Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 19

Judy Chicago: Revelations review – cosmic cobblers from a dinner party goddess

Serpentine North Gallery, London
Her cosmological screed is tiresome and her blissed-out female figures are idealised beyond belief. But at least her musclebound men cavort, weep blood and urinate realistically

I always assumed Judy Chicago deserved the credit for her 1970s masterpiece of feminist art, The Dinner Party, an epochal installation in the form of a triangular table set with places for great historical women, including Theodora of Byzantium, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Virginia Woolf. This monumental attempt to give women their rightful place in history and culture, now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, is a consummately clear and bold expression of an idea only a bigot would argue with now.

But it turns out it wasn’t her idea after all. She received miraculous inspiration from above, or below – for, in her personal cosmology, the female divine power is also a Gaian earth spirit. As she worked on The Dinner Party, Chicago created an illuminated manuscript entitled Revelations that is now being published for the first time and is at the heart of her Serpentine show. It tells us, among other mystical nuggets, that it was not Chicago but “The Goddess”, who originally “created a great triangular table, open in the center and formed in Her sign, which She placed upon the sea of names that honored Her Disciples”.

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Judy Chicago: Revelations review – cosmic cobblers from a pseudo goddess

Serpentine North Gallery, London
Her cosmological screed is tiresome and her blissed-out female figures are idealised beyond belief. But at least her musclebound men cavort, weep blood and urinate realistically

I always assumed Judy Chicago deserved the credit for her 1970s masterpiece of feminist art, The Dinner Party, an epochal installation in the form of a triangular table set with places for great historical women, including Theodora of Byzantium, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Virginia Woolf. This monumental attempt to give women their rightful place in history and culture, now on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, is a consummately clear and bold expression of an idea only a bigot would argue with now.

But it turns out it wasn’t her idea after all. She received miraculous inspiration from above, or below – for, in her personal cosmology, the female divine power is also a Gaian earth spirit. As she worked on The Dinner Party, Chicago created an illuminated manuscript entitled Revelations that is now being published for the first time and is at the heart of her Serpentine show. It tells us, among other mystical nuggets, that it was not Chicago but “The Goddess”, who originally “created a great triangular table, open in the center and formed in Her sign, which She placed upon the sea of names that honored Her Disciples”.

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Judy Chicago’s illuminated epic, Elton John’s best shots and an earshredding blast – the week in art

The manuscript behind the US feminist’s monumental Dinner Party is finally published, Elton’s photography obsession returns and some woodcuts warn of disaster – all in your weekly dispatch

Judy Chicago: Revelations
An illuminated manuscript that Chicago started in the 1970s and is only now being published reveals the thinking behind her renowned work The Dinner Party.
• Serpentine North, London, 23 May to 1 September

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Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of Charles III review – a formulaic bit of facile flattery

A psychedelic sea of lurid reds and a clunking monarch butterfly cannot save this superficially observed and carelessly executed bland banality

It’s hard to be objective about an artist you like as a person. I recently met the painter Jonathan Yeo – whose portrait of King Charles has been unveiled in a storm of crimson hype – on a radio show and was instantly charmed. It’s easy to see why famous people enjoy being portrayed by Yeo. He’s intelligent, relaxed, unassuming. We talked about a studio visit. But then I had a look at his works online and cringed. And that was before I saw this right royal banality.

Yeo’s portrait of the king is replete with all his vices. It is technically superficial and unfelt. There’s no insight into the king’s personality here, just a weird allegory about a monarch butterfly that Yeo says is a symbol of his metamorphosis from prince to king.

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Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain review – this changes everything

Tate Britain, London
This tremendous show highlights so many unjustly forgotten, belittled and misattributed works, from 15th century miniatures to Georgian thrillers, Victorian innovators and modern abstractors. What a seismic reckoning

Not many exhibitions turn the story of Britain and its art upside down. But this huge archaeological dig into the nation’s cultural past, from 1520 to 1920, does precisely that. It retrieves so many unjustly forgotten female artists, so many neglected works, far more than can be mentioned in a review – and all without rhetoric. Instead, its wall texts are factual and informative, simply amassing a vast amount of evidence. Now we see them.

