Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 174
December 14, 2015
Corbyn’s Christmas card? Now there’s a threat to national security | Jonathan Jones
Well, that would be in line with the attacks since he became Labour leader, and as likely to miss its target
We have seen and heard some strange things from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. The shadow chancellor flaunting Mao’s Little Red Book in the House of Commons. Corbyn himself quoting Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. But the image on Corbyn’s Christmas card is surely the most worrying sign yet that the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition is a clear and present threat to national security.
It’s cleverly done. At first sight, this is just a snowy scene with a bicycle in it. There’s a telephone box giving a flash of red in the bleak midwinter. But think about it – and take a look at the actual weather outside your window today. Britain (at least the bit where Jeremy lives) hasn’t had a white Christmas in years. So what is the snow on this card really saying?
There is one place that always has a white Christmas – and that is Russia
What is it about Santa and socialism? The Spectator’s Christmas issue has a cover with Marx as Father Christmas
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Christmas comes early! Ed Ruscha gifts a piece of LA to the UK
The king of apocalyptic pop art has given an early Christmas present to Tate: a copy of every single print he makes for the rest of his life
Ed Ruscha lives in Los Angeles, a city so vast its edges are unimaginable when you’re inside it, a place of space, signage, gas stations and fast food – a wonderland he has made his own.
Related: US pop artist Ed Ruscha donates collection of prints to Tate
The earthquake, the aliens, whatever is coming, has sent out advance clues in Ruscha’s art
Continue reading...December 11, 2015
Shia LaBeouf, Quentin Blake and a grenade in the Turner prize – the week in art
Uproar as the first ever ‘non-artists’ win Britain’s biggest art award. Plus the Hollywood star-cum-performance artist launches a hotline and beloved illustrators come over all Christmassy – all in your weekly art dispatch
Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer
Dutch art of the 17th century has a cool allure for modern eyes. The reality of it is so absorbing, the apparent use of optical instruments so precocious. But perhaps most of all, we recognise a world comparable with our own in these scenes of middle class domesticity. This exhibition includes the Queen’s two majestic Vermeers as well as works by Gerrit Dou, Gabriël Metsu, Jan Steen and Pieter de Hooch in a silent, subtle encounter with the art of ordinariness.
• Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, until 14 February.
December 10, 2015
Museum director walks into a bar: meet Neil MacGregor, standup comic
The departing director of the British Museum had the crowd in stitches at his leaving do. Here are his best gags
Neil MacGregor celebrated his triumphant directorship of the British Museum last night with a leaving party in the museum’s Great Court. He is well known for being multi-talented – not just an excellent curator but a presenter of great radio shows and an author of books that become instant classics. What can’t he do?
Now, he’s revealed another side to himself – standup comic. MacGregor’s farewell speech had his audience in stitches.
Related: The Guardian view on Neil MacGregor: a giant of Britain’s cultural life | Editorial
Continue reading...December 9, 2015
Nightmare before Christmas: the Chapman brothers' filthy new shop
Creepy £10 loo rolls, bedtime tales guaranteed to give your kids sleepless nights … punk present-giving has rarely been so well catered for
Tired of Christmas shopping already? Dying to stick two fingers up to the whole seasonal nonsense? Or just want to raise a smile at holiday parties? You could do a lot worse than to visit the Chapman brothers’ online store for a nightmare before Christmas.
Continue reading...December 8, 2015
There's only one Mona Lisa! Why a 10-year study got it all wrong
After a decade of research, a scientist claims to have found the portrait of another woman under Leonardo’s greatest work. Here’s why he’s so mistaken
Who is the Mona Lisa, really? There are two answers – and French scientist Pascal Cotte has got both of them wrong.
Cotte has told a BBC documentary about his 10-year study of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting using the Layer Amplification Method (LAM). When you look down through the layers of Leonardo’s painting, you see the fossils of his changing conception of the Mona Lisa. The first image he set down, Cotte says, was far less harmonious than the woman we see today – and she did not smile.
Continue reading...Five of the best art exhibitions for Christmas 2015
Wonder at Botticini’s Paradise, see Turner’s bracing vistas in Edinburgh, and explore the roots of the European winter festival at the V&A
It is the season to put nativity scenes on postcards, but the story of religious art goes so much deeper than we tend to notice. This exhibition focuses on one of the most spectacular Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery, a detailed vision of Paradise that contains heretical details. Ideal if you want to see how all the cribs and stars on all those cards on the mantelpiece fit into wider beliefs – and even heresies.
Continue reading...December 7, 2015
Plague and hell fire: the V&A's window on to a dark, disturbing world
In the museum’s new permanent display of art from 1600 to 1815, a breathtaking Bernini sets us off on a journey from plague-ridden Baroque darkness to Enlightenment exuberance
Ludovica Albertoni was a 16th-century noblewoman who gave her wealth and ultimately her life to help the poor and the sick of Rome. After she was beatified by the pope in 1671, Gian Lorenzo Bernini created a stupefying sculpture for her tomb statue. With her head thrown back and one hand caressing her right breast, she seems to writhe in ecstasy.
It’s a staggering way to start the V&A’s new permanent display of European arts and crafts from the age of Caravaggio to the defeat of Napoleon. This museum has so many great works that it is always unveiling new wonders. For the spectacular first room of these galleries, it has reunited the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni with other terracotta models by Bernini. Also present is his sublime full-size marble statue of Neptune, taken from a Roman fountain and brought to Britain in the 18th century. This is now the best display of the great Baroque artist that you can see outside Rome – and it doesn’t even include every Bernini in the V&A collection.
Continue reading...December 4, 2015
A feminist Pirelli calendar and the rise of Donald Dump – the week in art
Pirelli has a bit of a gear change with Annie Leibovitz’s portraits. Plus a high-speed tour of Art Basel Miami Beach, and how Donald Trump the pottymouth sparked an art movement – all in your weekly art dispatch
Europe 1600-1815
These new galleries at the V&A cover one of the most spectacular periods of European art, architecture, design and fashion, from the baroque to the age of Napoleon. They ought to be fabulous.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7, from 9 December.
December 1, 2015
Tomb raiders: what treasures could lurk inside Egypt's lost chambers?
Egyptology is entering another golden age, with dazzling new discoveries of hidden chambers under the Pyramids and in Tutankhamun’s tomb. A cynic could almost say it’s hype for the desperate tourist industry
Egypt never seems to stop revealing its ancient wonders and mysteries. Now, it seems we may be on edge of new discoveries as marvellous as when Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.
The most astonishing claims being made concern that very tomb. The “wonders” of the young king’s burial are exhibited today in Cairo. Yet it seems that Carter may have missed something potentially just as extraordinary, right in front of him. The dazzle of Tutankhamun’s gold probably satisfied the tomb’s discoverers – and besides, it has taken 21st-century technology to find the new mystery: traces of what may be well-hidden and still unopened chambers behind the tomb of the boy king.
Related: Is Egypt closer to unlocking the mystery of Queen Nefertiti in King Tut's tomb?
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