Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 239
December 31, 2013
Arts preview 2014: comebacks
From Johnny Cash to Angela Lansbury, expect to see some familiar faces in the coming year
PopThe lost Johnny Cash gets released
According to Cash's son John, the country legend was a prolific hoarder, hanging on to everything from original audio tapes for The Johnny Cash Show to "a camel saddle gift from the prince of Saudi Arabia". That explains why it's taken several years since his death in 2003 for anyone to find Out Among the Stars, an album he recorded in the early 1980s. Columbia dismissed the album as not worth releasing, but John Cash describes the 12 tracks – which include a duet with Johnny's wife, June Carter – as "beautiful". 24 March.
Hairspray
Barely has the set for a blistering revival of Chicago been cleared away than director Paul Kerryson sets about reinventing this joyous musical, inspired by John Waters's cult movie. It's a show that mixes the heart-rending and the hair-curling, the serious and the sentimental. Lyn Gardner Curve, Leicester (0116-242 3595), 28 February to 5 April.
Angela Lansbury
When Lansbury was last on the West End stage, the BBC's idea of interactive coverage was Ceefax. Forty years on, the 83-year-old is as much of a star as ever – and her reprise of a role she first played on Broadway in 2009, that of the eccentric clairvoyant Madame Arcati in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, is hotly anticipated. Andrew Dickson Gielgud, London W1 (0844 482 5130), 1 March to 7 June.
Peter Brook
Every return by the visionary 88-year-old director, based in Paris since the 1970s, is worth watching out for. Co-directed with long-term collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, the new play The Valley of Astonishment promises much: a kaleidoscopic journey into the miracles of the human brain. Some have said Brook's horizons are shrinking since the days when he did epic versions of texts such as The Mahabharata; can this work buck the trend? AD Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 2922), 20 June to 12 July.
Jean Dujardin
When Jean Dujardin made a sensational splash in silent movie The Artist in 2011, many assumed he would be all over international cinema from that point on. Instead, he was absent, and it was rumoured that his much-anticipated Hollywood career was hobbled by his poor command of English. Now he is back in George Clooney's wartime caper-thriller The Monuments Men. Peter Bradshaw 14 February.
Val Kilmer
Alec Baldwin is living proof that actors can gain weight and still be sexy. Val Kilmer has put on a pound or two since the days of Heat in the mid-90s, but he still has a fanbase. Now he is understood to be making an appearance in the new Terrence Malick movie about the Texas movie scene. PB
Jim Carrey
Time was when Jim Carrey was an undisputed comedy superstar. His profile seems to have faded, playing minor character roles and cameo turns in other people's movies. Perhaps Dumb and Dumber To will change things: an outrageous and dodgily spelt sequel from the Farrelly brothers. PB 19 December.
Lacey Turner
There is no way in the world that Stacey Slater, played by Turner, should return to Albert Square. She framed someone for murder there. She had an abortion there. She had an affair with her father-in-law there, and became alcoholic there, and murdered a man, and watched her husband fall off a roof to his death there. And yet, for reasons that make no sense at all, in early 2014 Stacey Slater is returning to EastEnders. Stuart Heritage BBC1
W1A
During an Edinburgh TV festival session with Jon Morton, I suggested he follow Twenty Twelve with a show set at the BBC. Morton looked shifty – presumably because this new show about the corporation was even then working its way through various exploratory committees at the Beeb. Expectation is high. The cast includes Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Hynes and Olivia Colman. Mark Lawson BBC2
Girls
Over its previous two series, Lena Dunham's creation has succeeded in fulfilling its remit to become a Sex and the City for the 21st century. It shares the sexual frankness and the social satire of the earlier show, but benefits from the considerable shifts in the technology and psychology of friendship. Third series are problematic, however: they must strike a balance between repetition of the familiar and injection of the new. ML Sky Atlantic
Endeavour
Several successful TV shows have managed one popular spin-off (Cheers/Frasier, Dallas/Knots Landing) but it's rare to see three hits from the same line. However, the trilogy of Man About the House/Robin's Nest/George and Mildred is now challenged by the Inspector Morse industry. The original show ran for 13 years, and the sidekick spin-off, Lewis, will return for an eighth series in 2014 alongside more of these stories about the young Morse, played by Shaun Evans. ML ITV
Jimmy Carr
It's hard not to see Funny Business as Carr's effort to bounce back after the tax-avoidance row that has dogged him over the last 18 months. Chances are, he'll just glide insouciantly on, dispatching nuggets of taste-free wordplay, and trusting we all forget. Brian Logan Swan, High Wycombe (01494 512000), 24 April, then touring.
Veronese
In the eyes of the first modern artists, Veronese was a radical painter whose rich feel for colour and light anticipated their own discoveries. Renoir revered this 16th-century Venetian as a sensual painter with a colossal appetite for life, velvet textures and dazzling perspectives. It's time to rediscover this libertine genius. Jonathan Jones National Gallery, London WC2 (0844 847 2409), 19 March to 15 June.
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: 1980
When Pina Bausch first came to London, performing the emotionally gruelling 1980, audiences were divided between rejection and a sense of ecstatic discovery. Three decades and a devoted fanbase later, the company bring this rarely performed work back to the UK. Judith Mackrell Sadler's Wells, London EC1 (020-7863 8198), 7-16 February.
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Arts preview 2014: daredevils
Theatrical hell-raisers and the art world's enfants terribles take centre stage in our roundup of the biggest risk-takers of 2014
TheatreOh! What a Lovely War
Theatre-maker Joan Littlewood was a visionary, an iconoclast and a subversive. Her 1963 "documentary collage" about the bitter ironies of the first world war was way ahead of its time, using popular period song and hard-hitting testimony. Lyn Gardner Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), 1 February to 15 May.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's dark tale as you've never seen it before, taking place in a secret location from dawn to dusk. Party with Duncan, bed down in Macbeth's castle on the 27th floor of a tower block, glimpse the witches in an underground car park, and join the feast at which Banquo will be an uninvited guest. The spectres will be bloody – but the food will be vegetarian. LG Secret location, London, 4 April to 31 May.
Grit
This show brings together the talents of Scottish theatre hell-raisers Cora Bissett and Kieran Hurley to celebrate the life and music of Scottish musical shape-shifter Martyn Bennett. Add in Cirque du Soleil's technical director, Andrew Watson, and there should be plenty to see. Plays Tramway before heading to Mull for the midsummer weekend. LG Tramway Glasgow (0141-276 0950), May.
