollywood actors. Talentlesss at art, I mean. Jim Carrey may or may not be a great comic actor. He is an astonishingly bad painter and sculptor. Carrey has released a video of his artistic efforts that makes for painful viewing. Can he be serious? Is this all a build-up to a film in which he plays a deluded character who thinks he’s an artist?
Related: Val Kilmer: 'Lord, I'm never going to read this tripe!'
Continue reading...August 9, 2017
+/- Human review – Is this the future of artificial intelligence? Bring it on
Roundhouse, London
Random International’s installation, Zoological, features a flock of airborne spheres that glide and swoop and dance and swarm above and among us. What a mind-boggling show
In René Magritte’s surrealist painting La Voix des Airs (1931), three inscrutable spheres hover in an empty blue sky above green fields. I’ve always wondered what these enigmatic objects really are. Do they come from outer space? Are they about to open and unleash a robot army? What strange message do they bring from their impersonal dimension?
At last I know, because I have met them. I have even danced with them. In the darkened heights of the Roundhouse in north London, a flying flock of white spheres that uncannily resemble Magritte’s dream objects float intelligently and curiously, checking out the humans below, hovering downward to see us better. They are the most convincing embodiment of artificial intelligence I have ever seen. For these responsive, even sensitive machines truly create a sense of encounter with a digital life form that mirrors, or mocks, human free will.
They are the most convincing embodiment of artificial intelligence I have ever seen
This artwork that opens visions of a future in which life evolves beyond biology itself.
Continue reading...August 4, 2017
The kinkiest art export, a hymn to breastfeeding, and Raphael's youthful genius – the week in art
A meditation on popcorn, women weavers celebrated, plus a terrifying portrait of a nation on the brink of disaster – all in your weekly dispatch
Kate Davis
Step into this Old Town gallery for a stimulating encounter with some original and powerful feminist video art, which includes a hymn to breastfeeding illuminated by a montage of medieval and Renaissance paintings.
• Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until 8 October.
Henri Matisse and Stephen Sutcliffe: this week’s best UK exhibitions
The French painter’s art collection is the focus at the Royal Academy, while class and sexuality in the 1960s are examined at Talbot Rice Gallery
The art collection that Matisse built over a lifetime, from Kongo masks to north African furniture, has a starring role in his paintings and this exhibition. Born in 1869, Matisse lived more than a third of his life in the 19th century and was schooled in its conventions. In the 1900s, he played a leading part in turning those conventions upside down. Together with friends such as Pablo Picasso, he found inspiration in what was then called “primitive” art. In later years, travel helped him renew his own art, and his collection reflects that. A glimpse of genius at work.
Royal Academy of Arts, W1, 5 August to 12 November
August 2, 2017
Want to try slow tourism? First give up your guidebook
Florence’s Uffizi Gallery wants to discourage casual visitors, promoting repeat visits at different times. It’s a noble aim: we should all learn to take our time
Some people go to Florence and check off its sights before heading for a pizzeria in the city that does Italy’s worst pizza (really, try the lethally delicious local delicacy Lardo di Colonnata instead). Others feast so obsessively on art they make themselves sick. Overdoing it on the art of Florence is a recognised medical condition, called Stendhal syndrome, named after the pseudonym of French novelist Marie-Henri Beyle, who fainted from artistic overload here in the early 19th century.
Now, Eike Schmidt, the director of the city’s Uffizi Gallery, wants to discourage the more superficial of its 2 million annual visitors, and, presumably, fill the city’s hospitals with exhausted aesthetes by changing how people visit Italy’s greatest art collection. He hopes to achieve this by changing ticket prices to reward repeat visits, including in the early mornings and off season, and punish people who “come in for a selfie in front of Botticelli’s Venus”, discouraging “hit-and-run tourism”.
Related: 10 of the best ways to enjoy Florence … on a budget
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