Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 198
March 24, 2015
Desperately seeking Diego: my search for Velázquez on the streets of Seville
It’s a Saturday evening in Seville and locals are flocking out of tapas bars into churches. I follow them. In front of a magnificent golden altar in one baroque church, a huge crowd is gathering for mass. I admire a float laden with candles and a statue of the Virgin Mary, ready to be pulled through the streets, past crowds of hooded penitents in the city’s famous Holy Week processions.
When I look more carefully at Mary’s painted face, I notice how lifelike it is and immediately feel closer to the artist I have come to Seville in search of: Diego Velázquez, the greatest painter of reality who ever lived. A major exhibition about the artist, who lived from 1599 to 1660, opens at the Grand Palais in Paris today. But instead of queuing up to revere his art, I want to walk in the footsteps of Velázquez himself, to stand where he stood and feel what he felt.
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March 23, 2015
Defining Beauty review – Greek sculpture alive and kicking
This is like entering a dream or a Terry Gilliam animation. It does not seem quite real. Some of the greatest classical sculptures in the world have been brought together in the opening section of the British Museum’s epic and captivating survey of Greek sculpture. It’s like looking at a collage cut from a giant encyclopedia. I half-expect Gilliam’s scissors to appear from above and snip off the discus-thrower’s head.
What a collection. A bronze youth wipes himself after a sweaty athletics tournament, his lithe powerful body recently rediscovered in the sea off Croatia. A faintly fascist German 1920 reconstruction of the lost Canon by Polykleites displays a mathematically perfect human body, while Aphrodite teasingly shows her bottom. The Discobolus of Myron strikes his eternal throwing pose. A young river god, headless and with shattered limbs, reclines – for all his injuries – in exquisite flowing grace, carved so fluently he seems a living, breathing creature.
Continue reading...March 20, 2015
Mannequins, masters of colour, and the exhibition of the year – the week in art
Ydessa Hendeles’s collection of 150 mannequins turns up at the ICA, Christina Mackie drenches Tate Britain in dye, it’s all Greek to the British Museum, and Grayson Perry smashes records – all in your weekly dispatch
Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art
This is the exhibition of the year – a stonkingly sensual survey of the ancient Greek world that includes many of the greatest sculptures ever created.
• British Museum, London, from 26 March until 5 July.
March 18, 2015
Gabriele Finaldi brings some controversy to the National Gallery
As a tourist attraction, the NG sells itself, but as home visitor numbers dwindle its new director’s biggest challenge is to spark a debate with the British public
For an institution that radiates the stability and heritage of 700 years of art history, the National Gallery has got through its directors very fast in recent years.
Related: National Gallery in London picks Prado deputy chief as new director
Continue reading...March 17, 2015
Art Dubai funds the world's most radical art
It’s not all super-yachts and spending binges: Art Dubai, which begins this week, is opening doors for some of the most marginalised voices in art
Art fairs. They are all about money, super-yachts and spotting Jeff Koons, right?
Art Dubai, which starts on 18 March, certainly does have a lot to do with cash. The oil states of the Middle East have recently made some of the most expensive art deals in history. In February, Qatar bought Gauguin’s Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) (1892) for $300m, setting a new world record that topped its massive Picasso and Cézanne purchases. What with all these mega-sales and enterprises such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, it’s clear that art and money are having a great get-together centred on Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Continue reading...March 16, 2015
Who cares about Saddam Hussein's tomb when Isis are obliterating empires?
Islamic State cowards have destroyed the Assyrian empire, but the world’s media glare is on a concrete mausoleum. Only our museums have the guts to protect our precious art history
So now we know the truth. An entire civilisation can be eradicated and the world will look the other way. No one will care except a few bleating art lovers.
It is less than a fortnight since it became clear that Islamic State was destroying every trace of the ancient Assyrian empire in the parts of Iraq it controls. At first there was disbelief – exacerbated by irresponsible interpretations of a video in which some of the antiquities being smashed appeared to be fakes – then numb horror when the bulldozing of ancient Nimrud was confirmed.
March 14, 2015
Van Gogh’s fading Sunflowers… and other tales of decaying art
Supposed damage to Van Gogh’s paintings is minimal, but other masterpieces by Leonardo and Duchamp et al are showing the ravages of time
Like people, works of art inevitably change with time. They get restored, are preserved in perfect environments by conscientious museums, and yet there is still no way to freeze a masterpiece for ever. Even the comparatively recent paintings of Vincent van Gogh were reported this week to be losing their original colour. Here are five works of art that have seen better days.
Continue reading...March 13, 2015
David Lynch hates graffiti and Gerhard Richter is shocked by his price at auction – the week in art
The film-maker takes a swipe at graffiti artists while Richter slams the art market. Plus, the Magna Carta goes on display, and a designer imagines animals of the future, including reflective cats – all in your weekly dispatch
Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy
This surprisingly moving array of medieval and modern documents, superbly contextualised and translated, and spiced with fascinating works of art from manuscript illuminations to newspaper cartoons, tells the thought-provoking story of how the middle ages invented human rights.
• British Library, London NW1, from 13 March until 1 September.
Graffiti is ugly, stupid and threatening – there's more creativity in crochet
David Lynch, that champion of the arts, says graffiti is ruining the world. And he’s right – this hypermasculine display is destroying our environment
It’s a familiar scenario. Older person gets angry with modern world and rages against the visual white noise of graffiti that is, well, everywhere these days.
Only this time the angry old man is film director David Lynch, whose surrealist pedigree and bizarre sense of style make his condemnation of graffiti difficult to dismiss as mere grey-haired grumpiness. Lynch says graffiti is ruining the world and making our planet ugly. He’s right, of course. The fame of street artists like Banksy and a general sense that graffiti is the natural art expression of the kids crushes dissent about this guttural art form. We are all subdued by it. We go along with it, so as not to seem uncool, daddyo.
Continue reading...March 12, 2015
Magna Carta exhibition is an 800-year-old lesson in people power
British Library showcase highlights value of enduringly popular document still relevant to everything from control orders to European integration
The most powerful work of art in the gripping Magna Carta exhibition portrays a king being attacked by peasants. They come at Henry I with scythe, fork and shovel, turning the tools of their daily work into crudely effective weapons.
This surreal masterpiece of medieval art is a depiction of a royal nightmare: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. There was no revolution against Henry I, although a few generations later, in 1215, the reviled King John would be forced at swordpoint to grant freedoms to his people and the Magna Carta would be born.
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