A View from the Bridge
Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove has presented Shakespeare's Roman tragedies as a six-hour multimedia spectacular, and reworked Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage as a promenade production that collapsed into a full-scale fistfight. Whatever he ends up doing to Miller's operatic tragedy of an Italian longshoreman and his frustrated American dreams, expect the unexpected. Andrew Dickson Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 2922), 4 April to 24 May.
Adler & Gibb
Tim Crouch's return to the Royal Court focuses on the real-life relationship between conceptual artists Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb, once described as "the most ferociously uncompromising voice of their generation". Prepare to be discomfited. AD Royal Court, London SW1 (020-7565 5000), 13 June to 5 July.
The White Whale
Slung Low's ambitious and futuristic Moby-Dick has an all-male, all-singing cast. Performed on boats and floating platforms in Leeds's canal district, it should be a leviathan of a show. Tickets free. LG Leeds Dock, 4-14 September.
Golem
Last time we saw them, the company 1927 considered rebellion and revolution in The Animals and Children Took to the Streets. Now they apply their sizzling blend of animation, live music and action to ask what happens when humans and machine become one. LG Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 2922), 9 December to 17 January 2015.
Hannah Hoch
Cut with a Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly – the title of Hannah Hoch's most notorious collage says it all. In Berlin just after the first world war, this revolutionary artist used scissors and paste to subvert a society. She belonged to the Dada movement that rejected the "civilisation" that murdered Europe's young men in four years of mud and blood. Hoch looks at her divided and turbulent times through the shattered lens of photomontage: chopping up images from newspapers and magazines, she reassembles them into a dream world of machines and monsters. Decades later, punk album covers were to echo her angry hilarious mayhem. Jonathan Jones Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 (020-7522 7888), 15 January to 23 March.
Vincent van Gogh: The Sunflowers
When the troubled, self-taught artist Vincent van Gogh got off a train in Arles in 1888, he wanted to start an artists' colony, "the studio of the south", and he turned the house he rented into a utopian vision of the simple creative life. To decorate The Yellow House he painted sunflowers – and this exhibition brings together two of his most powerful attempts at capturing their golden light. JJ National Gallery, London WC2 (020-7747 2885), 25 January to 27 April.
Ryan Trecartin
The first UK solo exhibition by LA-based Ryan Trecartin, whose work divided audiences at the 2010 Liverpool Biennial when it was first shown here. People ran out, screaming, but maybe they were caught up in the infectious mayhem of Trecartin's absurd video installations. Cheap technological effects, fractured storylines, shrill and stilted dialogue in peculiar accents, over-the-top ensemble acting, cross-dressing, crowd control and violence, particularly to smartphones, are Trecartin's forte. His work surfs the post-internet age and plumbs the shallows of modern TV culture. Yet he has really got a handle on the contemporary condition, and his art is as ordered and critical as it is seemingly chaotic and complicit with modern banality. Whether as comment or symptom, Trecartin's work is both addictive and deeply queer. The exhibition will centre on Priority Innfield 2013, Trecartin's most ambitious project to date, last seen at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Adrian Searle Zabvlodowicz Collection, London NW5 (020-7428 8940), 2 October to 21 December.
Sigmar Polke: Alibis
This retrospective aims to show the German painter, sometime film-maker and sculptor in full. A founder, with Gerhard Richter, of Capitalist Realism (a rejoinder to British and American pop art) in the 1960s, Polke went on to make an enormous variety of hallucinatory, poisonous, gorgeous and unsettling works that still reverberate with a strange dark humour and trenchancy. Polke took painting to places it had never been, both in terms of imagery – quoting Goya, John Teniel's illustrations to Lewis Carroll, Richard Dadd, medieval manuscript illustrations, images of Concentration camp watchtowers and the patterns on a tea-towel – and technical innovation – he painted with poisons, soot and much besides – and was possessed of a demonic skepticism and playfulness. The more time goes on, the more powerfully Polke's art resonates. AS Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888), 9 October to 8 February 2015.
Opus
Australian contemporary circus company Circa went where no acrobats have gone before with 2012's tour of cathedrals that melded Renaissance music to their own extraoardinary leaps and tumbles. Their next project, Opus, choreographs their physical feats of grace and beauty to the intensity of Shostakovich's String Quartets, performed on stage by the Debussy String Quartet. Imogen Tilden Barbican theatre, London EC1, 18-22 February.
Moses und Aron
If the highlight of opera in the UK in 2013 was Welsh National Opera's production of Alban Berg's Lulu, the company could repeat that success with its staging of another of the 20th century's great unfinished operas. No one has attempted to complete Schoenberg's magnum opus, but Moses und Aron is still an immense, spectacularly difficult undertaking for any opera company, complete with a notorious orgy scene to climax the second act. This production, directed by Josse Wieler and Sergio Morabito with John Tomlinson as Moses and Rainer Trost as his brother Aron, will be the first chance to see it on stage in this country for almost half a century. Andrew Clements Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 24 May to 7 June; Hippodrome, Birmingham, 18 June; Royal Opera House, London WC2, 25-26 June.
Crowd Out
David Lang began his composing career in the late 1980s as one of the founders of Bang on a Can, the New York-based collective. Choral music has played an increasingly important role in his output – his haunting Little Match Girl Passion won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 – but his latest project is on a far bigger scale. Crowd Out is a piece for 1,000 voices of all abilities on a text Lang created using the auto-complete function of an internet search engine, and will involve everything from whispering to shouting and clapping as well as normal singing. AC Millennium Point, Birmingham, 8 June; Arnold Circus, London E2, 21 June.
Matthew Barney
For the last few years, Barney's been working with composer Jonathan Bepler on The River of Fundament, partly based on Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings. Having previewed it at the Manchester festival, English National Opera will screen the complete version this summer and it could be the wildest, most visceral, most visionary myth of creation and destruction you've ever seen. Or an exuberantly pretentious folly. The risk is the thing; there's no one and nothing like Barney. Tom Service Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7836 1111), from 29 June.
