Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 209
November 13, 2014
Flat, soulless and stupid: why photographs dont 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 wouldnt 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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November 12, 2014
A poet of solitude: Peder Balke's haunting visions of the Arctic Circle
National Gallery, London
The first UK exhibition devoted to the eerie mystery of this 19th-century master shows just how precociously modern he was
Peder Balke lived in an Arctic of the mind. The 19th-century Norwegian painter explored the Arctic Circle and saw the mighty blank wall of rock that is the North Cape as a young man. He painted the frozen spectacle of the most remote regions of Norway for the rest of his life. The grandeur of the northern extremes got inside him; people rarely appear in his pictures; shipwrecks and ice-bound towns stand in for human life. Balkes imagination is ice-bound, frozen in contemplation of something at the very edge of human experience.
The first paintings in this haunting exhibition, which bring an unjustly obscure visionary back into the light of day, are big, expansive views of the North Cape, where today tourists travel to see the midnight sun. Balke brings out its ineffable mystery. He sees in it a silent barrier, the final limit to knowledge and exploration beyond it lies nothing. The sky above the massed rock is terrifyingly empty. The sea stretches into an inhuman void.
Continue reading...November 11, 2014
Rembrandt: the artist giving philosemitism a good name
Philosemitism the appreciation of Jewish culture has been hotly debated of late, in the wake of a new book by Julie Burchill and against a backdrop of Middle Eastern conflict. We should look to Rembrandt and Michelangelo to celebrate its true spirit
They are a glowing union of life and light surrounded by darkness, two orbiting stars whose luminous love may be the only warmth in an otherwise empty barren universe. The man gently touches the womans chest. Both have eyes of infinite gentleness, a noble yet humble tenderness.
In the National Gallery, Rembrandts masterpiece of love and inwardness is called Couple Posing as Isaac and Rebecca, and can currently be seen in the great exhibition Rembrandt: The Late Works but its popular title is The Jewish Bride. That traditional name seems fitting to me, for it conveys the philosemitism of one of Europes greatest painters.
Continue reading...November 7, 2014
The British Museum shows off Germany's technical brilliance – and its hard-won soul
As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall arrives, a British Museum exhibition is a reminder of the incredible richness of German arts and crafts – and shows us how history can have a happy ending
This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s end. It is therefore fitting that a chunk of the wall, one of the many real and fake souvenirs that have circulated since its joyous destruction, is the first thing you see as you enter the British Museum’s outstanding exhibiiton Germany: Memories of a Nation.
In Berlin itself, the course of the mostly vanished wall that once defaced a continent is to be marked by 8000 lights plotting its path across a city that has emerged as arguably Europe’s greatest since that magical democratic moment when crowds surged from east to west, as guards stood by helpless. They surge once more on screen in the British Museum show, in news footage of the wall’s last moments.
Continue reading...The British Museum shows off Germany's technical brilliance and its hard-won soul
As the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall arrives, a British Museum exhibition is a reminder of the incredible richness of German arts and crafts and shows us how history can have a happy ending
This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Walls end. It is therefore fitting that a chunk of the wall, one of the many real and fake souvenirs that have circulated since its joyous destruction, is the first thing you see as you enter the British Museums outstanding exhibiiton Germany: Memories of a Nation.
In Berlin itself, the course of the mostly vanished wall that once defaced a continent is to be marked by 8000 lights plotting its path across a city that has emerged as arguably Europes greatest since that magical democratic moment when crowds surged from east to west, as guards stood by helpless. They surge once more on screen in the British Museum show, in news footage of the walls last moments.
Continue reading...Allen Jones riles and Peder Balke chills – the week in art
Pop art’s most controversial figure explores fantasy and fetish at the Royal Academy, and we celebrate a masterpiece of peversity that’s more than 450 years old – all in your weekly dispatch
The most controversial of 1960s British pop artists brings his sexually charged art into the 21st century with a retrospective that may cause a few fireworks.