It starts with a bang. Artemisia Gentileschi in her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting lunges forward, eyes on the prize, utterly absorbed in her work as she reaches out a bared arm to add a splash of paint to the canvas she fiercely works on. With her jet black hair, black eyebrows, green dress and filthy painting hand, she’s a formidable presence. Except she is not alone. Not any more.

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Treasures on tour, outsized orchids and liberated bottoms – the week in art

Monet’s masterpiece flees the National Gallery, Marc Quinn plants himself in Kew and the Tate honours female artists – all in your weekly dispatch

National Treasures
As part of celebrations for its bicentenary, masterpieces from the National Gallery hang in museums across the UK including Vermeer in Edinburgh, Caravaggio in Belfast and Botticelli in Cambridge.
• At 12 museums across the UK, closing dates vary

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Turner: Art, Industry and Nostalgia review – Fighting Temeraire sets Tyneside ablaze

Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
How do you make Turner’s most famous painting cool? Take it to Tyneside, where it’s end-of-an-era magnificence takes on a whole new ghostly meaning

JMW Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire might be the most famous painting in London’s National Gallery and in 2005 was voted The Greatest Painting in Britain, but it’s hardly cool. Its heady atmosphere of patriotic pride and supercharged sentiment is the quintessence of the traditional image the gallery is trying to slough off in its bicentenary year. So while Caravaggio and Van Gogh are at the heart of celebrations in London, The Fighting Temeraire has been, as it were, dragged off by steam tug to be quietly moored on the Tyne.

Yet instead of just borrowing this unfashionable masterpiece, as part of a project entitled National Treasures that has sent 12 NG paintings out and about, Newcastle’s Laing Gallery has built an ambitious and moving exhibition around it.

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Insight! Sensitivity! Genius! Our critic picks the top five masterpieces in the National Gallery

It started from scratch – and became one of the world’s greatest collections. As the National Gallery celebrates its 200th birthday, we pick five sublime works – from a serene statesman to Van Gogh’s blazing blooms

The National Gallery in London is 200 years old on Friday, but what makes it so special? Founded in 1824 when public museums of fine art were in their infancy, it was different from rivals such as the Louvre (founded 1793) and the Prado (1819) because they inherited royal collections. By contrast, the National started from scratch and has intentionally built up the world’s most systematic corpus of European paintings. In that same thoughtful spirit, the gallery and the Guardian have charted a timeline of 20 of its masterpieces. Here are five of those to take you on a trip through 600 years of insight, sensitivity and genius.

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X-ray visions, stately sculptures and swelling seas – the week in art

Tony Cragg’s cosmic forms grace a Yorkshire manor, while the Lion of the Punjab roars back to life – all in your weekly dispatch

Tony Cragg
Wobbly cosmic abstract forms materialise around one of Britain’s most spectacular stately homes.
• Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, until 22 September

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Michelangelo: The Last Decades review – where has all the lust and longing gone?

British Museum, London
Michelangelo’s drawings were anything but dull, but this exhibition sucks out all the drama by focusing on his spirituality at the expense of his sexuality

Lord Elgin, you let us down. With all the masterpieces of world art that Britain’s rapacious collectors grabbed from hither and yon, couldn’t they have got their hands on a single statue by Michelangelo? No, the only original work in marble by the great sculptor, painter, architect and poet in a British collection is a circular relief owned by the Royal Academy. What we have instead are extensive holdings of his drawings in the British Museum and Royal Collection. Unfortunately, the BM’s hushed use of these works on paper to try to illuminate his later life shows what poor recompense they are.

The problem is disappointingly obvious from the start. After being moved by a portrait of the elderly, bearded, introspective Michelangelo by his most talented pupil, Daniele da Volterra, you’re plunged into his designs for The Last Judgment, painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel from 1536 to 41. Michelangelo was in his early 60s when he returned to the scene of his earlier triumph on its ceiling to create his cascading, tumbling vision of bodies rising to heaven and falling to hell against a deep blue. Here are his sketches of swarming muscular nudes, struggling and fighting – or embracing? – all desperate to join the ranks of blessed. Yet I couldn’t tear my eyes from a projection of the actual fresco, or stop wishing I was there with the real thing, in the Sistine Chapel.

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