Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 2
September 12, 2025
The dotty genius of Seurat and a song and dance about Picasso – the week in art
Tate Modern reframes its Picassos in a theatrical light, there’s a hands-on utopia in Gateshead and the Cerne chalk giant gets a colourful new neighbour – all in your weekly dispatch
Theatre Picasso
The Tate collection of Picasso’s revolutionary art is reimagined through a drama-conscious lens.
• Tate Modern, London, 17 September to 12 April
September 9, 2025
Radical Harmony review – Seurat’s shimmering visions trounce his spotty dotty imitators
National Gallery, London
The tradition of neo-impressionism begun by Georges Seurat was radical, even revolutionary, but this po-faced showcase is sadly lacking its joyful dazzle
Georges Seurat had kaleidoscope eyes. He saw in limitless colours, that swarm and bubble on his canvases in galaxies of tiny dots. Choosing random, barren subjects – an empty harbour, a rock – he found endless wonder in the most banal reality. In his 1888 painting Port-en-Bessin, a Sunday, myriad blues and whites create a hazy sky and mirroring water while a railing in the foreground explodes into purple, brown and orange as if it had a lurid spotty disease. Seurat only lived to the age of 31, but he inspired an entire art movement, the neo-impressionists, who copied his “pointillist” method.
Yet in a coarse-grained approach to this fine-grained art style, the National Gallery struggles to tell a different story. The neo-impressionists didn’t just paint dots, they dreamed of revolution. And by the way we shouldn’t call them by the evocative nickname “pointillist” because they didn’t like it.
Continue reading...September 5, 2025
Prized paintings, unburied treasures and murderous Millais – the week in art
The John Moores prize names its next stars, Renaissance booty is uncovered in Bath and a lover’s brothers plan a beheading – all in your weekly dispatch
John Moores painting prize
Davina Jackson, Katy Shepherd and Joanna Whittle are among the painters shortlisted for this prize that was once won by a young David Hockney
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool from Saturday until 1 March 2026
September 2, 2025
Mona Hatoum Encounters: Giacometti review – a meeting of marvellously macabre minds
Barbican, London
This extraordinary show is a conversation, across the decades, between two kindred artists who refuse to shy away from the world’s horror and pain
Mona Hatoum’s show begins with an indelible afterimage of modern war. Into a stack of welded steel boxes resembling an apartment block in a city that could be anywhere, Hatoum has melted or blasted holes imitating drone or missile strikes. Parts of interior walls and floors have been shorn away to look like apartments with their fronts blown off. This is the shell of what was once a home to many, emptied out by war, like the buildings you saw on the news last night.
Hatoum created Bourj, which means “tower” in Arabic, for an exhibition in Beirut, the city where she was born into a Palestinian family in 1952. Since 1975 she has been based in London but her art knows no peace. Home and family are perforated by violence. A steel cot resembling a prison cell has cheese wire in place of a soft mattress. A kitchen with small chairs for the kids, alongside larger ones for mum and dad, has been incinerated, and the carbonised fragments of wooden furniture painstakingly reassembled inside wire mesh replicas of what they looked like before the disaster.
Continue reading...August 31, 2025
Bullfights, ballet and hot jazz: inside Picasso’s scandalous theatre of sex and death
Famed for his cubist portraits, the Spanish genius also created costumes for the Ballet Russes and loved the intensity of bullfights. A new show at the Tate explores the dramatic side of an uncompromising artist
She is called the Weeping Woman, but that is an understatement. She grinds her teeth on a handkerchief that’s like a jagged white-and-blue spearhead while her fingers claw at her face, tearing the flesh to expose her skull. Her chin is two grenades, her eyes are filled with horror – black silhouettes of planes are held in her transfixed eyeballs. They are the German bombers that attacked the Basque town Guernica on 26 April 1937.
Picasso’s Weeping Woman was bought from him by the British surrealist Roland Penrose in November 1937, fresh off the easel. Fifty years later, his son gave it in lieu of tax to the Tate Gallery. Now it is about to star in a Tate Modern exhibition that showcases the museum’s Picasso collection, enhanced with terrific loans from the Musée Picasso in Paris.
Continue reading...August 29, 2025
Golden gifts, spindly sculptures and an etching innovator – the week in art
Mona Hatoum goes hammer and tongs with Giacometti, Andrew Geddes is revealed as a pioneer and Saint Nick rocks up four months early – all in your weekly dispatch
Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum
Second in a sparky series of shows comparing sculptors of today to the 20th-century legend who captured the slender survival of the human spirit in spindly simplified figures.
• Barbican, London, 3 September to 11 January
August 26, 2025
Space, stadiums, poses and prizes: the best art and architecture of autumn 2025
The season’s standouts include mighty Picassos, mesmerising mushrooms, the visions of Kerry James Marshall, the combat photography of Lee Miller – and a return trip to space
• See the rest of our unmissable autumn arts preview picks here
Continue reading...August 22, 2025
Gower power, deep-sea dances and a millennial male prayer – the week in art
Anna Boghiguian sinks a boat in Margate, Emma Critchley takes soundings in St Ives and Guy Oliver examines his masculine identity in Edinburgh – all in your weekly dispatch
Anna Boghiguian: The Sunken Boat: A Glimpse Into Past Histories
Decayed and broken boats, puppet-like figures and sand feature in a salty installation about the sea as a space of world history.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 26 October
August 15, 2025
Wintry chills and an alter ego in Edinburgh, plus surreal toys in London – the week in art
Scottish artist Victoria Crowe serves up an evocative rural portrait, Nkem Okwechime explores his other self and domestic objects get strange – all in your weekly dispatch
Victoria Crowe: Shifting Surfaces
To mark the 80th birthday of this Scottish artist, this evocative survey brings together some of her rural portraits and wintry landscapes.
• Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until 11 October
August 8, 2025
Gems from Paris, sofas from Philadelphia and cinema from puppets – the week in art
Millet’s iconic Angelus visits the UK, Philly shows its subtle side, while east and west face off in a puppet retelling of history – all in your weekly dispatch
Millet: Life on the Land
The Musée d’Orsay has lent Millet’s iconic Angelus for this journey to the dark side of the landscape.
• National Gallery, London, until 19 October
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