• Royal Academy, London W1J from 13 November until 25 January.
Allen Jones riles and Peder Balke chills the week in art
Pop arts most controversial figure explores fantasy and fetish at the Royal Academy, and we celebrate a masterpiece of peversity thats more than 450 years old all in your weekly dispatch
The most controversial of 1960s British pop artists brings his sexually charged art into the 21st century with a retrospective that may cause a few fireworks.
Royal Academy, London W1J from 13 November until 25 January.
November 6, 2014
Transmitting Andy Warhol review – white light and black angels in an immersive explosion
Tate Liverpool
The first major Andy Warhol exhibition in the north of England recreates the world of the Factory and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable – and Warhol is revealed in all his compassion and searing insight
When I look at Andy Warhol paintings, I tend to play Velvet Underground songs in my head. The Velvets were the “pop group” Warhol managed and produced in the 1960s, their overwhelmingly harsh yet beguilingly poetic sound a fusion of Brooklynite Lou Reed’s rock’n’roll animality and Welshman John Cale’s classical-music theory. I can’t look at the hard, black, silk-screened skeletons of Warhol’s luridly coloured pictures without imaging Cale’s scraping electric viola, Reed drily declaring that he’s “made a big decision”.
In Tate Liverpool’s utterly delightful Andy Warhol exhibition, you don’t have to imagine those inimitable cascades of feedback, for the Velvet Underground are playing live. OK, not exactly live. Cale and mallet-using drummer Maureen Tucker are now the original band’s only survivors. Yet a superbly devised installation recreates the club Warhol created to showcase their violent sound, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with whip-wielding dancers, a multicoloured lightshow and Warhol’s films projected in overlapping chaos.
Continue reading...Transmitting Andy Warhol review white light and black angels in an immersive explosion
Tate Liverpool
The first major Andy Warhol exhibition in the north of England recreates the world of the Factory and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and Warhol is revealed in all his compassion and searing insight
When I look at Andy Warhol paintings, I tend to play Velvet Underground songs in my head. The Velvets were the pop group Warhol managed and produced in the 1960s, their overwhelmingly harsh yet beguilingly poetic sound a fusion of Brooklynite Lou Reeds rocknroll animality and Welshman John Cales classical-music theory. I cant look at the hard, black, silk-screened skeletons of Warhols luridly coloured pictures without imaging Cales scraping electric viola, Reed drily declaring that hes made a big decision.
In Tate Liverpools utterly delightful Andy Warhol exhibition, you dont have to imagine those inimitable cascades of feedback, for the Velvet Underground are playing live. OK, not exactly live. Cale and mallet-using drummer Maureen Tucker are now the original bands only survivors. Yet a superbly devised installation recreates the club Warhol created to showcase their violent sound, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with whip-wielding dancers, a multicoloured lightshow and Warhols films projected in overlapping chaos.
Continue reading...November 5, 2014
Picasso's fight against fascism and the British surrealists who followed him
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
A new show of UK artists responses to the Spanish civil war is dominated by Picassos emotive works, but British artists also realised Spain was an ominous testing ground for future conflict
It looks as if she has black stars in her eyes, but on closer inspection they are bombers, hovering as they did above Guernica, dropping their vile cargo. That is why she weeps. Her mouth is crumpled in grief, white as bone, sharp teeth chewing on a handkerchief. Green and yellow colours of death stain her cheeks. Her hair is a river of tears. An insect laps at a rivulet flowing from her eye as if sorrow were honey.
Pablo Picasso painted Weeping Woman as he mourned, and sought to make others mourn, the bombing of the ancient Basque capital Guernica in 1937. The greatest war art of the 20th century was not created in response to either world war, but the civil war that tore apart Spain when General Franco led a far-right revolt against the democratically elected Spanish republic. When German planes sent by Hitler bombed Guernica on Francos behalf, Picasso unleashed an unparalleled torrent of images.
Continue reading...Jonathan Jones's Blog
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