Jonah
The Australian comedian Chris Lilley has followed his nation's greatest comedian – Barry Humphries – in creating an interacting array of fictional characters. His characters are based around Summer Heights High: a high school in Australia, which is being filmed for a TV documentary. Lilley has now spun off two of the characters – a Tongan immigrant and a posh girl – into series of their own: Ja'mie: Private School Girl and now Jonah. Which should raise the profile of this versatile and daring performer. Mark Lawson BBC3
Damon Albarn
Given that his recent projects have involved staging Chinese operas and chartering a train of African musicians across Britain, the notion of Damon Albarn releasing a solo album seems almost small-scale. Yet, amazingly, it's another first: he's never released a solo record before (Demo-crazy was a double EP, Mali Music a collaboration). The preview we've heard – all 20 seconds of it – involves gentle piano and electronics, although Albarn calls it "folk soul" with added beats by producer Richard Russell. Oh, and as ever, there's talk of possible new Blur material in 2014 too. Tim Jonze
TV on the Radio
Renowned for their experimental take on traditional indie rock, perhaps the most surprising thing about TVOTR's comeback single Mercy is that it's so straight. Gone are the shades of funk, R&B and electronica in favour of a to-the-point, punky blast. Whether this will be indicative of their new album – their first since the death of bassist Gerard Smith – remains to be seen. TJ
Analog.Ue
One of the most consistently interesting and experimental performers in UK comedy, Daniel Kitson brings his new is-it-comedy-or-is-it-theatre? show to the National – and this one sounds like yet another push at the formal envelope from the restless Yorkshireman. Reports from New York, where Analog.Ue premiered, suggest a play made up entirely of recorded text, with Kitson himself manhandling the equipment but not speaking a word. And all in aid of "a strangely hopeful story about what we learn from loss," in the words of the show's rave New York Times review. Brian Logan National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), 25 February to 20 March.
Lynn Ruth Miller
You want daredevil? How about taking up standup when you're 70? That's what Lynn Ruth Miller did 10 years ago. Now the Ohio native is an Edinburgh fringe regular, and the current holder of the TO&ST cabaret award, which she bagged for her standup-and-songs show Granny's Gone Wild! "The wonderful aspect of Miller's set," wrote Time Out, which co-runs that prize, "is that she utterly embraces her age, without the slightest shred of sentimentality or solemnity." Miller also has a celebrated appearance on Britain's Got Talent under her belt (judge David Walliams called her "fantastic") – but don't hold that against her. BL Soho theatre, London W1 (020-7478 0100), 11-22 March.
Miranda Hart
Her first live standup tour this spring is a gamble. Hart wasn't a well-established standup before she found TV stardom, and her experience is limited to a few middling solo character-comedy shows at Edinburgh. But Hart isn't fazed. "Yes, I would probably say I am more of an actress than a stand-up," she said in a recent interview (with herself). "But I hope that is what will make the show a bit different." And if not, well, at least the queen of slapstick is used to falling on her face and getting back up again. BL Bournemouth International Centre (0844 576 3000), 28 February.
Virgin Galactic Spaceport
Rising from the deserts of New Mexico like a winged creature burrowing up from the depths of the earth, Norman Foster's spaceport is an appropriately mysterious site from which to launch yourself into space. Designed to heighten the drama before blast-off, the building has a long axial entrance, funnelling visitors through a great cleft in the landscape past walls that depict the history of space travel, before depositing them beneath the undulating shell of the terminal building's roof. After long delays, Virgin's first commercial flights should begin this August. Foster, an avid pilot, is first in the queue. Oliver Wainwright
Frank
Michael Fassbender has played a serene cyborg, Bobby Sands, a slavemaster and a sex addict. But in 2014, he gets inside the most bizarre mind of all: Frank Sidebottom, aka Chris Sievey, the musician-comedian who wore a giant fibreglass head with a beautifully unreadable expression. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Domhnall Gleeson co-star in an one of the most improbable – but potentially riveting – biopics of recent times. Ben Beaumont-Thomas 9 May.
Foxcatcher
Steve Carell, that lovely man from the Despicable Me movies, whacks the dial round to full-on weirdo for a biopic of John Eleuthère du Pont, an eccentric multi-millionaire who was convicted of the murder of his friend, Olympic wrestling champ Dave Shutlz. Mark Ruffalo plays the ill-fated brawler, Channing Tatum's his brother and training partner. Carell's done drama before, but nothing this heavy. Henry Barnes
English National Ballet: Lest We Forget
For the centenary of the first world war, Tamara Rojo has commissioned this fascinating-sounding programme for ENB. Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Liam Scarlett have all been invited to create works inspired by the cataclysm of 1914-18. Judith Mackrell Barbican theatre, London EC2 (020-7638 8891), 2-12 April.
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Arts preview 2014: star turns
Angelina Jolie takes on Sleeping Beauty while Terry Gilliam tackles Berlioz as the stars come out to confound our expectations in the coming year
FilmAngelina Jolie in Maleficent
Hollywood's most formidable leading lady is back after a relatively quiet spell, in a role playing on her scariness and seniority. This reinvented fairytale is a twist on The Sleeping Beauty, and Jolie is not playing the insipid dormant heroine with her crybaby attitude to finger-pricking but the evilly magnificent Maleficent, the sorceress who casts a spell on the demure young Princess Aurora. How did she get that way? Everything will depend on the script – but Jolie is always a great turn. Peter Bradshaw 30 May.
Natalie Portman in Jane Got a Gun
Natalie Portman is a Hollywood A-lister who first came to prominence in George Lucas's Star Wars prequel trilogy. She was compellingly vulnerable in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, but is also no snob, cheerfully appearing in the stoner comedy Your Highness. Now Portman has a cowgirl role in this western about a woman who has to ask an ex-lover's help in defending her husband against a gang. The title calls up memories of Doris Day in Calamity Jane. Sleek, sexy Portman will undoubtedly be a quite different proposition. PB 29 August.
Timothy Spall in Mr Turner
"National treasure" status is perhaps bestowed indiscriminately these days; you can get it by making consecutive weekly appearances on 8 Out of 10 Cats. But Timothy Spall earned it long ago, particularly in association with the director Mike Leigh. This uniquely generous British actor makes a powerful impression without ever showing off or stealing scenes. Audiences respond to his emotional warmth, and he can play comedy, tragedy and anything in between. His performance in Leigh's film about the artist JMW Turner looks set to be a hot ticket. PB 26 September.
