Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 153
August 22, 2016
Destroying priceless art is vile and offensive – but it is not a war crime
As Ahmad al-Mahdi goes on trial for razing Timbuktu’s mausoleums, we should remember what The Hague is for: preventing the mass murder of humans
Should acts of cultural destruction that happen during conflict be classed as war crimes? That is the precedent being set by the current trial of Ahmad al-Mahdi at the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague. Al-Mahdi has pleaded guilty to leading a group that destroyed most of the architecturally beautiful, historically precious mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali, when it was under Islamist rule in 2012.
It may seem a clear-cut case, a one-sided argument. Attacks on art and architecture have become a terrifyingly routine weapon in the hands of religious extremists. It is so easy to blow up a temple, to smash a statue. And these assaults on “idolatry” – as the extremists brand them – are not just upsetting for archaeologists. From the blowing up of Afghan Buddhas that eerily preceded the attack on the World Trade Center to the horrible confluence of vandalism and cruelty in Palmyra, it is clear that for those who psych themselves up to destroy great art, it is just a short step to killing people.
Related: Islamist pleads guilty at ICC to destroying Timbuktu mausoleums
Culture can be renewed, remade, reinvented. Human life cannot
Related: Palmyra must not be fixed. History would never forgive us
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August 19, 2016
Five of the best... art exhibitions
Constellations | Fire! Fire! | Punk 1976-78 | The Camera Exposed | Unseen: London, Paris, New York, 1930s-60s
This accessible, stimulating show focuses on groups of works linked by chains of influence and inspiration, such as a history of British and American pop art showing the artistic roots shared by Claes Oldenburg, Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake. Word clouds on the walls illuminate a galaxy of modern art history from Marcel Duchamp to Rachel Whiteread, Michelangelo Pistoletto to Gillian Wearing.
Continue reading...August 12, 2016
The Great Fire of London, punk at 40 and a golden rhino – the week in art
Edinburgh steps back in time to prehistoric Scotland, Guantánamo shapes interior design, and Rem Koolhaas gets profiled by his son – all in your weekly art dispatch
Fire! Fire!
An epochal event that marks the birth of modern Britain as Christopher Wren rebuilt the capital in its wake is explored in this family-friendly survey of the Great Fire of London. Find out how the Monument to the fire’s outbreak doubles up as a telescope, among other gems in the ashes of history.
• Museum of London, London, until April 2017.
August 10, 2016
Horny, hairy and horrifying: the scariest monsters in art
From Da Vinci’s live animal mashups to a macabre giant skeleton, a horrifying history of monsters gives our writer nightmares
Want to make a monster? Well, grab a big bag, head out to the countryside, and find the strangest creatures you can: bats, dragonflies, lizards, birds, snakes. Then lock yourself in your room, kill the animals and chop them up, keeping the most interesting bits: a bat’s wings, a serpent’s tail, an owl’s eyes. Stick these together to make a terrifying, marvellous, magical new being – and invite people round to see your new “pet” before it starts to stink.
This was how a young boy called Leonardo da Vinci made a monster in his bedroom, according to his 16th-century biographer Giorgio Vasari. Monsters: A Bestiary of the Bizarre – a new picture book of imaginary creatures in handy pocket format – shows Da Vinci was not alone. Artists have been creating monsters for centuries, using exactly the same splicing technique.
Related: The top 10 monsters in art
Continue reading...August 8, 2016
Mark Wallinger at the Freud Museum review – mirror mirror on the ceiling
Freud Museum, London
The British artist transforms Sigmund Freud’s study into a Dalí-inspired hall of mirrors for a meta-surrealist look at art, psychoanalysis and self-obsession
Related: Full Marks: Mark Wallinger's ID runs rampant in his new show
When Salvador Dalí visited Sigmund Freud in London in 1938, he showed the father of psychoanalysis his Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It is a painting about reflection. In the Greek myth of Narcissus, as told in Ovid’s Latin poem the Metamorphoses, beautiful, young Narcissus falls in love with his own image, and simply can’t stop gazing at his reflection in a pool of water. Dalí plays optical tricks to multiply the obsessive self-regard of Narcissus, as a head becomes an egg, becomes a stone, in a world of infinite reflection.
