Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 177
November 9, 2015
Army for hire: the artist employing ghost soldiers to invade Facebook
In resurrecting an 18th-century mercenary army, Constant Dullaart has found a novel way to skewer the social media empire
Constant Dullaart uses the internet to expose the internet. The Dutch artist, who once hunted down the first ever Photoshopped image – so he could see it before it was altered – is now taking on the ultimate champion of digital fantasies: Facebook.
He’s hiring a ghost army of 18th-century soldiers to attack the most mighty empire of today. His online art intervention, called The Possibility of an Army, will expose the ease with which fake identities can be created online. He has enlisted people to open Facebook accounts with the names of mercenary soldiers hired by Britain in the American war of independence. He is literally creating a fake army of dead men.
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November 6, 2015
Thatcher-gate and the ‘other KKK’ – the week in art
The V&A vetoes Margaret Thatcher’s powersuits, as we remember the UK’s oddest youth movement. Plus Jeff Wall worries his career has been a mistake and Paris celebrates the Musée Rodin reopening … with chocolate Thinkers – all in your weekly roundup
Susan Hiller
Early and celebrated works by this artist of ghosts, memories and interstellar mysteries.
• Lisson Gallery, London, from 13 November until 9 January
November 5, 2015
Modern pottery is tasteful, simple, clean lined and dull. Please don't revive it
A £1m find in Leeds and a new BBC show The Great Pottery Throw Down have put ceramics in the spotlight. A pity, then, that so much pottery is too repressed to be considered art
A ceramics expert says that after discovering a £1m collection of modern British pottery in a bungalow in Leeds, he knows how Howard Carter felt when he peeped into a long-lost tomb and got his first glimpse of the treasures of Tutankhamun.
No, he doesn’t. Carter found wonders that tell of a lost world. The hoard of ceramics found in Leeds and being hailed as a marvel is just a collection of prissy, repressed, pseudo-artistic vases and bowls.
Continue reading...November 4, 2015
Made in Japan: the true birthplace of modern art
The V&A’s new gallery of art by Japanese masters shows how their free, sensual and subversive works revolutionised the west’s way of seeing the world
Japan invented modern art. That is the highly convincing message I took from the spruced-up and rethought Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art that has just opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The first clue is in front of you as you walk into the atmospherically lit gallery (it’s as shadowy as a fashionable Japanese restaurant) – and it is massive. It is an opulent bronze sculpture of peacocks, a tree stump and a three-legged urn that a Victorian director of the V&A bought after it caused a sensation at the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris.
Continue reading...Magic in motion: the Victorian toys spinning back to life as GIFs
These charming updates of 180-year-old toys are a delight – and they’re proof of an ancient human obsession that frees our minds
The moving image is everywhere now, no longer just on cinema screens or TVs but advertising hoardings, laptops, phones. When did it all begin? When did people first try to make pictures move?
Continue reading...November 3, 2015
Why Margaret Thatcher's power suits are worthy of the V&A
By refusing the clothes in which Maggie entranced and terrorised the nation, the museum has snubbed a moment in style history on a par with Bowie’s platforms
Once in a generation a museum fails to grab a masterpiece and regrets the choice for ever. In the 1920s, the Louvre missed the chance to purchase Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and thus allowed one of Picasso’s greatest paintings to go to New York and become a treasure of the Museum of Modern Art. Now, the V&A has rejected an opportunity to add another kind of modern masterpiece to its collection – the outfits of Margaret Thatcher.
Related: V&A rejects offer to showcase Margaret Thatcher's clothing
Related: No style icon but an image-maker: why Margaret Thatcher was the wrong fit for the V&A
Continue reading...November 2, 2015
Give us your money! Why tourists should pay to visit museums in the UK
It’s only right that tourist parties should stump up the entrance fee mooted by the British Museum. Our superb institutions are staring into a financial abyss
The British Museum wants to introduce an entrance charge for tourist groups. Good.
Who can possibly argue against this, other than the tourist industry that enhances its profits on the back of Britain’s free museums?
Related: Tate’s BP sponsorship was £150,000 to £330,000 a year, figures show
Continue reading...October 30, 2015
Ai Weiwei v Lego – the week in art
The world sticks a primary-coloured middle finger up at the Danish toy company in solidarity with the Chinese artist. Plus Audrey Hepburn, a violent model village and Gilbert & George’s obsession with David Cameron – in your weekly dispatch
Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art
The V&A reopens its gallery of art from all periods of Japan’s history: a refurbished and reinvented showcase for one of the most fertile of all artistic traditions.
• V&A, London, from 5 November.
October 28, 2015
Islamic State's latest attack on Palmyra is a picture of the end of civilisation
When Isis blew up three captives tied to the Temple of Baalshamin’s columns, it proved the inseparability of violence against art and violence against humans
It is, in a monstrous way, the picture of the year. This week the latest atrocity reported to have been carried out by Islamic State was illustrated in news reports with a photograph of a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust rising above the ruins of ancient Palmyra. This brutal conjunction of beauty and violence – the remaining columns of the ancient city gold-hued against the leaden plume of destruction floating in the pure blue sky – is an image of sheer fanaticism, unbridled hatred, and the obliteration of everything anyone has ever called civilised.
The picture was released on 25 August, but it is the only possible way to illustrate this week’s story: in a new twist of sadism and barbarity, Isis have reportedly killed three prisoners by tying them to Roman-period columns, then blowing up the columns.
Related: Why it's all right to be more horrified by the razing of Palmyra than mass murder
Continue reading...October 27, 2015
Covering up Japanese erotica for lols betrays our timidity when it comes to sexuality
The erotic Japanese artform shunga has been modernised – using jokey emoji-like icons. It’s proof of our perversely prudish sexual age
What’s gone wrong with erotica? Are we too addled by a hypersexualised age to find artistic beauty in images of desire?
The question is aroused – or not – by a book of “modern shunga” that takes the sensual art form invented in 17th-century Japan and subjects it to some crass, and actually quite prudish, jokes. It’s all very well showing footballs, feathers and emoji-like Punch and Judy faces over the rude bits in these sketchy pastiches of shunga masterpieces. But what happened to good old-fashioned voyeurism? Why cover up what people in the past loved to look at?
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