Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 240

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The Christmas story in art: archangel Gabriel appears before Mary

The annunciation is a favourite Christmas story scene among artists. Here are the top five

The Christmas story in art is a rich epic with different moods and tones that speak to different emotional needs. The adoration of the Magi offers artists a spectacle of rich clothes, long cavalcades, rare gifts. The adoration of the shepherds is humbler and more spiritual. But the most introspective and mysterious moment in the story is the annunciation – the appearance of the archangel Gabriel to Mary to tell her she will give birth to the son of God.

Medieval and Renaissance artists painted the annunciation again and again. It was popular in art long before the Renaissance dwelt on all those glitzy Magi. Annunciation scenes are profound moments of enigma in which a woman encounters the divine in the quiet of her home. They include some of the most powerful visionary paintings of all time.

Leonardo da Vinci heads the top five annunciations with a dreamlike youthful masterpiece. The angel has wings with incredibly realistic feathers: it looks as if, in this early painting that he did in Florence in around 1472-1475 when he was still in his 20s, Leonardo is already thinking about the possibility of human flight. His angel is a bird-man. But it is also an angel, and Mary shows her perturbation and awe at the message she receives. Her garden and bedroom are painted in miniscule, hallucinatory detail: a view past tall Tuscan trees reveals misty mountains in a world that hums with portent.

Second in the annunciation top five is a daring and unexpected take on the tale. In his Virgin Annunciate, painted in about 1476, Antonello da Messina does not show the angel at all. Instead, he concentrates on an intimate portrait of Mary as she absorbs the holy information. The leaves of her book seem ruffled by a divine breath: the holy spirit agitates the air. Mary is reserved, modest and contemplative. This is a shatteringly intense painting.

Simone Martini's annunciation uses far simpler methods than Leonardo and Antonello. Painted around 1333, with Lippo Memmi creating a gothic structure for his panel, he does not have the other artists' Renaissance mastery of perspective and depth. Yet it could be argued that this sets him free to be truly spiritual. The narrow Gothic eyes of Mary and Gabriel lock, in a moment of revelation and truth. Mary arcs her body with feeling against the golden ether.

Two great religious artists with very different personalities complete this mystical top five. Fra Angelico was a true holy man whose greatest achievement was his decoration of the religious house of San Marco in Florence. Each monastic cell has its own eerie painting. A highlight of the scheme is a perfectly poised annunciation. Mary sits humbly, profoundly aware of her task, in a loggia whose architecture is brilliantly delineated in depth. This a supernatural moment in a very solid three-dimensional space.

Fra Filippo Lippi was – like the saintly Fra Angelico – in holy orders, but by contrast he was a bad friar. It was said that his patron Cosimo de' Medici had to lock him in a room at the Medici palace to get him to stay away from lovers long enough to work. Perhaps the painting he was finishing under house arrest was his Annunciation in the National Gallery in London.

Whatever his sins, this is a holy work. Mary is lost in an inner world of prayer and vision. The angel reveres her, even as she reveres the power of God. The annunciation is art's most sacred moment.

ArtLeonardo da VinciChristmasJonathan Jones
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The art story of 2013? Alas, it's Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson

Charles Saatchi's new notoriety shows how marginal art is to UK culture – it will never have the mass appeal of football or cooking

What was the art news story of the year? Well, it was clearly the epic story of Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson, which began – let's not forget – with Saatchi being photographed putting his hand around his then-wife's throat.

This image has become more infamous than any of the artworks that caused so much sensation when the Saatchi collection was at the forefront of contemporary art. Move over Myra Hindley, roll over tiger shark. Saatchi himself is in the shock image of the year.

Surely, the new notoriety of Saatchi as one of the participants in this year's most jaw-dropping public scandal has something to tell us about the place of art in modern society. To read the more cultured newspapers and follow media coverage of events such as the Turner prize or Grayson Perry going to the shops, one would think that Britain in the 21st century is obsessed with contemporary art.

Yet the new public fame of Saatchi shows what an illusion that is. Art is really quite marginal to UK culture. A lot of people – shock! – have no interest in it at all. The most famous thing about the man who first collected Damien Hirst is now his marriage to a TV chef, and its end.

Art is not mass entertainment. It is not popular culture in the way Nigella is popular culture. For many people, the fact that Saatchi collects cool contemporary art is irrelevant. He may as well be an expert on Athenian red figure vases for all the impact his cultural activities make on public perceptions of him. He's just this guy in a news story and his claim to fame is that he married a real star, a TV celebrity. Also that he is rich.