Continue reading...August 5, 2016
Freud's study, Rio's favelas and Hillary's niqab – the week in art
Tracey Emin to David Shrigley reveal their visions for Team GB, Edinburgh explores the macabre and x-rays reveal Degas’s hidden face – all in your weekly art dispatch
Mark Wallinger
A mirrored ceiling eerily doubles the space of Sigmund Freud’s study and offers a view into the mysteries of the mind. Wallinger’s installation celebrates this likable museum’s 30th anniversary.
• Freud Museum, London, until 25 September.
Five of the best... art exhibitions
Sculpture In The City | Ragnar Kjartansson | Olivia Webb | Painter’s Paintings | Graham Fagen
Jaume Plensa’s Laura is a spooky colossal head whose dimensions change as you move towards it – is it flat or round, a picture or a sculpture? This powerful and haunting portrait is one of the thought-provoking artworks placed in the plazas of the City of London for its enjoyable sculpture trail. Mat Collishaw, Enrico David, Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas and William Kentridge all help add a bit of unpredictability and imagination to the hard-headed streets of the capital’s financial district.
Continue reading...Vincent van Gogh: myths, madness and a new way of painting
A new exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum sets out to separate the artist’s late work from the myths surrounding his ‘madness’. But does a clinical interpretation of his paintings miss the mystery of his vision?
When Vincent van Gogh got out of hospital in January 1889, with a white bandage covering the place where his left ear had been, he immediately went back to work in his house next to a cafe in the southern French town of Arles. A still life he painted that month looks like a determined attempt to hold on to the things of this world, to quell his inner turbulence by concentrating on the solid facts of his life. Around a sturdy wooden table he has laid out a symbolic array of the simple pillars of his existence. Four onions. A medical self-help book. A candle. The pipe and tobacco he found steadying. A letter from his brother Theo. A teapot. And one more thing: a large, emptied bottle of absinthe.
Has he drunk the absinthe since leaving hospital? Does its emptiness represent a promise to swear off the stuff from now on?
Related: The whole truth about Van Gogh's ear, and why his 'mad genius' is a myth
Related: Science peers into Van Gogh's Bedroom to shine light on colors of artist's mind
Continue reading...August 4, 2016
Audio fail: why is so much sound art so bad? | Jonathan Jones
Susan Philipsz and John Cage have shown that the genre has claims to greatness, but two works in Edinburgh betray the emptiness of much sound art
Sunlight is streaming into an Edinburgh chapel. On speakers spaced throughout this gothic building, people are talking. Sometimes they burst into song. Then the talking starts up again. We’re hearing a choir rehearsal, it seems – but it’s all a bit lackadaisical. Apart from me, the only people here are a couple of invigilators who sit chatting in the middle of the church. That’s totally understandable. I’d be bored too after spending all day with this artwork. The chat simply adds to the futile feeling of it all.
Related: Edinburgh art festival review – ugly beauty in the Jekyll and Hyde city
Continue reading...August 3, 2016
Edinburgh art festival review – ugly beauty in the Jekyll and Hyde city
Darkness has descended on Scotland’s capital, with monstrous statues, robot babies and macabre examinations of the human soul. Go and be corrupted
Calton Hill in Edinburgh is, architecturally, the sanest place in Britain. This deliberate recreation of the Acropolis of ancient Athens is graced with early 19th-century classical temples that express a belief in science, philosophy and education, embodying the spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment when thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith led Europe towards a future of sweet reason.
It is as if the unconscious is seeping out of its lairs in the Old Town to pollute the New … with evil and madness
Related: Fat, felt and a fall to Earth: the making and myths of Joseph Beuys
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