Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 208
November 21, 2014
The $44m for Georgia O’Keeffe’s work shows how little female artists are valued | Jonathan Jones
The art historian Linda Nochlin posed a very good question in 1971 and it still has not been answered. “Why,” she asked in an essay that helped to shape feminist art history, “have there been no great women artists?”
She did not ask why women in art were not getting enough prizes, or being taken up by enough big art dealers, or otherwise getting ahead in the art world. She asked a much more serious question: what obstacles have kept women out of the canon for so long?
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The Queen, magic islands and Will Self on why the rich are ruining London
The Queen opens a new gallery for her treasures, Thomas Heatherwick plans a miracle island for New York, and Will Self on why Tate Modern shows London’s deep inequality – all in your weekly dispatch
Post-Pop: East Meets West
Andy Warhol saw a connection between pop art and communism when he created his portrait of Mao. This show explores the legacy of capitalist and communist pop with artists including Ashley Bickerton and Ai Weiwei.
• Saatchi Gallery, London SW3 from 26 November until 23 February
November 20, 2014
Don’t tell me how long to look at art
More and more our experience at exhibitions is prescribed, as if we won’t understand unless we look for a set time. That kind of art should be banned from galleries
One of my most powerful experiences of contemporary art was the first time I got lost inside Mike Nelson’s installation The Coral Reef. This labyrinth of seedy urban corridors and waiting rooms is a frightening and uneasy place, because you lose track of where, and when, you are. You can be cast adrift from time and space on this treacherous reef. And that casting adrift – especially from time – is, for me, the definition of an interesting work of art.
From an installation by Nelson to a painting by Thomas Gainsborough, the wonder of art is deeply connected with how it can un-anchor you from time. Instead of rushing to the next deadline or message, you can forget that it is 2014, for a moment, and linger in the other-time, created by art.
Continue reading...November 19, 2014
Cumberland Art Gallery review – like looking into the Queen’s jewel box
Women stalk the corridors of Hampton Court, at least if you believe the ghost stories. Grey ladies, headless ladies are said to haunt this venerable palace, the victims of its most notorious owner, Henry VIII. But if it is associated with Henry’s cruelly used spectral wives this magnificently preserved Renaissance building now plays host to a strong woman, flesh and blood, the hero of her own life.
Artemisia Gentileschi portrayed herself in about 1638 leaning forcefully into her work, brush in hand, sleeves rolled up. Her face is rapt and absorbed in the mental and physical effort of painting. Muscular arms contrast with her fine green dress. She’s tied back her long hair to get down to work.
Continue reading...November 18, 2014
How William Blake keeps our eye on The Tyger
No other work of art so urgently tells the truth about nature and our relationship with it as Blake’s poem about a ferocious, precious beast
William Blake is about to have an exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum that looks at the artistic development of this great Romantic visionary. It is timely, for Blake deserves at least as much glory as JMW Turner, who is currently getting so much attention. For one thing, he created the single most urgent work of art of our time.
Urgent, that is, if you look at it not from the point of view of art, literature, galleries or school texts but the perspective of planet Earth. If Gaia could tell us what to read and look at, she’d surely whisper “The Tyger”.
Continue reading...November 17, 2014
Shock horror: why art's so obsessed with the grotesque
Diabolically grotesque art – from Jonathan Payne’s sprouting finger sculptures right back to Hieronymus Bosch – has staying power because our lives have not radically changed. As long as we have bodies, we will experience body horror
Warts, growths and misplaced body parts abound in the bizarre sculptures of Jonathan Payne. A tongue with teeth, a mass of flesh sprouting fingers, an eyeball in its own little flesh sac … Don’t tell me you’re not a bit shocked or repelled or amazed. Horror never really gets old. It’s tired to say this kind of art is tired.
The grotesque has staying power because our life as beings of flesh and blood has not changed, and so long as we have bodies, we can experience body horror. This applies across art, cinema and literature. What we mean by the “grotesque” in art goes back to the medieval imagination. In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the hideous monster Grendel murders sleeping warriors in the king’s mead hall. In medieval art, such evil creatures abound. They reach a diabolical grandeur of imagination in north European art in the 15th and 16th centuries. We still stare transfixed at the grotesque art of Bosch, Bruegel and Grunewald.
Continue reading...November 14, 2014
The history of sex, looting and Studio 54 – the week in art
Masters of sex bare all at the Wellcome Collection, plus rare photographs of Alabama in the 50s and New York’s superclub at the height of its fame – all in your weekly art dispatch
Art is included alongside archival documents in this exhibition about the modern discovery of sex as a scientific subject. Ooh Dr Freud, I had such a strange dream last night …
• Wellcome Collection, London NW1 from 20 November until 20 September 2015
The history of sex, looting and Studio 54 the week in art
Masters of sex bare all at the Wellcome Collection, plus rare photographs of Alabama in the 50s and New Yorks superclub at the height of its fame all in your weekly art dispatch
Art is included alongside archival documents in this exhibition about the modern discovery of sex as a scientific subject. Ooh Dr Freud, I had such a strange dream last night
Wellcome Collection, London NW1 from 20 November until 20 September 2015
November 13, 2014
One World Trade Center's rescued window washers: a human triumph we needed | Jonathan Jones
In a strange and redemptive way, the image of the hanging basket and the heroic story that followed has done more than anything so far to free this new building from 9/11
Window washers rescued from scaffold at One World Trade CenterEmma Brockes: Confessions of watching window cleanersBuildings become iconic not through the abstract designs of their architects, but the human stories that hang from them.
No sufficient caption here, just hope these guys get out OK. pic.twitter.com/eXNrCu5qjL
Window washing platform collapsing on 1 WTC bldg - just drove by pic.twitter.com/NZIsno6vNQ
Continue reading...Flat, soulless and stupid: why photographs don’t work in art galleries
Photographs can be powerful, beautiful, and capture the immediacy of a moment like nothing else. But they make poor art when hung on a wall like paintings
Photography is a miracle of the modern world. It gives us instant visual information from all over the planet and far beyond. It is a unique documentary record of our own lives, a simple source of creative pleasure and fun. I just wish people wouldn’t put it in art galleries.
Let me be clear: photographs on the page or screen are fascinating. Who can fail to be entranced by the first-ever pictures from the surface of a comet that were taken this week? The power of photography to show and to tell has never been greater, as modern technology takes it simultaneously to the far reaches of the solar system and ever deeper into the heart of daily life.
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