Hugh Grant in The Reluctant Professor
Grant's Hacked Off activism has almost overshadowed his movie-star profile, and his brilliant investments in property and contemporary art mean he doesn't exactly have to take any old role to pay the bills. Hugh Grant is a smart, elegant romcom lead, and he's back in what looks like a classic Grant role, playing a washed-up screenwriter who is reduced to teaching. Naturally, he falls for one of his wide-eyed pupils: Marisa Tomei, who may well cure his cynicism and depression. A must-see for his fans, which includes me. PB
Bruce Springsteen
If new Springsteen material gets you excited then prepare to be … well, semi-excited. The Boss's 18th studio album, High Hopes, is due on 14 January, though it won't include fresh songs. Rather, Springsteen is looking back for the first time in his career, with an album of cover versions, reworked classics and outtakes. Of note: Tom Morello performs on several songs, including a new version of The Ghost of Tom Joad, and the Boss delivers his take on 70s avant-electro punk with a cover of Suicide's Dream Baby Dream. Tim Jonze
Beyoncé
Fresh from catching the entire pop world by surprise with her self-titled fifth album, Beyoncé's Mrs Carter tour hits UK shores in February. Fans can expect a visual spectacular – the album Beyoncé featured more videos (17) than tracks (14), after all – with previous tours having sparkling catsuits, lasers and a shower of golden fireworks. TJ
Lily Allen
Allen's return to the world of pop was certainly eventful, though perhaps not quite as she had intended. First she made her barnstorming entrance with, er, a Keane cover for a John Lewis advert. Then she released Hard Out Here, an attack on music industry sexism that ended up – along with its video – being accused of racism. With a Glastonbury performance and her third album – apparently featuring a track responding to her feud with Azealia Banks – 2014 looks to be a big year for Allen. Whatever she does, she probably won't do it quietly. TJ
Prince
After a pretty eventful year – new songs, a mini tour, hosting a pancake party – Prince is rumoured to make his big return in spring. The tracks he released in 2013, such as Breakfast Can Wait, sound like his strongest material in years. Best of all, his new deal with Kobalt lets him control distribution, so hopefully he'll be giving it away free with, say, a box of Weetabix. TJ
Tubby and Enid
Victoria Wood, originally a writer of contemporary comedy, has recently turned to historical pieces: the TV drama Housewife, 49 and the stage play That Day We Sang. This play with songs – about the famous 1929 recording of Nymphs and Shepherds by the Manchester Children's Choir – becomes a 90-minute television film, written and directed by Wood, with Imelda Staunton and Michael Ball as former members of the choir who meet again in middle age at a reunion. There is a sense that the 2014 Christmas schedule and the 2015 Bafta nominations may have already filled some of their slots. Mark Lawson BBC2.
Castles in the Sky
Unsurprisingly, the 2014 schedules will be filled with first world war stories. But this bio-drama about a discovery – radar – that may have changed the course of the second world war, flies in under the cover of a BBC series of science programmes. Comedian Eddie Izzard, an increasingly good character actor, plays Robert Watson-Watt, Scottish-born descendant of James Watt, creator of the steam engine, who led the team that developed the first working radar. ML BBC2.
Thomas Cromwell
Hero or henchman; Tudor genius or traitor to the crown? There are so many sides to Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell it's hard to know which to believe. How fitting, then, that we'll get two incarnations of him, on stage and screen: Mark Rylance in the BBC's six-part TV version of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies (expected in 2015); and Ben Miles in a double bill for the RSC. Andrew Dickson Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844 800 1110), until 29 March.
The Duchess of Malfi
Gemma Arterton began her stage career at the Globe, and she returns to star as Webster's imperious heroine who risks all for love and loses everything – except her dignity. It's also the first chance to peek inside the theatre's new candlelit indoor playhouse – a space that should give this macabre tragedy the intensity it needs. AD Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1 (020-7401 9919), 9 January to 16 February.
The Testament of Mary
Fiona Shaw as the Virgin Mary? It sounds unlikely, but this collaboration with Deborah Warner, adapted from Colm Tóibín's 2013 Booker prize shortlisted novel, was a hit on Broadway last year. In this retelling Mary becomes a subversive figure, torn apart by grief. Lyn Gardner Barbican, London (0845 120 7511), 1 to 25 May
King Lear
Star actor Simon Russell Beale and even starrier director Sam Mendes have finally found space in their respective diaries for Shakespeare's tumultuous study of madness and desolation. It's the role of a lifetime, but will the show live up to the billing – and the hype? AD National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), 14 January to 25 March.
A Streetcar Named Desire
Nominated for an Olivier award four years ago for her fiercely passionate take on Ibsen's Nora, Gillian Anderson gets her teeth into another trapped heroine: Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's whiskey-sodden study of desire and self-deception. Benedict Andrews, best known for drawing a blistering performance from Cate Blanchett on stage in 2012, directs. AD Gods and heroes are resurrected in poet Simon Armitage's reworking of Homer's The Iliad. One of the great stories of all time, this re-examination considers our own attitudes to war, cycles of revenge and what it really means to be a hero. AD Royal Exchange, Manchester (0845 450 48080), 8 May-7 June, then touring.
Henry IV, Parts I and II
The never-knowingly-underacted Antony Sher marks his return to the RSC with the beefiest character in the canon, the wench-and booze-guzzling Sir John Falstaff.Sher's challenge will be to find the lingering pathos of the role, and director Greg Doran's to highlight the kaledoscopic vitality of Shakespeare's richly observed scripts. AD Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon (0844 800 1110), 18 March-6 September 9 (Part I) and 28 March-6 September (Part II).
Natalia Osipova in Sleeping Beauty
Former Bolshoi star Natalia Osipova has already danced her first performances as a full member of the Royal Ballet. But the real test of her fit with the company style will be her debut in The Sleeping Beauty, the Royal's signature work. Judith Mackrell Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020-7304 4000), 27 March, 5 April and 9 April.
From the lens of David Lynch, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol
Industrial interiors from David Lynch, snapshots by William Burroughs and stitched-together photographs from Andy Warhol form this intriguing group show across three floors of the Photographers Gallery. Lynch's factory interiors, which were shot across eastern Europe and the US, are the most formally unified photographs here, while Burroughs' scattergun approach reflects a mind in thrall to the chance encounter. Most intriguing are Warhol's black-and-white shots of his daily life – interiors, streets, signage and, inevitably, celebs at parties – taken over the last 10 years of his life. Each series casts new light on their more well-known works of fiction, film and silkscreened art. Sean O'Hagan Photographers Gallery, London W1 (020-7087 9300), 17 January to 30 March.
