Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 213

Banksy wanted Clacton-on-Sea to confront racism instead it confronted him | Jonathan Jones

Tendring district council has destroyed a painting that eloquently challenged views on immigration was it too close to home?

Council removes Banksy artwork after complaints of racism

It must say something about the swirling currents of prejudice, fear and anger in modern Britain that even Banksy cannot predict their next bizarre lurch.

From Bristol to New York, this street artist has made his reputation by wittily mocking power and money. In Manhattan he satirised McDonalds (not, perhaps his most original target) and in Cheltenham, near GCHQ, he painted spies snooping on a phone box. Usually people love him for it. The political content of Banksys art is generally so accepted and enjoyed that it has become tame. Far from being challenged, people gush at the prices it fetches.

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José Damasceno: Plot review surreal digging into hidden, disused spaces

Holborn library, London
The Brazilian artist has transfigured this quiet place of reading with an intervention of subtle imaginative power

Pity our libraries, hit hard by austerity. Cut taxes, close a few more. Who cares?

Step forward Artangel, the public art agency with an almost mystical belief in the power of place. Artists working with Artangel have, over the years, tranformed sites from a south London flat to a field at Orgreave into vivid theatres of memory. Now it is the turn of Holborn library in central London to have its unconcscious excavated. Brazilian artist José Damasceno transfigures this quiet place of reading and study with an intervention of appropriately subtle imaginative power.

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Invisible art: the gallery hoax that shows how much we hate the rich

People love to lampoon a credulous art world, but the reaction to the fake invisible work of Lana Newstrom shows just how repelled we are by its marketplace

A lot of people have fallen for a fake news report about invisible art. Collectors, claimed Canadas CBC, are paying through the nose for the art of 27-year-old Lana Newstrom even though you cannot see any of it.

Art is about imagination and that is what my work demands of the people interacting with it. You have to imagine a painting or sculpture is in front of you, the artist supposedly said.

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The Turner prize show: voices, videos and erotic tickling sticks

Has the Turner prize lost its power to shock? No thanks to James Richardss sphincter shots. But its Tris Vonna-Michells spellbinding spoken-word travelogues that deserve to win

Video: 30 years of the Turner prize
Censored bits and candy-coloured prints the Turner prize 2014 in pictures

Someone is picking wild flowers. Isnt that nice? Now the flower is being used as a tickling stick. Very amusing. Wait, isnt that actually a foreskin? Yes, its definitely a foreskin. This is Rosebud, a sensual black-and-white film by Turner prize nominee James Richards that interweaves images of aroused flesh and censorship. Provocative photographs with rude bits scratched out are intercut with footage showing the erotic use of flowers. In one sequence, a flower tickles an anus, which reacts by clenching shut.

What a heartening way to celebrate 30 years of the Turner prize. People are always saying the Turner, which shocked the nation with Tracey Emins unmade bed and Damien Hirsts bisected cow, has become tame and middle-aged. It no longer creates the kinds of visceral arguments about the nature of art that it did back in the 20th century, when Rachel Whiteread won both the Turner in 1993 and the K Foundation award for worst artist of the year. Nowadays, conceptual art is so widely accepted as part of every aspiring persons cultural makeup that the Turner causes less controversy than The Great British Bakeoff.

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The 10 best works of erotic art

Art has always been intrinsically linked to expression, passion and sensuality, but across the centuries, there have been surprisingly few unambiguous depictions of the carnal act in its naked glory. Here, Jonathan Jones chooses his favourite 10 erotic pieces

Tim Adams on why Britain is having less sex

How the British changed their minds about sex

How Tinder took me from serial monogamy to casual sex

Katsukawa Shunei (attributed to)

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Ai Weiwei takes his place among the greats amid the opulence of Blenheim

Modern chinoiserie and myths of east and west meet in a chaotic, hilarious, liberating vision of history gone mad

Everyone in the world knows by now that Ai Weiwei is a man of courage, a devastatingly effective political artist and campaigner. His new exhibition at Blenheim Palace, seat of the dukes of Marlborough and one of Europes great secular buildings, reveals that he also has a diabolical sense of humour.

Who but a born joker would put on the most comprehensive British survey of his art at a stupendous stately home where it will mostly be seen by visitors who come for the Capability Brown gardens and the tea shop and perhaps not for the conceptual art.

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The Turner prize, John Malkovich and Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz and Blenheim Palace the week in art

The four shortlistees line up at Tate Britain, as the actor recreates world-famous photos and the big man of Beijing finds two unexpected new homes all in the best weekly art dispatch out there

The prize that put young British art on the map returns as shortlisted artists Ciara Phillips, Duncan Campbell, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell exhibit their competing visions.
Tate Britain, London SW1P, from 30 September until 4 January.

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Cerith Wyn Evans review looking at art has rarely felt like such a vain pose

Serpentine Sackler, London

In the past, the Welsh artist has created strange and wondrous work. But this show is throwaway, half-hearted and embarrassing it even has a silly garden corner

The Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans has filled, or rather, half-heartedly semi-filled, the Serpentine Sacklers chic space with sparkling chandeliers and inanely poetic neon writings that mean less the longer you spend among them, and soon start to induce a deep sense of embarrassment.

Looking at art has rarely felt like such a vain pose. Standing there gazing seriously up at an array of elegant tubes piping out airy notes why? I felt like a character in some cruel Paolo Sorrentino film in which empty metropolitan types affect to see meaning in meaningless art.

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The new Socrates? Artist Tino Sehgal sets up talking shop in Athens agora

Tino Sehgals latest interactive artwork in Athens pays tribute to the masters of philosophy hopefully without the same deadly end result

How do you keep ancient Greek civilisation alive in the 21st-century? Tino Sehgals new show or event, or whatever this artist of social interactions work ought to be called is at the Roman agora in Athens. The Berlin-based artist Sehgal has previously got people interacting in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern and was shortlisted for the Turner prize. Now hes bringing his state-of-the-art actions to the ancient city whose most famous work of art, up to now, was the 5th-century BC Parthenon and its missing sculptures.

It sounds at first like a raw encounter between old and new. But, actually, Sehgal fits in perfectly with Athens and its history. His show there is a clever engagement with the very classical heritage of which this city is the wellspring.

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Bricking it: is Lego art?

Nathan Sawayas Lego statues are interesting, but the people calling them art are missing the point. Lego doesnt need to be art

Lego sculptures: the Art of the Brick exhibition in pictures

Can you make art from Lego? There seems to be widespread media agreement that you can. Nathan Sawaya has an exhibition of ambitious Lego models at Old Truman Brewery in London. Reports uncritically call it art, made by an artist. Is that so?

Certainly these Lego statues aspire to the kinds of existential anguish you might see in serious art. Theres a figure pulling open its own chest to reveal bricks pouring out from within and another holding up a Lego mask as if meditating on the enigma of identity.

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