Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 176
November 17, 2015
Olafur Eliasson: why I'm sailing Arctic icebergs into Paris
It was meant to be a comment on climate change. But now, by sailing 12 pieces of ice from Greenland and placing them in the Place de la République, the artist is hoping to restore the numbed feelings of a city in shock
It was planned as a wake-up call to one crisis, but it is sailing towards the heart of another. A mass of ice harvested from Greenland is currently on its way to Paris, where it is due to be installed on Place de la République on 29 November to mark the UN climate change conference COP 21. “The blocks are in freezer containers normally used to ship shrimps from Greenland,” says Olafur Eliasson, the Danish-Icelandic artist behind Ice Watch Paris.
He imagined the work as a way of making the fragility and decay of the Arctic visible, not to mention tangible: “You stand in front of the ice, and then you can touch it.” Now, it also feels like a strange and unexpected homage to Paris itself.
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November 16, 2015
Rogue gallery: rejects from the Taylor Wessing Portrait prize – in pictures
What makes a good photograph? What defines a bad one? And who do the judges of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize think they are? Such are the questions that arise from looking at the pictures included in this year’s Portrait Salon, an exhibition of photographs rejected by the National Portrait Gallery’s competition
November 13, 2015
Sex and the city: 1660s London brought to life at National Maritime Museum
Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution exhibition explores the great cultural and scientific changes that shook Restoration England
“Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me),” wrote Philip Larkin. But he was wrong. It began in 1660. This was exactly the right moment for the 27-year-old Samuel Pepys, who careered joyously through a suddenly uninhibited London full of beautiful people sensually clad in frills, lace and silk – and that was just the men.
The great cultural change that came about in Britain in 1660 was an escape into sex, glamour, art and science after three decades of violence and religious bigotry. A higher proportion of the population had died in the recent British civil wars than in the first world war – and on home soil, with buildings destroyed and civilians suffering alongside soldiers. Peace brought the military and “godly” rule of Oliver Cromwell. When he died, the young Pepys sailed to Holland with his patron Edward Montagu to bring back Charles Stuart and make him king.
Related: Samuel Pepys' other diary on display in new exhibition
Continue reading...Marina Abramović sued by her ex, and Modigliani breaks a record – the week in art
Ulay and Marina’s relationship has soured – and he’s taking her to court. Plus the reclining nude bought for $170m by a former taxi driver and much more – in your weekly art-world dispatch
Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution
What makes history gripping? Is it plague, fire and revolution – all of which feature in the world of the great 17th-century diarist Pepys – or the daily details he records from feasting on oysters to “dallying” with women at every available opportunity? This should be a fascinating encounter with the art, science and gritty reality of Pepys and his age.
• National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, from 20 November until 28 March.
November 12, 2015
Susan Hiller review – a bizarre, brilliant haunted house
Lisson Gallery, London
With UFO testimonies, ghost photographs and drawings made by literally splitting hairs, Hiller’s new show is a fascinating gathering of countercultural beliefs and outsider truths that will leave you spooked
Something has been lost. It vanished years ago and no one can remember what it is. But still we search the skies and the shadows. Every mysterious light in the sky and each phantom in the camera lens is a glimpse of that nameless thing we lack.
Susan Hiller’s modern world is a haunted house. It is not a smooth-running machine, a utopia, or a digital playground but a place of troubled souls looking for the spiritual consolations that once flooded everyday life but are marginalised now by our technocratic age. As a Russian woman laments in one of the many voices collected in her eerie exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, we were happier in the middle ages, when we had angels and demons.
Continue reading...November 11, 2015
Is Camila Batmanghelidjh really worse than Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell?
The National Portrait Gallery has taken down its painting of the Kids Company founder. But if the collection is a reflection of life, surely there should be space for the more ‘morally ambiguous’ among us
The serial wife-killer stands plump and cocksure in the National Portrait Gallery, flaunting a dagger. Hans Holbein’s lifesize drawing of Henry VIII is undoubtedly the greatest work of art in this museum of pictures of British people. But should such a murderous tyrant be celebrated in our gallery of national heroes at all?
Henry Tudor was surely a worse human being than Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, whose portrait recently vanished from the National Portrait Gallery wall just as her public reputation took a nose dive. It is one of a whole bunch removed to make space for current exhibitions, but reports state that there are no plans for this painting by Dean Marsh to be rehung. If the much-criticised charity boss really has been permanently mothballed by the NPG, it reveals something profoundly primitive in our attitude to portraits.
Continue reading...Are the most expensive paintings ever worth their prices? A definitive ranking
On Monday, Modigliani’s Reclining Nude joined an elite band of artworks that have commanded over $150m at auction or private sale – but are they worth it?
The art market is reaching ever new heights – or excesses – and it is blue chip modern masters who are setting the records, with Amedeo Modigliani this week joining the likes of Picasso and Cezanne in art’s financial elite. But do the prices really match the quality of these uber-expensive works? Here are the world’s most expensive paintings ranked not by price, but by actual merit. (Prices, meanwhile, have been adjusted for inflation.)
Continue reading...November 10, 2015
Sex sells: why Modigliani's 98-year-old hymn to lust is worth $170m
Painted through an absinthe haze as the first world war raged, Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché mixes modernist thrills with age-old hedonism. No wonder it still seduces
She offers herself up to the painter, lying back on a rich red bed, her eyes as black as desire. This is not an academic study of the nude; this is a painting about sex.
Related: Modigliani's Reclining Nude fetches second-highest ever art auction price
No paintings have ever been easier on the eye than the great modernist nudes
Continue reading...November 9, 2015
A bird in the hand: the boy who threw away a Picasso
Actor Brian Blessed’s story of rejecting a drawing by Picasso is fascinating but odd: how could anyone not recognise a dove by the greatest artist since Raphael?
The booming actor Brian Blessed has a flair for a story. Asked by a newspaper if he ever made a financial mistake, he revealed that when he was 12 he met Pablo Picasso. The greatest artist of the 20th century was in Sheffield for a peace congress and the boy Blessed cheekily asked if he really was Picasso – then challenged him to prove it by drawing something.
Picasso drew a dove, and the future film star said “That’s not a dove”, and threw it to the ground. It was picked up and preserved by someone else and today – claims Blessed – it is worth £50m.
Continue reading...Pyotr Pavlensky is setting Russia's evil history ablaze
By torching the doors of Moscow’s security service HQ, the radical artist ties its sinister history – the KGB, the Gulag, the secret police that boiled people alive – to Putin’s current reign. No wonder he was arrested for hooliganism
Pyotr Pavlensky is not exactly a subtle artist. The radical Russian performance artist made world headlines in 2013 when he nailed his scrotum to Red Square. Now he has been arrested for setting fire to the front door of the Federal Security Service Building on Lubyanka Square in Moscow.
Pavlensky has been charged with “hooliganism” – yet this is a superbly well-aimed piece of political art. Normally, setting fire to a building would not win my approval. Someone might get hurt. And this is a historic front door, on a historic building.
Related: Russian artist arrested for setting fire to security service HQ
Related: Petr Pavlensky: why I nailed my scrotum to Red Square
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