Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 219
July 21, 2014
Why Scotland should follow its art and vote no to independence
As Scotland prepares to decide if its future belongs inside or outside the British union, a summer of Scottish art offers a cultural perspective on the pros and cons of independence. Generation, a mega-exhibition of Scottish contemporary art, is about to be joined by yet more new art when the Edinburgh art festival opens at the end of July. But is the vibrant art scene of Scotland an argument for, or against, complete Scottish independence?
It is so obviously an argument against it. The no campaign, short on the emotional arguments that fuel the yes vote, should be celebrating the art of Douglas Gordon, Martin Creed, Martin Boyce, Susan Philipsz and Richard Wright as proof that Scotland and the rest of Britain really are "better together".
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July 18, 2014
Subversive objects, radical Germans, and cultured holidays the week in art
Disobedient Objects
You know what it's like: the computer won't work, the toaster burns the toast and your watch is slow. And that's just this morning. But this exhibition is not about the frustration of technology. Instead, it shows how design has been used to promote subversion and dissent, from the suffragettes to today.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7 from 26 July until 1 February
The MH17 crash images show us what war in Europe looks like in 2014 | Jonathan Jones
Picture editors selection of Malaysia Airlines MH17 images
Television cameras at the place where MH17 fell to earth couldnt help panning back to reveal a vast, low-lying landscape of interminable near-nothingness. A roadside cross, dark against a yellow and violet sky, spoke of centuries of quiet farming and rural life interrupted only by the wars that have churned up Ukraines history, the tanks that have rolled across this great empty space with its eerie, Rothkoesque light.
Returning to the charred field, which in a second turned into a monument to every war that has ever mulched the land of Europe, video images join with still photographs in documenting a catastrophe like no other. The visual evidence of disaster should by now be banal, overfamiliar and yet it is not, because humanity is always finding new ways to destroy humanity. As Tolstoy said of families, all true tragedies look different.
Continue reading...July 17, 2014
The top 10 swimmers in art
When it's hot, everybody loves a good dip. And from David Hockney's famous splash to kids in pools and ancient divers, here are the best swimming scenes yet captured by artists on canvas and mammoth tusk...
The top 10 crime scenes in art
The 10 most shocking performance artworks
The top 10 female nudes in art
The top 10 male nudes in art
Everything that everybody associates with the Mediterranean is encapsulated in this wall painting from Paestum, an ancient Greek city in southern Italy. The anonymous classical artist has sensually portrayed the arc of a diver's body as he glides into the sea. It looks as hedonist as Hockney's A Bigger Splash and as with all ancient Greek art, the homoeroticism is totally intentional. Yet it was painted in a tomb, and the depths towards which the man is diving must be those of death itself.
Continue reading...July 16, 2014
Gilbert & George review a dirty-mouthed atheist onslaught
This new exhibition of relentless photomontages restates the double act's desire to offend on a colossal scale
Gilbert & George are back in pictures
Gilbert & George Q&A
The world of art is overwhelmingly liberal and forward looking. Unless you start following the money into Charles Saatchi's bank account, the mood, content and operating assumptions of contemporary art are strikingly leftwing, from Bob and Roberta Smith's cute posters to Jeremy Deller's people's art. The consensus is so progressive it does not need saying.
Gilbert & George have never signed up to that consensus. I am not saying they are rightwing. I am definitely not saying they are "racist". But throughout their long careers, from a nostalgia for Edwardian music-hall songs to a more unsettling affinity for skinheads, they have delighted in provoking us, dear Guardian reader.
Continue reading...Moving pictures: the amazing paintings that float in mid-air
Luridly chemical colours hang in the air in the vast wastelands of Nevada in an eye-catching set of pictures by the New York art duo Floto+Warner. To make these images of bright liquids arrested in space, Cassandra and Jeremy Floto threw up cocktails of colour until their camera caught just the splashy, fluid, stilled moments they wanted to record. Apparently, Photoshop is not involved.
These images echo the great modern tradition that pictures motion, energy and flux. "Energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space," as Jackson Pollock said of his paintings that he made by dripping, flicking and throwing paint on to canvases laid on the floor. Pollock's "action paintings" are the obvious source of Floto and Warner's hurled colours: their photographs are playful riffs on Pollock. And they bring out one of the most startling things about his art: the sense it is still in motion even when it has stopped; the feel of paint being liquid long after it has dried.
Continue reading...July 14, 2014
Why Germany would win the World Cup of modern art too
Germany has proved its global footballing eminence by winning the 2014 World Cup, yet soccer is just one of many things Germans excel at. There's also art.
What is the most exciting show coming up in Britain this autumn? No question it is the German artist Anselm Kiefer's exhibition at the Royal Academy. Kiefer is one of the most imaginative, original and serious artists alive. History hangs like snow-laden fir branches in the haunted forest of his art. He is a magic realist whose way of seeing makes most of our feted British artists look silly.
Continue reading...July 11, 2014
Gilbert and George, Malevich and 20,000 toothbrushes the week in art
Gilbert and George
Continue reading...July 10, 2014
The top 10 comics in art
The top 10 artworks of the 20th century
The top 10 monsters in art
The 10 weirdest artworks ever
Robert Crumb creates a graphic (and funny) self-portrait of age and celebrity in this intimate adult comic. The art of Crumb is fiercely honest and riskily confessional. Spurning the superheroes and violence of American mass market comics, he has forged a genuinely grown-up approach in which sexuality is openly explored. Yet what makes him a powerful artist is his ability to draw with accuracy and beauty.
Continue reading...July 9, 2014
Secret oasis: the artist who's hidden a swimming pool in the desert
Art does not always want to be seen at least, not easily. Since the 1960s, some of the most memorable works of art have been hidden in remote places, or knowable only through photographs.
The latest such elusive treasure is a swimming pool created in the Mojave desert by Austrian artist Alfredo Barsuglia. The pool is full of clean blue water, whose appeal under the fierce sun in the middle of the desert must surely be amplified hundreds of times, set in a white, modern structure with pool-cleaning equipment supplied so you can leave it as you found it. You are also asked to bring water to replenish the pool.
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