Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 23
February 13, 2024
Soulscapes review – glimpses of greatness get lost in the lush, tropical overgrowth
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
This exhibition exploring race and landscape art has some fabulous moments but its desire to remain tasteful veers towards kitsch
Whenever I encounter Ingrid Pollard’s conceptual photography, I feel, as a white British male, as if I have had my landscape ripped out from under me. When Pollard looks at the English landscape, she sees the enslaving past in every hill and dale. A day on the beach for her is ruined by the fact that slaving ships once crossed that sea.
If only she were included in Dulwich Picture Gallery’s gentle, slightly aimless survey of Black landscape art now. She would certainly make it a more pointed and contrary experience. On the other hand, perhaps the show should simply have made room for more works by Scottish-Barbadian artist Alberta Whittle. She has three paintings in Soulscapes: surreal circular tropical island scenes that make you smile. Yet in Whittle’s artistic output these are just playful moments in a much more serious and expansive project. She maps the long shadow of enslavement in installations of sunken houses and impromptu altars, videos and performances – a battery of approaches to history and geography. Can you even call her work landscape art?
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February 12, 2024
Outi Pieski review – an entrancing artist with her heart in the Arctic Circle
Tate St Ives
From a Warholian riff on traditional Sámi dress to paintings of dark forests with eyes, Pieski mines her heritage to produce work that is both joyous and bleak
How can you keep an Indigenous cultural tradition alive in the rushing roaring modern world? How about by turning it into wallpaper? That’s what Outi Pieski does in a work that humorously restages Andy Warhol’s pop art cow wallpaper, except the repeated image here is of a woman wearing a ládjogahpir, a hat that was once part of the dress of Sámi women in northern Finland and Norway. It is red, warm, with a horn or crown on top that’s the shape of an upturned shoe. The young women wearing this ancestral headgear with pride are part of a whole series of Arctic pop art works in which Pieski resurrects the ládjogahpir and makes it visible again.
She photographs the bright caps by themselves, in pairs, and being worn. This part of her entrancing exhibition at Tate St Ives is set up, ironically, like a fashion store. It is the closest her work comes to the consumerist urban norms of 21st-century Europe. Her heart, however, is in the mountains and ice fields of the far north, in another time stream, where landscapes are alive and forests have eyes. She sees that world with the passion of a campaigner and the vision of a remarkable artist.
Continue reading...February 9, 2024
Yoko Ono’s bottoms, Frank Auerbach’s heads and visionary new landscapes – the week in art
The pop icon finally gets the retrospective she deserves while Tracey Emin and Judy Chicago unpick their textile pieces – all in your weekly dispatch
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind
The brilliant conceptual artist who became a controversial icon of pop culture gets the retrospective she deserves.
• Tate Modern, London, from 15 February until 1 September
February 2, 2024
An eyeful of Soho sinners: Douglas Gordon’s All I Need Is a Little Bit of Everything review
Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London
Four decades of video work ranging from Dr Jekyll to a red light odyssey showcase the Turner-winning artist’s obsession with good and evil
Ethical beliefs drive plenty of 21st-century artists but Douglas Gordon is a different sort of moralist. The problems that haunt him are biblical. He is obsessed with the nature of good and evil, seeming to believe in sin and the existence of the human soul.
Confessions of a Justified Sinner, the video work that won him the Turner prize back in 1996, distils his metaphysical concerns perfectly. It’s one of the oldies but goodies, playing on a colossal mound of TV monitors at the Gagosian, part of a portable anthology entitled Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work from About 1992 Until Now, updated since it was shown at the Hayward two decades ago. The face of Fredric March, slowed down, shown split screen in “positive” and “negative”, transforms from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde, from the mixture of good and evil that makes up most of us into a creature of pure distilled evil.
Continue reading...Abstracted women, a pop pioneer and a portal into hell – the week in art
A global survey of non-figurative female artists, a great Scottish innovator and an installation of angels and flies – all in your weekly dispatch
Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970
Abstract art by women including Eva Hesse and Marisa Merz, from the era between 1950 and 1970 when modernism triumphed, then broke into more organic and personal visions.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, from 3 February until 6 May
January 29, 2024
Legion: Life in the Roman Army review – ‘More than just a blood and guts orgy of military might’
British Museum, London
From monsters to messiahs, from rebels to republics, from sex workers to chilled-out lovers, this wildly enjoyable blockbuster delivers a Rome for everyone
About halfway through this wildly enjoyable delve into Roman military history, you see an eerie object: a cuirass, a piece of torso-fitting armour that looks too big, as if it were created for a giant. It makes you think the legions that dominated so much of Europe, north Africa and the Middle East two millennia ago must have been full of truly invincible men.
Then you discover this is a relic not of a Roman triumph but one of the most devastating defeats its legions ever suffered. It was found on the battlefield near today’s village of Kalkriese, Lower Saxony, where German warriors massacred the legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus in 9 AD. The legionary who wore this armour may have been slaughtered after the battle, on the ground, to judge from leg irons with which he was apparently restrained. Or perhaps he was paraded as a trophy? It feels incredibly intimate to be so close to an event that has become a kind of historical horror story. “Varus, where are my legions?” yelled Brian Blessed as Augustus in I, Claudius.
Continue reading...A killer’s muse, a goddess, or actually a man? … 10 things you need to know about the Mona Lisa
The protesters who threw pumpkin soup at the world’s most famous painting have made headlines around the world. But what is it that makes Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece so alluring?
If you want to publicise a cause or gain infamy by vandalising a work of art, then you may as well pick on the most famous of all. When pumpkin soup was hurled at the bullet-proof glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre at the weekend, pictures of the painting obscured by gobs of liquefied food duly appeared across the world. But why is the Mona Lisa so famous anyway? Here are 10 things you need to know about the most idolised painting on Earth.
Continue reading...January 26, 2024
Romans invade, slogans loom large and Douglas Gordon wants everything – the week in art
Life as a legionary, Barbara Kruger’s concepts and new work from a video pioneer – all in your weekly dispatch
Legion: Life in the Roman Army
A celebration of the all-conquering Roman army that made its mark on ancient history and has haunted the ages. But what was life as a legionary really like?
• British Museum, London, from 1 February to 23 June
January 19, 2024
Lubaina Himid sews up Bath and 50 London galleries weave together – the week in art
The Turner prize-winner reconstructs the literal threads of colonial history, and a collaborative exhibition extends over 23 spaces across the capital – all in your weekly dispatch
Lubaina Himid: Lost Threads
The Turner prize-winner explores and reconstructs history’s complex webs.
• Holburne Museum, Bath, until 21 April
January 12, 2024
A painting looted by Nazis, a garden in a gallery and Pasquarosa’s hues – the week in art
Camille Pissaro’s stolen work, the London Art Fair and explosions of fauvist colour – all in your weekly dispatch
Pasquarosa: From Muse to Painter
This Italian fauve painter was a hit in early 20th-century London as well as in her own country.
• Estorick Collection, London, until 28 April
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