Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 24

Eek! Yikes! Love the tidying mouse video? Here are the greatest mice in art

Photographer Rodney Holbrook isn’t the first artist to capture a rodent in his studio. From Keith Haring to Paul Klee, painters have long been fascinated – and tormented – by the creatures

There are no mice in cave art. Stone age artists were too awed by mammoths to notice the tiny rodents. But by the time of the Roman empire, mice appear in mosaics, stealing the remnants of banquets while Roman cats fail to catch them. And mice have been depicted at play ever since, in just about every human habitat. One of their favourites is the artist’s studio: a messy setting with lots of materials, from the smelly to the potentially edible.

The tidying mouse in wildlife photographer Rodney Holbrook’s film has gone viral after being caught by a night vision camera. This little creature has us all charmed – but it’s hardly the first time an artist has noticed little intruders in the workspace. Bruce Nauman’s video masterpiece Mapping the Studio I and II, a three-screen epic study of randomness and chance, may seem far removed from Holbrook’s mousy footage yet it has similar origins.

Continue reading...

Psychedelic monks, subversive sculptures and paper-eating Pope.L’s final show – the week in art

A memorial to the performance artist who once ate the Wall Street Journal, eerie woodcuts and the immersive Book of Kells – all in your weekly dispatch

Pope.L: Hospital
This intense evocation of Pope.L’s provocative performances, which included sitting on a toilet nearly naked, eating the Wall Street Journal, has become a memorial after his death during the Christmas holidays.
• South London Gallery until 11 February

Continue reading...

Were the monks on drugs? How The Book of Kells went fully psychedelic

Spirited to Ireland to save it from the Vikings, this wild illumination of the New Testament, full of gilded curls and coils, is one of the most ecstatic artworks ever – and now it’s gone gloriously immersive

What was going on in the minds of all those monks on Iona when, more than 1,000 years ago, they created the Book of Kells? Whatever they were fuelled by, they made an artistic masterpiece of medieval Christianity, up there with Durham Cathedral, the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, and the frescoes of Giotto. But it is older than any of these, and far stranger, one of the most ecstatic and psychedelic artworks ever created, an enchanted book that leads you on curling, coiling journeys of endless reverie in which a single letter in a word can become an object of obsession.

Now that waywardness has gone immersive. This already mighty exhibit, in the Old Library of Trinity College Dublin, has been transformed into The Book of Kells Experience, taking you inside its illuminated pages to uncover the manuscript’s history.

Continue reading...

The best art and architecture shows to visit in 2024

Yoko Ono’s cheeky pieces, a gut punch from Goya and the National’s centenary celebrations will fill the UK’s galleries, while Giza opens its pyramid doors
• Artist Tavares Strachan on his 2024 show Awakening
• More from the 2024 culture preview

Continue reading...

The best art and architecture of 2023

Our critics’ high points include a ceramic wedding cake you can climb inside to Alice Neel’s fearless portraits, plus a new children’s V&A and a school with lumpy yellow walls
• More on the best culture of 2023

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Johannes Vermeer attracted over half a million visitors to the Rijkmuseum between February and June this year. Not bad for an artist who only produced about 37 known paintings over a 20-year period between 1654 and 1674. An exhibition of quiet intimacies and domestic mysteries, beautifully installed and spread over 10 rooms, 28 of these mostly small, interior scenes and occasional street views were presented in this stupefying exhibition, the largest ever of the artist’s work.

Continue reading...

Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession

It was a nice innocent game played by Renaissance courtiers, often featuring strong women. Why were these artistically dazzling cards given a black magic makeover that endures to this day?

As the train hurtles along, the art critic sniffs scornfully at the idea that tarot cards can tell your future. But he lets Dr Terror lay out his pack anyway, as does everyone else in the compartment. And, one by one, they are all dealt the same final card. It is Death.

This chilling scene, from the 1965 film Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, is fairly standard tarot fare. Many people use the cards to tell the future, or to meditate and find mindfulness. In any occult shop, you’ll find a huge selection of decks. Just in time for Christmas, traditionally a great time for card games, a famous pack – created in 1910 by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith – is being reissued by Taschen, complete with Waite’s booklet explaining the supposed mystic roots of tarot and what the symbols all mean: “Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy.”

Continue reading...

Prince’s prints, stolen Shrigleys and Apocalypse, Nativity – the week in art

It’s your last chance to catch a postmodernist provocateur’s photos, a jaw-dropping dinosaur and more – all in your weekly dispatch

Richard Prince
Early works by the postmodernist provocateur and appropriation pioneer.
• Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London, until 22 December

Continue reading...

Warhol on Beuys, Pauline Boty’s swinging 60s and jugs in abundance – the week in art

Warhol captures his friend with icy darkness, Bruce McLean chooses pottery over provocation and a contemporary gem on the north Wales coast – all in your weekly dispatch

Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits
Haunting images by the great American artist of his German peer. With typical icy darkness, Warhol sees fragility and fear in Beuys.
• Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, London, 14 December to 9 February

Continue reading...

Pesellino review – a lost star of the Florentine Renaissance shines again

National Gallery, London
Francesco Pesellino died young and this show only fills a single room. But it’s a room bursting with life, where bold, radical colours bloom in narrative scenes crammed with activity

It was a gossipy aside that was to shape art history. After seeing Titian’s latest painting in his studio, the Florentine Michelangelo praised it to Titian’s face but on the way home commented backhandedly to his friend and biographer Giorgio Vasari that it was a shame these Venetian artists didn’t learn to draw. Over the centuries, the contrast between Florentine “design” and Venetian “colour” became a cliche. It even stoked up William Blake to rage at the Royal Academy for promoting soft Venetian colourism against the true tradition of drawing.

Pesellino at the National Gallery overturns that simplistic view in a jewel case of a gallery where golden searchlights illuminate a universe of colour straight out of 15th-century Florence. The paintings of Francesco Pesellino cover all the top themes typical of a Florentine artist in the early to mid 1400s, from the journey of the Magi to the Annunciation. But what glow in your mind are his intense, almost psychedelic blues, reds and golds. In his painting King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land, a dawn sky unfurls in layers of pink against the azure heavens, beautifully observed and freely brushed. This isn’t rigidly “designed”: you sense the light is changing as you look, and recognise that Pesellino has captured the passing beauty of a brief moment.

Continue reading...

Volcanic prints, Mapplethorpe’s mates and Puerto Rico’s Palestinians – the week in art

The history of 500 years of print from Picasso to Emin, Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of his famous friends, and the Palestinian diaspora in Puerto Rico – all in your weekly dispatch

The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego
Five hundred years of woodcuts, etchings and linocuts with artists including Picasso and Tracey Emin.
• National, Edinburgh, 2 December to 25 February

Continue reading...