The enduring Marina Abramović
Performance artist Marina Abramović has become a global phenomenon. She has, for her art, walked the Great Wall of China, sung lullabies while sitting on a heap of rotting cow's bones, been sung at by Jay Z, and served as the subject and star of Robert Wilson's opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. For three months in 2010, she sat at a table in New York's Museum of Modern Art, all day, every day, in silent communion with her audience. This summer at the Serpentine, she will present a new "endurance" performance. Expect enormous queues. Adrian Searle Serpentine Gallery, London W2 (020-7402 6075), dates tbc.
Richard Hamilton
The founding father of pop art, pop culture observer, painter, draughtsman, collagist and illustrator, who died in 2011 at 89, will have three simultaneous shows in London dedicated to his inquisitive career. The ICA is restaging two seminal installations, Man, Machine and Motion (1955) and an Exhibit (1957), to coincide with Tate Modern's retrospective, while Alan Cristea Gallery is showing a large selection of his prints. Hamilton's work digs at Thatcherism, examines the Northern Irish dirty protests and Orange marches, lampoons Tony Blair and recoils at the Iraq war; there was much more to him than pop art. AS ICA, London SW1 (020-7930 3647), 12 February to 6 April; Tate Modern, (020-7887 8888), 13 February-26 May; Alan Cristea Gallery (020-7439 1866), 14 February to 22 March.
Civilisation according to Kenneth Clark
Not only did the art historian Kenneth Clark run the National Gallery and write definitive books on topics like Leonardo da Vinci and The Nude, he also showed how beautiful and serious arts television can be with his legendary 1969 series Civilisation. Yet Clark became a figure of fun, too; in a democratic age, his aristocratic persona stuck out like a sore thumb. Monty Python satirised him as an art critic raving about "the nude in my bed". He was a convenient straw man for radical art historians who attacked him as a posh conservative lover of beauty. Today, Clark is rightly being rediscovered and this exhibition is an encounter with a dazzling intellectual star who put big ideas in clear words and gorgeous images. Jonathan Jones Tate Britain, London (020-7887 8888), 20 May-10 August.
Richard Strauss's 150th anniversary
The big questions to ask about Strauss at 150? Did his music atrophy into late-romantic obsolescence after his first, aggressively modernist operas? And was his close relationship with the Third Reich near the end of his life about personal pragmatism, or something more troubling? The best way to find out is to get stuck in to the music. Covent Garden's new staging of his longest opera, Die Frau ohne Schatten, directed by Claus Guth, will be one of the grandest and most opulent Straussian offerings of 2014, with a great cast, a thoughtful but controversial director, and conductor Antonio Pappano at the helm. Tom Service Royal Opera House, London (020-7304 4000), 14 March to 2 April.
Piotr Anderszewski
Over the last 10 years, Piotr Anderszewski has emerged as one of the great pianists of our time. He first attracted attention at the 1990 Leeds Piano Competition, when he walked off the platform during the semi-finals because he felt he was not playing well enough, and since then his rise has been characterised by that same meticulous self-criticism, resulting in playing of crystalline transparency and penetrating musical insight. Anderszewski strictly rations his recital appearances: this short UK tour in February with a programme of Schumann, Bartók, Szymanowski and Schubert, is one that every keyboard connoisseur will want to catch. Andrew Clements Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton (023 8059 5151), 11 February, then touring until 19 February.
Jonas Kaufmann's Die Winterreise
Though Kaufmann performs regularly in London, there's never the risk of him becoming the kind of circus act that great tenors sometimes become: he brings a freshness to everything. This spring, there are opportunities at Covent Garden to hear him both in Lieder and on stage – singing Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise with pianist Helmut Deutsch, and in Jonathan Kent's new production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, in the role of Des Grieux. AC Die Winterreise, 6 April and Manon Lescaut: 17 June to 7 July, both at the Royal Opera House, London (020-7304 4000).
Terry Gilliam does Berlioz
The film director and Python member made his opera debut when he staged The Damnation of Faust for the English National Opera in 2011. Its success brought another invitation to direct Berlioz. This time, unlike Faust, it's a work the composer actually wrote as an opera. Even so, Benvenuto Cellini is rarely seen on stage – the last British production was at Covent Garden in the 1970s. Berlioz's dramatisation of the Florentine sculptor's memoirs has its problems, but it will provide ample opportunity for trademark Gilliam spectacle. AC Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7845 9300), 5-27 June.
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Arts 2014 preview: talking points
What more has Courtney Love possibly got to share with us, and how will Steve McQueen fare at the Oscars? These are just a few of the topics that will set tongues wagging in the new year
PopCourtney Love's memoir
The question is not so much "what will be in Courtney Love's book?" as "what could possibly be in Courtney Love's book that she hasn't already spoken/ranted/raved about?" Still, her self-titled autobiography has been described as "too crazy not to be true" and should provide her definitive take on her time with Hole and her doomed relationship with Kurt Cobain. It will also, hopefully, spill previously unspilled beans on her relationships with Billy Corgan and Steve Coogan. Oh, and according to an interview she did with Rolling Stone, it was inspired by Russell Brand's My Booky Wook. The mind boggles. TJ
Everything to do with Kanye West
Kanye has hinted that a seventh studio album of his should see the light in 2014. But even without the prospect of this "minimalist eight-track" affair, be sure that Kanye's quotes, wild displays and jaw-dropping motorbike-humping videos will make him the most talked about pop star of the year. Again. TJ
Metallica and Iron Maiden team up for Sonisphere
The two heavy-metal giants have never played at the same festival in the UK until now, so expect Knebworth Park to be suffering from severe tinnitus by the time July has finished. TJ
12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen's Oscar-bound drama about Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery in pre-civil war America, is remarkable, if not for its classy performances (Michael Fassbender's volatile plantation owner is chillingly good), then for the fact that it's based on a true story. McQueen uses Solomon's personal anguish to cut to the heart of a superpower's relationship with the slave trade. Henry Barnes 10 January.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese's bleak Wall Street comedy arrives after the reckoning, but is set before the crash. Based loosely on the book by former trader Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an amoral money man snorting his way through multiple millions as the stock climbs higher and the party gets louder. There's no nod to the recession, no attempt to find meaning in excess. Just more money, more drugs, more fun. Morality is for wimps. HB 17 January.
Nymphomaniac
Sex. Four hours of the stuff, with a brief interval for the audience. Lars von Trier – him of the genital mutilation (Antichrist) and the extended disability joke (The Idiots) – knows how to push our buttons. Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stacy Martin share panting duties as Jo, a sex addict detailing her conquests to an older male confidante. Von Trier premiered the film, which contains scenes of penetrative sex, bondage and fellatio, on Christmas Day. Happy holidays! HB 21 February.
