Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 192
May 29, 2015
Duane Hanson's hyperreal sculptures, $90k Instagram photos and the winners of the Deutsche Börse – the week in art
Hanson’s overweight Americans descend on the Serpentine, a South African estate bags a top photography prize, and the Suicide Girls battle Richard Prince for ownership of their Instagram photos – all in your weekly dispatch
Agnes Martin
One of the greats, an abstract artist of minimalist rigour and ethereal craft whose vision is as pure as prairie rain.
• Tate Modern, London, 3 June until 11 October.
May 28, 2015
Why can't we face up to the true horrors of the first world war?
The savagery of the Great War shattered Europe – yet, when it comes to art, we hide the shocking, gory images in favour of something more palatable
I recently wandered into the gift shop at a National Trust property and peered into the bargain bin. Most of the products being sold off cheap were first world war centenary souvenirs: Horrible Histories first world war magnets, Red Baron Post-it notes, a strange collection of 21st century images of a 20th century war.
It seems the time for remembering was last year. Britain invested so much energy in marking the centenary of the Great War’s outbreak, that we are now giving much more muted attention to the four years of terrible events that followed. The bargain bin full of last year’s memorial cash-ins is an indication of how hard it is to genuinely understand, face, and do justice to the enormity of the 1914-18 war and what it did to the modern world.
Continue reading...May 27, 2015
Emoji is dragging us back to the dark ages – and all we can do is smile
With its poodles, noodles and happy poos, Emoji is now the fastest growing language in the UK. What a huge step back for humanity
So it’s official. We are evolving backwards. Emoji, the visual system of communication that is incredibly popular online, is Britain’s fastest-growing language according to Professor Vyv Evans, a linguist at Bangor University.
The comparison he uses is telling – but not in the way the prof, who appears enthusiastic about emojis, presumably intends. “As a visual language emoji has already far eclipsed hieroglyphics, its ancient Egyptian precursor which took centuries to develop,” says Evans.
Continue reading...May 25, 2015
A Qatari sheikh, Picasso's censored breasts and the west’s confusion over Islam
The media were horrified that Picasso’s nudes might be locked away by a conservative Middle Eastern collector – but the unfounded story only serves to highlight our hypocrisy
Picasso’s Women of Algiers (Version O) is the painting that just keeps on giving to news outlets. The world record sale of this late Picasso daub for £116 million has started a story that just won’t die. The latest twist, at the end of last week, was the buyer’s identity: reportedly, the secret billionaire purchaser was Qatar’s Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani.
That, it seems, was empty speculation. Christie’s has denied the story. The Telegraph has removed its report. What’s fascinating, though, given the apparent lack of a factual basis to the buyer’s unmasking, is how the flaky story was interpreted.
Continue reading...May 22, 2015
Marina Abramović, Jay-Z and the world's largest hotel – the week in art
A £2.3bn city in the sky is set to open in Mecca, as the performance artist says working with the rapper was ‘cruel’. Plus Grayson Perry’s pottery, Photo London and potty-mouthed robots – all in your weekly dispatch
Small Worlds
What’s it like living in a city today? This exhibition offers images of 21st-century urban experience from artists including Rita Donagh, Richard Forster, Andreas Gefeller, Naiza Khan and Lucy McLauchlan.
• New Art Gallery, Walsall, until 6 September.
Grayson Perry review – 'Like being trapped in a room full of trendy folk talking bollocks'
Turner Contemporary, Margate
Provincial Punk – a showcase of Grayson Perry’s prints, pots and tapestries – shows that his artworks are as meaningless and annoying as his silly films
Grayson Perry would be a very good artist if he never made any art. As a performer on a public stage, he is brilliant. His prickly persona is a work of art in itself. At pure conceptualism, he is great. What a shame that he insists on making stuff.
At pure conceptualism, he is great. What a shame that he insists on making stuff
Continue reading...Sorry, Facebook, but the finest art is always about sex and death | Jonathan Jones
The social media site’s ludicrous attempt to ban Gustave Courbet’s masterpiece reveals its ignorance about life itself
Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World – his clinically voyeuristic 1866 oil painting of a woman shown literally and solely as a sex object, with all distractions, such as her face, ruthlessly removed – hangs in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, opposite his far larger canvas A Burial at Ornans (1849–50).
It is an incredibly powerful juxtaposition, an unforgettable double act. The small, yet white and bright and unavoidably shocking Origin looks across a shadowy space at the huge, dark, funeral scene, with its enigmatic rural faces gathered around the black void of a grave.
This is sex as the elixir of reality, the secret to making art truly alive
Continue reading...May 21, 2015
Was Picasso a misogynist?
The greatest artist of the 20th century has been characterised as a bully, a narcissist and a man who feared as well as desired women. But are the stories really true? Jonathan Jones tackles the six million euro question
It is the six million euro question – or much more, if you are Picasso’s granddaughter enjoying reverse retail therapy by selling inherited art and property. What were the great modern artist’s relationships with women really like?
Picasso has been characterised by many as a misogynist, a bully who put “his” women on a pedestal only to knock them off it, a man who feared, as well as desired, the female body and who was a selfish, demanding, narcissistic husband, lover and even grandparent. You get the picture, recognise the cliche. But is any of it really true?
Continue reading...May 20, 2015
Jay Z v Marina Abramović: they both used each other
The rapper enveloped himself in the art world for credibility, the artist embraced pop culture and found global fame. So why is she so cross with him?
Marina Abramović has taken art into a dangerous new marriage with pop culture. Once just a name in art-history textbooks as one of the founders of performance art, she has in recent years used pop collaborations to beam her charisma to the masses and whip up a frenzy of adulation. Where previous artists such as Richard Hamilton or Andy Warhol were interested in pop stars, Abramović has become one.
Related: Marina Abramović: Jay Z 'completely used me'
Related: Jay Z made 'substantial donation' to Abramović's project, claims gallerist
Continue reading...The Shakespeare code: why the Bard portrait ‘discovery’ is provable guff
The story of how William Shakespeare’s face was revealed through symbols in a 1597 gardening manual is a concoction worthy of Dan Brown
Has the only authentic portrait of Shakespeare been recognised, hidden in plain sight, in a 16th-century garden book? That’s the story that has swept the media this week, with huge excitement about the cracking of the “Shakepeare code”.
It might be wise to pause at that hyperbolic image of cracking a code. “How one man cracked the Tudor code”, the cover of Country Life magazine, which broke the story, announces. Inside, scholar called Mark Griffiths does indeed reveal how he identified an image of Shakespeare in the illustrated title page of John Gerard’s 1597 book The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes through a feat of code cracking that evokes, deliberately, Dan Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code.
Historians knew the dangers of getting carried away, and laid out careful rules [to avoid] wild speculation
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