Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 168
February 26, 2016
Botticelli goes pop and Yoko tells the time – the week in art
The V&A’s Botticelli Reimagined show opens alongside his drawings over at the Courtauld, while Oxford hosts a starry group show with Douglas Gordon and Elizabeth Price – all in your weekly art dispatch
Botticelli Reimagined
This provocative look at the afterlife of an artist shows how the Renaissance genius of Sandro Botticelli was rediscovered by the Victorian age and has fascinated art ever since. With poptastic versions of Botticelli by everyone from Andy Warhol to Dolce & Gabbana, this is no staid old-master exhibition – but there are plenty of real Botticellis too. Is this the future of art’s past?
• V&A, London, 5 March to 3 July
‘Saving art for the nation’ merely disguises the poverty of our museums | Jonathan Jones
If there is a work of art that’s worth buying for Britain, it is surely Alberto Giacometti’s Femme (1928-29). Just a quick look at a photo of this modern masterpiece will tell you it is special. There’s a softness to it that sensually collides with its squared abstract form. This is dream art, of a radical and eerie kind. One circular scoop in the white plaster conjures an eye, a slit makes a mouth, and a bigger circular recession suggests … what?
Related: Alberto Giacometti sculpture barred from leaving UK
Continue reading...February 25, 2016
Brexit? Britain has already voted to stay. Just look in its galleries
Boris Johnson is wrong – we cannot claim to love European culture if we leave the EU. Some of the greatest artists ever to work in Britain were migrants from the continent, so when will the Stay camp start playing the culture card?
Boris Johnson is no philistine. He has written about the ancient world and eloquently protested the destruction of Palmyra. In his recent declaration of British independence in the Telegraph, he evidently wanted to make it clear that leaving the EU implies no disdain for European art, literature, music, architecture or, of course, that glorious food. Right at the top of his article, he praises Europe as “the home of the greatest and richest culture in the world, to which Britain is and will be an eternal contributor”.
Loving Europe’s culture, claims Johnson, has nothing to do with accepting what he sees as the anti-democratic ambitions of the EU: rejecting Brussels does not imply any kind of narrow-minded suspicion of foreigners or their art.
Related: Brexit would harm efforts to tackle global poverty, UK aid figures warn
All that wonderful European cultural heritage has to be paid for. Those statues and temples cost a lot to look after
Continue reading...February 23, 2016
A robot Rembrandt? I'll eat my beret!
Google has invented a device that turns smartphone photos into portraits. Nice try, guys – but machines will never sketch like Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Picasso
Lo and behold, the art of portraiture has now been replaced by an app and a robotic arm. Just put a beret on your mobile and let it sketch you. No need to bother with artists ever again. That, in so many words, seems to be the message of the new tool from Google’s Creative Lab, just unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Related: Will automation make us happier? – live chat
Related: Tell us something we don't know: why science can't show us much about art
Continue reading...February 22, 2016
The Cambridge cockerel is no Cecil Rhodes statue – it should be treated as a masterpiece
Students are calling for the cockerel of Jesus College, looted from Benin in 1897, to be returned to Africa. But it could still find an appropriate home in the UK
Students are right to be unhappy about the sculpture from Benin that stands in the hall of Jesus College, Cambridge. It should either be repatriated, as students demand, or displayed in a totally different place and context.
Related: Cambridge college's bronze cockerel must go back to Nigeria, students say
Related: Looted artefacts, imperialist statues: is repatriation and removal the answer?
Related: Cecil Rhodes statue to remain at Oxford after 'overwhelming support'
Continue reading...February 19, 2016
Shia LaBeouf and Eduardo Paolozzi both take the lift – the week in art
Mark Wallinger goes into analysis, the ancient Greeks expose themselves and Shia LaBeouf gets stuck in an Oxford lift – all in your weekly art dispatch
Mark Wallinger
One of the wittiest and most thoughtful artists at work in Britain today meditates on identity and psychoanalysis in this large new show featuring self-portraiture, ink-blot tests, Leonardo da Vinci and Sigmund Freud. What an ego! Or rather, what an id.
• Hauser and Wirth, London, 25 February to 7 May
De-Bosched! Who cares if a painting isn't by a famous artist after all?
Masterpieces by Rembrandt, Da Vinci and now two of the Prado’s famed Bosches have been identified as the work of ‘followers’ – is it time to update the labels?
Art museums like to present their best treasure in an authoritative way. Clearly printed labels on paintings tell you the artist’s name and when he or she lived, as well as the likely date of the work. But how reliable is that information? And if the facts change, do labels change too?
Related: Hieronymus Bosch review – a heavenly host of delights on the road to hell
Related: Art researchers uncover 'lost' Hieronymus Bosch – and sausage link
Continue reading...February 17, 2016
Floating Yodas aren't art, but don't kick them to the kerb, National Gallery
Gabriele Finaldi hates the living statues outside his gallery – but they’re just a sign that London is the same riotous place depicted in the museum’s paintings
They pose as floating statues of Yoda, play lame versions of classic songs and generally celebrate idiocy. The buskers who entertain tourists outside London’s National Gallery are not exactly exponents of high art. But so what? As we used to say in a more tolerant age, they’re not hurting anyone.
Gabriele Finaldi, the new director of the National Gallery, disagrees. He has complained about the vulgar and demeaning chaos on his institution’s doorstep. He says living statues and bagpipers playing the Star Wars theme have no place in front of the museum.
Continue reading...Jeb Bush’s gun tweet is a portrait of the American nightmare | Jonathan Jones
When a man hoping to be president of the United States can sum up his own country with a photograph of a monogrammed gun and the single-word caption “America”, it may be time for the rest of the world to worry.
Instead they are laughing. Since the Republican nomination hopeful (although not very hopeful) Jeb Bush tweeted a picture of his handgun he has been mocked around the world with images that comically replace that violent symbol with the gentler images that sum up less trigger-happy places – a cup of tea for the UK, a bike for the Netherlands, a curry for Bradford.
Related: He's back: George W Bush turns on the campaign trail charm to fight for brother Jeb
America. pic.twitter.com/TeduJkwQF3
Continue reading...Is Kanye West hip-hop's greatest cubist?
Whether West’s latest album The Life of Pablo is a homage to Picasso or not, the two artists share a genius for presenting the world in creative collage
The Life of Pablo – what a great title. It would be arresting on the front cover of a Booker prize winning novel. As the name of a hip-hop album, it proves pop culture evolves. Back in the day, people had to pretend they saw depth in such concept album titles as The Wall, Tommy and Sandinista! By those standards Kanye West deserves the Forward prize for poetry.
Related: Kanye West – The Life of Pablo review: 'You can see why his immodesty rubs people up the wrong way'
Related: Kim Kardashian’s Selfish: a nail in the coffin for artistic photography?
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