Transcendence
Christopher Nolan proved that brainiac sci-fi could do well at the box office with Inception. Now his cinematographer, Wally Pfister, puts his mind to directing with a similarly cerebral thriller. Johnny Depp plays an artificial intelligence researcher who is willing to sacrifice himself to create a sentient machine. Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany play fellow researchers, trying to pull him back from the brink. HB 25 April.
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn's bestseller gets a big-screen adaptation. Ben Affleck plays a struggling journalist implicated in the disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike), who went missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Set in the heart of recession-hit small town America, Gone Girl is a gritty suspense story. It'll need someone experienced in delivering grim-minded thrillers to direct. Step forward Mr David Fincher. HB 3 October.
Veronica Mars
Kickstarter's great success story. The film version of Veronica Mars, a cult US TV show in which Kristen Bell's high-school super-sleuth solves crimes in her downtime, was floundering in development. Then creator Rob Thomas turned to the 90,000 fans on the internet that were ready to chip in and see the film made. Cue a shift in our understanding of film financing and a wave of other film-makers (Spike Lee, Zach Braff, James Franco) begging funds off Joe Public. HB
A Million Ways to Die in the West
Family Guy creator/swing crooner/feminist-baiting Oscar host Seth MacFarlane steps out from behind the camera with this comedy western. MacFarlane plays a yellow-bellied sheep farmer whose lack of courage costs him his gal (Amanda Seyfried). Only a rambunctious adventure across the old west, a duel with an infamous outlaw (Liam Neeson) and many, many dick jokes can help our hero get back on the horse. HB 6 June.
Akram Khan
Akram Khan has joined forces with some extraordinary dance artists during his career, from Sylvie Guillem to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. This autumn's project should deliver sparks as Khan creates and performs a duet with flamenco iconoclast Israel Galvan. Judith Mackrell Sadler's Wells, London EC1 (0844 412 4300)
Inside KFC
We've already been inside Greggs, Claridge's, Liberty and Iceland, and now we'll get to see inside the mighty KFC. An upcoming three-part BBC1 documentary promises "unprecedented access" to the company, from boardroom to the lowly restaurant chef. It'll be worth watching for no other reason than to see if the truth of KFC is closer to the adverts (tender-eyed men stroking organic chicken wings) or most people's experiences (cross-eyed hen night revellers staggering up to the counter at 3am, bellowing "BARGAIN BUCKET"). Stuart Heritage BBC1
The Jump (Channel 4)
The BBC has Celebrity MasterChef, where famous people cook things. ITV has Splash!, where famous people jump into some water. And now Channel 4 has The Jump, where famous people strap planks of wood on to their feet and shoot off an icy ramp at 40mph. If you've ever wanted to see what Anthea Turner looks like writhing around in agony with two broken legs, or what Nicky Clarke looks like strapped to a gurney, this might just be the show for you. SH Channel 4
Sochi Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympics never tend to catch the public's imagination to the extent of its summer counterpart. The 2014 games look set to go the same way, thanks to the outcry and drip-by-drip boycott over Russia's human rights violations. However, Olympic fever is still strong here, so it might only take one British medallist to get everyone tuning in again. SH BBC
The Trial
Recent high-profile controversies about the ethics and outcomes of drug trials have meant the use of humans for pharmaceutical testing has become a recurrent subject in popular culture: including Lucy Prebble's National Theatre play The Effect and an episode of the Channel 4 drama series Fresh Meat. This potentially fascinating documentary follows the participants in a 2013 trial at Frenchay hospital in Bristol, aimed at finding a new treatment for Parkinson's disease. Mark Lawson BBC2
The Mistress Contract
Based on a real-life story, TV and film writer Abi Morgan's return to the stage has a tantalising premise: the long-running relationship between a man, 93, and his mistress, 88. He provides her with bed and board, she with "all sexual acts as requested, with suspension of historical, emotional, psychological disclaimers". Andrew Dickson Royal Court, London SW1 (020-7565 5000), 30 January to 22 March.
This May Hurt A Bit
As Danny Boyle's 2012 Olympic opening ceremony proved, the NHS is part of the British psyche – which is probably why it hurts when things go wrong. The latest from Out of Joint explores one family's journey through the digestive tract of the NHS. Will they be spat out? LG Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds (01284 769505), 6 to 15 March. Then touring.
Pests
As she proved with 2011's Mogadishu, a tough-minded study of Britain's educational system, ex-teacher and playwright Vivienne Franzmann is never afraid to say the unsayable. Here she takes on the failings of the care system, mental health and addiction. LG Royal Exchange, Manchester, (0161-833 9833), 12 to 22 March, then touring.
Union
Breaking up is hard to do – and if you've been together since 1707, it's easy to forget what brought you together in the first place. In the year of the Scottish referendum, playwright Mark Thomson reminds us of the story behind the Act of Union and the larger-than-life historical characters involved. Lyn Gardner Lyceum, Edinburgh (0131-248 4848), 20 March to 12 April.
Privacy
With Edward Snowden's NSA/GCHQ revelations making headlines throughout 2013, the Donmar is keen to prove it's on top of the news. Josie Rourke (who recently scored with Shakespeare's Coriolanus) directs; young playwright James Graham (best known for his surprise parliamentary hit, This House) writes. AD Donmar, London WC2 (0844 871 7624), 10 April to 31 May.
