Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 141
December 22, 2016
The Vatican appoints its first female museum head – but it can go further
Hiring art historian Barbara Jatta is another progressive move from the Vatican Museums – now it must open up its secret wonders to the public
Which museum will be the next to appoint a female director? Most of the world’s great visual arts institutions remain firmly under male control. The current bosses of the British Museum and the National Gallery in London are men, as are the directors of the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. So which groundbreaking top-rank art museum will be run by a woman from 1 January 2017?
It is one of the oldest and grandest of them all, and you will find it at the heart of perhaps the most male-dominated enclave in Europe. The new director of the Vatican Museums, whose collections started to be amassed in the Renaissance, is the Italian art historian Barbara Jatta, who previously curated prints there and rose to be deputy director. She has now been appointed by Pope Francis to succeed the current 77-year-old director, Antonio Paolucci, in the new year.
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December 21, 2016
Stallone refused Trump's arts job – but who will take this poisoned chalice?
The actor and part-time painter was right to decline a role as chief of the National Endowment of the Arts. Whoever takes it will be tainted by a hellish reign
Sylvester Stallone is not as dumb as he looks. Of course he isn’t – he’s made a career of it. Stallone may be famous for playing action heroes and musclebound fighters, but in real life Rocky loves to draw and paint. He has even exhibited at major museums in Russia and France. He may not be a great painter, but he does plug away at an art he apparently prefers to acting.
Related: Sylvester Stallone: the wacky people's champ who battled his own ego
Continue reading...December 20, 2016
Ignore the snobs – Monet is a contender for the greatest artist ever
A Monet pastel gifted to the Scottish National Gallery shows how powerful the impressionist is – a genius creator of poetic symbolism
Who is the greatest artist of all time? Names like Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Picasso spring to mind. Yet a very strong contender has to be Claude Monet.
That’s right, Monet. The soft and soppy, “chocolate box” impressionist, that painter of picnics and haystacks. Early in 2016, Monet’s water lily decorations revealed their reflective depths in the Royal Academy’s fine exhibition Painting the Modern Garden. The year ends with an early Christmas present for the Scottish National Gallery, which has just unveiled a scintillating pastel by Monet that has been in a Scottish private collection since the 1920s and has now been given to the museum through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme.
Jonathan Jones's top 10 art exhibitions of 2016
From great masterpieces by Caravaggio and Picasso to Georgiana Houghton’s hypnotic rediscovered paintings, this was a year full of stunning blockbusters
More on the best culture of 2016Adrian Searle’s top 10 art shows of 2016
Picasso emerged here as the modern world’s true god of sculpture, an artist with no respect for what art 'should' be
Continue reading...December 16, 2016
From the Moomins to Asterix, picture books help build a better world
Do we buy picture books to relive our own childhoods? Perhaps, but the best have the power to inspire both children and adults
I think it was while waiting for our boat to plummet over the precipice of Le Grand Splatch, a colossal water ride at Parc Astérix, that I started to wonder how wise it is to share cherished illustrated books from your childhood with your kids.
Related: UK's first major Moomin exhibition set to open in London
Continue reading...Five of the best exhibitions this week
Beyond Caravaggio | William Kentridge | South Africa: The Art Of A Nation | Yves Klein | Hepworth Prize For Sculpture
The shockingly beautiful naturalism of Caravaggio puts real people on canvas with an immediacy unparalleled in art, so it’s not hard to imagine why this dangerous maverick inspired a crowd of imitators. What is more surprising is how well their paintings stand up to his. The handful of Caravaggio masterpieces in this fascinating exhibition open a door into the rich realism that energised European art in the 17th century. Powerful works by the likes of Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera and Georges de La Tour light up the shadows.
Continue reading...Moomins, board games and taxidermy – the week in art
The first UK exhibition devoted to the Moomins opens, while Djordje Ozbolt’s bizarre pastiches arrive in Bath – plus the rest of the week’s art happenings
Adventures in Moominland
Interactive exhibition for all ages about the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson and her surreal creations the Moomins.
• Southbank Centre, London, until 23 April
December 14, 2016
Forget the modernists – Turner and Stubbs are Britain's true radicals | Jonathan Jones
Property developer Harry Hyams has left his art collection to the nation in his will, and – Victorian sentimentality aside – it contains some of the brightest jewels of British culture
Thank God for private collectors. They follow their own tastes and enthusiasms, don’t have to listen to critics or follow fashion and, in buying the art they love, end up enriching us all.
Harry Hyams was that kind of collector. It has been revealed that this multimillionaire property developer – the man behind Centre Point, London – who died in December 2015 has left his art collection to the nation and dedicated £387m from his estate to pay for its maintenance and display. It is a collection that not only enriches us all, but offers a welcome corrective to the widespread and apparently growing ignorance of British art history that stops us valuing the real achievements of British artists down the ages.
Continue reading...December 13, 2016
Fake or fortune: is this lost Leonardo da Vinci drawing the real deal?
A drawing owned by a French doctor is thought to be a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci – it bears all the hallmarks of one of history’s greatest creative minds
Miracles do occur. People walk into auction houses with an old bit of art that has been in the attic for centuries and it turns out to be a masterpiece. It has just happened, apparently.
A drawing of Saint Sebastian that a French doctor brought to the Paris auction house Tajan is now thought to be a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. The auctioneer has the backing of Carmen C Bambach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one of the world’s most astute curators of Leonardo, in making this sensational claim. If they are right, this is an amazing find – a new drawing by one of the greatest geniuses in history. So are they?
It would take not just a forger of genius but a whole panel of art historians to create a fake this subtle
Continue reading...December 12, 2016
Under threat from terrorism, Coptic culture remains eternally powerful
The explosion in Cairo that killed 25 Coptic Christians shows the hostility to this antique faith. But it might just have helped invent popular culture
The Coptic church is Egypt’s oldest living religion. Its unique artistic tradition stretches right back into antiquity and stands as a rebuke to the murderers who killed 25 worshippers in a chapel next to Cairo’s main cathedral on 11 December.
For the legacy of Coptic art proves that people of this faith are in a direct line from the ancient Egyptians themselves and to protect their culture, beliefs and lives is to defend the very identity of Egypt.
Related: Egypt: three days of mourning declared after 25 people killed in Cairo bomb
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