Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 228
April 14, 2014
David Cameron's holiday snaps: political gaffe or shrewd PR signal? | Jonathan Jones
Other people's holiday snaps are always a thrill. Oh, how lovely. There you are on the beach. Yes, it was raining.
Has no one told David Cameron that flaunting your foreign fun is about as charming as waving a bank statement in someone's face? It certainly looks that way to the Daily Mirror, which headlines pictures of the Camerons chatting over coffee: "David Cameron 'chillaxes' by Lanzarote beach after escaping for yet ANOTHER foreign holiday." The paper reminds its readers that Cameron "managed FOUR getaways last summer" before going into detail about the luxury yoga retreat the prime minister and his family are enjoying in Lanzarote (they did at least fly there by Ryanair).
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April 13, 2014
'Retronauting': why we can't stop sharing old photographs
View a gallery of stunning vintage pictures
The power of photography: time, mortality and memory
It was the sign advertising Brylcreem that got me. It can be seen in one of Chalmers Butterfield's colour photographs of Piccadilly Circus in 1949. Why did it move me? Brylcreem's range of hair styling products for men is still very much with us. Personally, though, it always means the red plastic pot of the stuff my dad kept ever-ready in the bathroom of our home in the 1970s. It spoke then, and does now, of his youth in austerity Britain, skiffle-board Britain, Teddy Boy Britain.
What is nostalgia? For me it's triggered by the sense that my parents might be young people in Butterfield's deep colour vistas of the West End of London. For enthusiasts who post historic photographs on Twitter, it's more broadly scattered. These pictures reveal the wealth of photographic documents, memories and arcana that these sites have dragged into the 21st-century limelight, from an 1890s portrait of Cornelia Sorabji, India's first female advocate and the first woman to study law at Oxford University, to the building of the Hoover dam in Roosevelt's America.
Continue reading...April 11, 2014
Matisse, the best ever male nudes and Hirst's tell-all memoir the week in art
Matisse: Cut-outs
After the second world war the brilliance of French art seemed to most people to be utterly exhausted. Paris, the capital of modernism since the days of Manet, had ceded its title to skyscraping Manhattan. But an ill old man playing with paper proved everyone wrong. The cut-outs that Henri Matisse made in his final years are among the truly pivotal artworks of the 20th century they are a missing link between modern painting and postmodern installation, between the dedicated art of the easel and the readymade, theatrical art of today.
April 10, 2014
The top 10 male nudes in art
The 10 sexiest artworks ever
The 10 most surreal artworks
The 10 most shocking performance artworks
The full-frontal menace of Caravaggio's boldest painting creates one of art's most unsettling encounters. Cupid is a real youth, modelled, it was said in the 17th century, after his own boyfriend "that lay with him". He poses as the god of love, wearing fake wings, grinning insouciantly at the embarrassed onlooker as the painting's severe light leads all eyes to his nudity. Is this what it felt like to be a cardinal eyeing up the trade in baroque Rome? Caravaggio's anarchistic tribute to the destructive power of desire the stuff of civilisation lies defeated at Cupid's feet is eternally worrying.
Continue reading...April 9, 2014
Let's hit Putin where it hurts all artists must boycott Russia
While the news in Britain is dominated by domestic politics and celebrity, Russian troops remain massed on the Ukraine border as nationalist confrontation escalates in eastern Ukraine. It's the most serious threat to world peace since the end of the cold war. The unacceptable policy on gay rights already unleashed by the Russian government now looks like a warning sign the world should have paid more attention to that something was seriously going wrong.
Continue reading...April 8, 2014
Damien Hirst's autobiography: what's left to say about the YBA bore?
Damien Hirst to reveal 'criminal past' in autobiography for Penguin
Damien Hirst. Is there anything left to be said about him? One person is hoping there is, and that's Hirst.
Penguin Viking is to publish his memoirs. Last year, Penguin Classics brought out Morrissey's autobiography. Will Hirst's book also be a classic?
Continue reading...Fancy a breeze-block sofa? Sarah Lucas unveils her first foray into furniture
Fancy sitting on a breeze-block couch? A chair made of, er, breeze blocks set in MDF? Artist Sarah Lucas is offering an eponymous furniture range that elegantly, albeit uncomfortably, parodies modern design and spartan chic.
Lucas is not the kind of artist who blandly celebrates the veneer of the new. She's a trasher of the times, a suburban satirist with an eye for the embarrassing.
Continue reading...April 4, 2014
George Bush's paintings: this is the art of Forrest Gump
George W Bush has found that magic recipe for public redemption that eludes Tony Blair. Don't waste time on globetrotting missions and elder-statesman opinions that do nothing to appease people who see you as a liar and warmonger and think you should be arrested. Take up painting instead.
That gentle, civilised art can wipe away a surprising quantity of blood.
Continue reading...Gucci glamour, Georgians and graffiti on the Berlin Wall the week in art
The First Georgians
This year is the 300th anniversary of the coming of the House of Hanover to Britain. This imported German royal family gave the cultural revolution that swept 18th-century Britain a continental flavour. The reigns of Georges I, II, III and IV saw Britain transformed from a traditional rural society into the first modern commercial nation, its arts and economy dominated by rapidly growing London, its landscape starting to be transformed by the world's first industrial revolution. This heady age also saw German influences on the arts from Handel's music to Johann Zoffany's paintings. This show looks at the start of Britain's Georgian boom.
Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London SW1, from 11 April until 12 October.
Arthouse stars: Ai Weiwei and the history of artists in film
China's legendary dissident artist Ai Weiwei is to make another foray into popular culture (following his heavy-metal record and dance video) as he appears in a forthcoming science-fiction film called The Sandstorm. It's set in a "dystopian Beijing", and filmed on location there, according to reports, so maybe his involvement has a political edge. And far from a Hollywood blockbuster, it is a short film funded by Kickstarter, so it's all very artistically pure.
However, this is not the first time a famous artist has made a cameo appearance in a film and some have been far more surreal.
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