Battle of the towers of London
With plans for novelty towers shaped like a can of ham, a knife and a rolled-up napkin set to join the Gherkin in the City of London, the table is almost laid for a surreal dinner party in the sky. This year, two of its biggest guests will finally join the party, with the completion of the Cheesegrater, by Richard Rogers, and Rafael Viñoly's Walkie-Scorchie "fryscraper". With the latter undergoing an expensive retrofit to try to banish the lethal "death ray", will it be safe to walk along Eastcheap this summer? Oliver Wainwright
Glasgow School of Art by Steven Holl
Looming over Charles Rennie Mackintosh's original Glasgow School of Art building, American architect Steven Holl's new extension to the college has been designed as a shimmering apparition of greenish glass in contrast to the heavy masonry structure across the road. A spiralling sequence of studios will climb up through the building, arranged around "driven voids" to bring light down deep into the floors below. The different departments will all be connected by a continuous zig-zagging route designed, says the architect, to encourage "creative abrasion". OW
A House for Essex
The final project of mischievous architecture practice FAT, which recently announced its breakup, this surreal hybrid between a Thai wat and an Essex barn will be one of their strangest projects yet. Conceived as a scaled-up gingerbread house, it will be decked out with ceramic mouldings and tapestries by Grayson Perry, along with a line of his sculptures on the top of the roof. It will be the latest building in Alain de Botton's programme of Living Architecture holiday rentals – and promises to be the kookiest of the lot. OW
Master of the Queen's Music
Peter Maxwell Davies's self-imposed 10-year limit on his stint as Master of the Queen's Music ends in March, a few months before his 80th birthday. There's no stand-out candidate to succeed him, for it's hard to imagine most of the other leading British composers of today writing the ceremonial music required. Mark-Anthony Turnage might be one possible candidate, though; others could be Judith Weir, Michael Berkeley or Jonathan Dove. Before that appointment, though, the LSO has a major Maxwell Davies premiere, when Antonio Pappano conducts what Davies says will be his last symphony, the Tenth. Andrew Clements Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891), 1 February.
Thebans
In an age when too many composers are encouraged to compose their first operas at far too young an age, Julian Anderson has taken his time before embarking on one. Thebans, with a libretto by playwright Frank McGuinness, based upon Sophocles' Oedipus and Antigone plays, has been gestating for some years since ENO first offered Anderson a commission. It's directed by Pierre Audi, intendant of the Netherlands Opera and once a familiar figure in London contemporary music, here making his ENO debut. AC Coliseum, London WC2 (020-7845 9300), 3 May to 3 June.
Sensing Spaces
Architecture is not just about walls and doors and iconic skylines. It is about what's inside a shape – the volumes that a building contains and how the human body moves through them. From labyrinths to pods, from vast open halls to underground swimming pools, architecture can craft powerful spatial experiences. This exhibition uses multimedia installations to make the most avant-garde spaces of 21st-century architecture come alive. Jonathan Jones Royal Academy, London W1 (020-7300 8000), 25 January to 6 April.
Art as Therapy
Author Alain de Botton believes museums should change lives. This exhibition applies that ideal – the theme of his book Art as Therapy – to the great collections of the Rijksmuseum. Can Rembrandt's Nightwatch help you deal with a fear of the dark? Does Vermeer's Milkmaid suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder? The exhibition no doubt asks far more profound questions than these as it aims to show how artistic masterpieces can heal the pain of modern life. JJ Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (0031 20 6747 000), 25 April to 7 September.
Digital Revolution
Digital culture is the future that's already here. But is it art? That old chestnut of a question is likely to be raised in new forms by this survey of how the digital revolution is changing everything from music (will.i.am is a participant) to cinema and interactive art (represented by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer among others). Perhaps the most fascinating field for debate is gaming, which is both addictive and genuinely creative in the complex imaginary worlds it reveals. If digital life is art, is the artist an individual or a crowd? JJ Barbican, London EC1 (020-7638 8891), 3 July to 14 September.
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December 30, 2013
Banksy to Saatchi: the year in art – quiz
Jonathan Jones: Francis Bacon was a record-breaker, Lady Gaga made art go pop (again), and Jay Z found himself in a performance piece. How well did you follow the art scene in 2013? Test your mettle
Jonathan JonesDecember 28, 2013
What we liked in 2013: art
Are David Bowie, Man Ray and LS Lowry, who provided the year's mix of pop icons, glamorous portrait photos and matchstick men, evidence that British taste has reverted to an anti-artistic mood?
The best way to bring crowds into an art museum is not to exhibit art at all. That seems to be the lesson of the most popular exhibition of 2013, for according to figures provided by the Art Fund, the year's most highly attended show was David Bowie Is, at the V&A. And it was not the only gallery to do well with an unlikely choice.
This year's audience figures tell us that people don't want to go to museums to be talked down to or, God forbid, educated. The events that have done best are left-of-field surprises that offered good old-fashioned entertainment. Man Ray's portraits of artists and beauties transported audiences at the National Portrait Gallery – that was the second biggest exhibition of the year, followed by LS Lowry at Tate Britain, a hit of northern nostalgia and good, solid painting.
The striking thing here is that if you assessed the most popular art in the country in, say, 1975, you might get a very similar mix of pop icons, glamorous portrait photos and matchstick men. Back then, people in Britain were not considered to be anything like as besotted by art as we are nowadays. To put it bluntly, these are philistine enthusiasms. So has British taste reverted to an essentially anti-artistic mood that will always prefer a Lowry to, say, a Sarah Lucas, whose retrospective at the Whitechapel is nowhere in the year's top 10?
But wait, here's a contemporary artist at number 4. Oh no, it's Jack Vettriano. In spite of the disdain of the art establishment and the contempt of critics, people flocked to see this slick, semi-erotic painter's first museum exhibition at Kelvingrove in Glasgow. Enough also queued at Wolverhampton Art Gallery to put the hyperrealistic figure maker Ron Mueck in at number 9. These were the year's biggest contemporary art shows and both are massively accessible, unsubtle crowdpleasers a million miles from the stuff that wins the Turner prize (which was not a top 10 hit).
One jewel shines among the ashes of taste, and it delivered all the humanity and pathos of true popular entertainment. The British Museum's Pompeii blockbuster was the year's fifth most popular show, and the most rewarding exhibition of 2013. It is possible to thrill and enlighten at the same time.
The most impressive success of the year is that of London's tiny and "elitist" Courtauld Gallery, which got to number 7 with a small, intense show looking in detail at a moment in art history. That moment was Picasso's arrival in Paris and this 20-year-old's first forays in modern art – we could be heroes, just for one day.
Top 10 art shows1 David Bowie Is, V&A.
2 Man Ray Portraits, National Portrait Gallery.
3 Lowry And The Painting Of Modern Life, Tate Britain.
4 Jack Vettriano retrospective, Kelvingrove.
5 Life And Death In Pompeii And Herculaneum, British Museum.
6 Manet: Portraying Life, Royal Academy.
7 Becoming Picasso, Courtauld Gallery.
8 Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, Tate Modern.
9 Ron Mueck, Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
10 Ansel Adams, National Maritime Museumartfund.org
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December 27, 2013
The departed: Seamus Heaney and Lou Reed, the cultural heroes I lost in 2013
The death of the Velvet Underground leader stole a musical icon, but that of the poet felt like a more personal loss
Two of my real, heart-held culture heroes died in 2013. Lou Reed was the soundtrack of my adolescence and I still listen to his music. He's the reason I find meaning in the art of Andy Warhol, who discovered the Velvet Underground and was admired by its leaders, Reed and John Cale.
