Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 202
February 6, 2015
Bonaparte and the British review – a bizarre delve into patriotism from another age
British Museum, London
This hoard of cheap and often cruel satirical prints of the Napoleonic wars is hard work, but it’s worth the effort
In one of the many classic moments in his BBC TV series Civilisation, critic Kenneth Clark stands before Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican and relates how painter Sir Joshua Reynolds used to warn his pupils that they might find these masterpieces a bit boring on first view. You must keep on looking until you do appreciate them, admonished Reynolds.
“Well, I’ve been trying to do that all my life,” says Clark, “and let me tell you, it has been worth it.”
Continue reading...
New Michelangelos discovered, and Damien Hirst’s Valentines Day show – the week in art
Michelangelo’s panther-riders gallop into Cambridge as Hirst shows his softer side. Plus, the artist who broke into Google’s data farm and one man’s LSD adventures – all in your weekly art dispatch
Sargent: Portrait of Artists and Friends
John Singer Sargent, the strange, compelling and subversive painter of the Edwardian age, is modern in the same way that his contemporaries Henry James and Joseph Conrad are. This overdue exhibition may turn out to be unforgettable.
• National Portrait Gallery, London from 12 February until 25 May.
February 5, 2015
Beyond the veil: photographs can be more powerful than art
There’s a simple, crushing human truth in Elliott Erwitt’s great photograph of Jackie Kennedy, taken at JFK’s funeral, that eludes Andy Warhol’s silkscreen images of the same day
How can you tell the truth about history in a visual image? The question is raised for me by the news that Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt is to receive an award for his outstanding contribution to photography at the Sony world photography awards, and will have a solo show at Somerset House this spring.
All well deserved. But one picture by Erwitt especially haunts me. In November 1963, America’s assassinated President John F Kennedy was buried at Arlington military cemetery.
Continue reading...February 4, 2015
Where the internet lives: the artist who snooped on Google’s data farm
Well, they started it. Google Street View allows people to crawl virtually along your street and look at your house. Google Earth offers global intrusion from above. The web giant has done its bit to abolish privacy. Now an artist has out-Googled Google, offering a sneak peek at its less than beautiful underbelly.
The joy of the internet is that it is always moving. We experience it as speed, mobility, freedom, flux – as an ethereal superhighway we visualise, if we do at all, as lines of light or pulses of pure energy. Irish digital artist John Gerrard brings this myth crashing down to earth in his new projected installation Farm. A camera very slowly pans around a vaguely sinister industrial complex in the middle of nowhere – well, Oklahoma. Cooling towers, pipes, blank walls, and a lonely basketball court are revealed in the silence and cruel sunlight. This is one of Google’s eight vast data farms where your emails and searches are sorted and remembered. The information superhighway ends here.
Continue reading...February 3, 2015
Why does our Instagram generation think its snaps are so special?
When two amateur photographers on a cruise took the same picture of an iceberg, one accused the other of plagiarism. This ridiculous row is just the tip of a very ordinary iceberg
We all love taking photographs. I take them everywhere, on a camera, on a mobile device, snap, snap, snap. We give cameras to our kids too. Even more snapping. But how much do we value those pictures?
As memory markers, they are addictive. As fun, they are ... great fun. But it all gets daft when amateur snappers think they are artists.
Continue reading...February 2, 2015
From Michelangelo to Caravaggio, why masterpieces are coming out of the woodwork
It may not be as dramatic as a tomb raid, but the discovery of the only surviving bronzes by Michelangelo is the latest in a long line of thrilling art re-attributions
The attribution of two bronze nudes to none other than Michelangelo is one of those rare art stories that are genuinely important and authentically sensational. And like so many truly significant art history discoveries, this one does not involve digging a lost masterpiece out of a cellar or finding it in a Nazi hoard, but is instead a scholarly argument for re-attributing a work known for centuries.
A lot of the time, this kind of connoisseurship leads to the opposite: sceptical de-attribution. Paul Joannides, the art historian whose immense knowledge lends the Cambridge claim authority, put some of the final nails into the reputation of the Venetian painter Giorgione when he all but demolished the idea that Giorgione painted the Sleeping Venus, one of the icons of the Renaissance. He and others argue it is by Titian.
Related: Michelangelo's bronze panther-riders revealed after 'Renaissance whodunnit'
Related: The new Michelangelo sculptures are a sensation, but are they any good? | Jonathan Jones
Continue reading...February 1, 2015
The new Michelangelo sculptures are a sensation, but are they any good? | Jonathan Jones
Related: Michelangelo bronzes discovered
The discovery of two new sculptures by one of the greatest artists in history is a sensation of the highest order. For them to turn up in Cambridge, where they are on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum from an anonymous private owner, is an amazing coup for the town and a tribute to the university’s art historians whose scholarship led to this recognition.
Related: Michelangelo bronzes discovered – in pictures
Continue reading...January 30, 2015
Punks and pub crawls – the week in art
A show about youth subcultures takes over the Photographers’ Gallery’s new space, while Christian Marclay’s inebriated action paintings hit London. Plus, the gif art you can see from space, and how much sponsorship money BP paid Tate – all in your weekly art dispatch
Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden
Powerful, erotic, troubling ... Marlene Dumas is a painter of our time.
Tate Modern, London SE1 from 5 February until 10 May
January 27, 2015
Adrian Henri and the painter-poets who turned the Mersey Beat into an art
Paintings, posters and ephemera from Liverpool at the time of the Beatles show the city’s 60s scene rivalled New York for creativity
In 1965, Liverpool was “the centre of human consciousness in the world”, according to Beat visionary Allen Ginsberg. A small exhibition at the ICA offers a nostalgic taste of that moment when Beatlemania ruled pop and the Mersey Beat poets were at the forefront of the British avant garde.
It is a display of paintings, collages, film clips and cases of posters, books and ephemera remembering artist and poet Adrian Henri, who died 15 years ago. Henri, it turns out, pioneered happenings and performance art in Britain.
Continue reading...January 26, 2015
The world’s largest gif? The art world’s latest hype more like
We may be able to see it from space, but the world’s largest gif is really just an advertising stunt. We still need a real artist to create the first digital masterpiece
So where is art headed in the digital age? Can we see the future yet?
We must be experiencing the fastest rate of technological change in human history. The industrial revolution was a meandering process compared with today’s acceleration. And because communication is at the heart of this historical leap, it instantly and constantly creates new opportunities and challenges for artists.
Continue reading...Jonathan Jones's Blog
- Jonathan Jones's profile
- 8 followers