When I was 16, I literally thought I was the only Velvet Underground fan in the world. It was an obscurantist obsession, at a time when I should have been listening to Joy Division like every other miserable teenager in the northwest. I did listen to them, but I could hear in Reed's voice that he had a mainline into a place of sin and mystery and fearful magic.
Now it turns out there were loads of other fans of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground all along, and I was not alone.
Yet oddly enough, when the news of Reed's death broke, I felt nothing like the shock or sense of loss I might have expected to be torn by. I don't think I would have been especially upset if he died back in 1982, even, when I was listening to him all the time.
The fact is that mourning Reed seems a bit besides the point. In his best songs he presents himself as dead already. Heroin and I'm Waiting for the Man are letters from the end of the world. By rights, to judge from their lyrics, he ought to have passed away years ago. The extremism of his vision is not really captured by bland praise of Perfect Day. Reed's is a majestic voice but somehow not one that changes how you live, unless it inspires you to put a spike into your vein.
No – the death that saddened me most is Seamus Heaney's, for it is the silencing of a voice that could heal and resurrect and move mountains. I discovered this poet a bit later than I listened to Reed – and in the classroom. Then at university I went to a reading by him that I can still feel the soft power of.
Heaney's poetic voice is unpretentious, and yet tremendously knowledgable and sophisticated. He introduced me to Dante with his luminous translation of the story of Ugolino.
I have this deep feeling that Heaney is one of the greatest poets in the English language. His words go down like honey, like the conversation of the gods. Easy and profound.
It is Heaney's voice that is the deepest loss. A warmth was in it and I'm feeling the chill now.
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December 26, 2013
Waqas Khan: my art discovery of the year
There is cosmic majesty in this artist's sensational geometric works, and they've changed the way I think and see and live
It was only at the end of 2013 that I encountered my artist of the year. Waqas Khan showed a work at the Frieze art fair this year but, I'm sad to say, I missed it in the hubbub. It was only when I saw his sensational, visonary art in the Jameel Prize at the V&A that I fell head over heels for an artist who reveals the unstable contours of all things.
Waqas Khan makes drawings that start as tiny precise circles and expand, circle by circle, to become vast fields of shimmering light and shade. He spends long hours hunched over big sheets of paper accumulating networks of dot-like marks. Every one has to look just right, and he mustn't spill any ink.
The fascinating thing about these ethereal abstract drawings is the tension between precision and freedom, discipline and chaos. Because every detail is done by hand and with the naked eye, each little constituent part is different. The patterns are mathematical and geometric and yet organic, unpredictable, flawed. Forms constellate and fade. There's a sense of cosmic majesty, as if we were observing an abstract vision of the birth and death of the universe.
Khan says his work is about love. When he was a child in a village in Pakistan, he would listen to village elders tell stories of Sufi saints. To him, the great quality of these saints was their universal love. He also says his art is an attempt – partly inspired by the Sufi tradition – to take people out of everyday life for just a few minutes and reveal some other plane of existence.
In other words, here is an artist who matters because he is trying to change how we think and see and live. Working in Lahore, he creates a truly global art whose abstract liberty is ecstatic and compelling.
Late in the year, Waqas Khan made me see again. He showed me that art has a purpose in the age of science and technology, for his magic geometries give life to the universe.
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December 25, 2013
The Christmas story in art: we three kings
The arrival of the Magi in art is one of wealth and gifts – more like the modern, materialistic Christmas than you might think
The Adoration of the Magi is one of the great themes of European religious art – and obviously one of the most Christmassy. But it is more in line with the materialism of a modern Christmas than traditionalists might like to think. It is very much an artistic celebration of presents and wealth.
One rich family is largely responsible for making the adoration of the Magi such a mercenary artistic subject. The Medici became the wealthiest family in Europe in the late middle ages and their money made them the political bosses of their city, Florence. The Medici identified with the Magi. It was a way to assert that rich men can be holy – and that money is not sinful.
The Magi are wise, rich kings from the east who come to give gifts to baby Jesus. The Medici deliberately set out to be seen as modern Magi. They dressed up as the Magi for an Epiphany procession through the streets of Florence – and their supporters regularly commissioned paintings of the Magi from the city's greatest artists.
So it is not surprising that most of my top five paintings of the adoration of the Magi have a Florentine flavour.
Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence is in at No 5. In this painting that helped get him the patronage of the Medici, the young Sandro Botticelli portrays famous members of the family as wise men. Along with Cosimo, Piero, Lorenzo and Giuliano de'Medici stands, in an orange robe at the right of the crowd, Botticelli himself.
The Medici were not the only rich Florentines to identify with the Magi. At No 4 is Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration, laden with gold and glittering with luxury, painted for the ultra-wealthy Florentine citizen Palla Strozzi. This magical opulence is shared by Albrecht Dürer's Adoration of the Magi (No 3). These paintings literally sanctify wealth, making material gifts look both desirable and spiritually OK.
Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco The Procession of the Magi, No 2 in my top five, is one of the very few treasures of the Medici palace in Florence that can still be seen in its original location today. This painting has a huge appetite for the material world. Members of the Medici family ride horses in a long procession towards Bethlehem. Richly clad, they hunt and enjoy themselves on the journey. Gozzoli makes it look easy for a rich man to get into heaven after all. Forget that stuff about the eye of a needle.
For a young artist in 15th-century Florence, painting the Magi was clearly a good way to get noticed by the Medici. It was therefore very clever of Leonardo da Vinci to have a go. Yet where his rival Botticelli had put portraits of the Medici into a lovely adoration, the painting Leonardo started soon outstripped any practical calculations. It became a strange, eerie picture that he never even finished.
This masterpiece is at No 1. It is the greatest adoration ever. Leonardo shows infinite multitudes of humanity in a receding landscape, swarming over unfinished architecture, battling in the dust. In the foreground, dark-eyed Magi and a pensive horse contemplate the mysteries of life and death. Leonardo hints at untold riches of knowledge and unanswerable questions in this stupendous window on the cosmos.
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December 24, 2013
Ice ice baby: take our wintry art quiz
Jonathan Jones: Do you have the white stuff? Feel the Christmas chill as you test your winter art knowledge with the following 10 questions…
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