Is there a moral? Surely it is that art is never going to be like football or cooking as a mass phenomenon. What, therefore, are galleries and artists doing when they subscribe to populism as a basic premise of art today? If art is a minority interest, perhaps artists ought to be pursuing deep inner mysteries instead of catering for an illusory pop audience. Except, of course, that art collectors do want the slick, the easy and the sensational, and they get what they want.

Collectors like Charles Saatchi.

Charles SaatchiArtNigella LawsonJonathan Jones
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Gold, frankincense, myrrh and sex – the week in art

The Christmas story is told at the British Museum, as sexy exhibitions run riot elsewhere. Plus, the €100 Picasso raffle and the world's first nativity scene – in your weekly dispatch

Exhibition of the week

Beyond El Dorado
Gold plays a part in the Christmas story, along with frankincense and myrrh. It also appears in the halos of angels and the settings of medieval altarpieces. Gold, in short, has mythic and poetic meaning. This exhibition shows how such meanings vary in different cultures. For the Spanish conquistadors who believed the legend of El Dorado, the gold of the Americas was a dream of wealth and power. For native peoples in what is now Colombia, however, it was a connection with the sun god. See this beautiful exhibition and ponder the madness of materialism.
• British Museum, London WC1B until 23 March

Other exhibitions this week

Jameel Prize
A sexy and very interesting survey of contemporary art and design influenced by Islam.
• V&A, London SW7 until 21 April

Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art
Sensuality abounds in this scholarly delve into the history of erotica.
• British Museum, London WC1B until 5 January

David Hockney
The early works of David Hockney reveal a gay artist claiming sexual freedom in 1960s Britain.
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool L3 until 16 March

BP Displays
The story of British art can be savoured in style at this relaunched and reshaped museum.
• Tate Britain, London SW1P

Masterpiece of the week

This is one of the humblest, most severe and intensely beautiful of all nativities. If Christmas is getting too tinselly, a moment with Piero and he will cleanse you.
• National Gallery, London WC2N

Image of the weekWhat we learned this week

That a Picasso worth €1m was raffled off for €100 …

… which ended up teaching us about endangered art all around the world

What Christmas really looked like in London in the 1950s and 60s

What starry nights, culture vultures and batik gifts have in common

That George Zimmerman has put his first painting on eBay – and bidders have gone for broke

That the British Library have done a million-image giveaway

What the world's first ever Nativity looked like

And finally ...

Follow us on Twitter

Share your celebratory art about the Christmas period with us now

David HockneyMuseumsChristmasJonathan Jones
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What the €100 Picasso raffle teaches us about endangered art all over the world

Tyre, the ancient city in Lebanon, will be helped by cash raised in the recent Picasso raffle – and it's a reminder that we should chip in to save other world heritage sites threatened by conflict

Congratulations to Jeffrey Gonano, who has won a Picasso valued at €1m for the cost of a €100 raffle ticket. But while the inclusion of a work by the the modern world's greatest artist has drawn attention to a charity auction in aid of the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, the publicity has not led to much interest in why this world heritage site needs help.

In his book The Stones of Venice the Victorian critic John Ruskin says that three great empires have ruled the waves – Tyre, Venice and the British Empire. This maritime city was built by the ancient Phoenicians, a trading people who made a huge impact across the Mediterranean world. They are said to have even sailed down the Atlantic coast of Africa. They founded Carthage, a city that rivalled Rome.

As for artistic riches, legend has it that purple dye was discovered in Tyre. Impressive architectural remains survive there. But as Lebanon fell into civil war in the 1970s ancient Tyre was a victim of the chaos.

Money raised by the Picasso raffle will help protect the ruins of Tyre. It also serves as a reminder of one of 2013's saddest, and ongoing, cultural stories.

Tyre's peril began in the civil war that ended in 1991. But this is now just one of many cultural treasures endangered by conflict and crisis. In Syria, precious places from crusader castles to ancient Christian villages have been damaged by the current war. In Egypt, museum looting took place again this year. In Italy, neglect and organised crime threaten Pompeii as economic tensions deepen.

Even in affluent nations where war is not an immediate problem, the short attention spans and futurist mood of the digital age can devalue masterpieces of the past and lead to their comparative neglect.

There's good news, too. Timbuktu was saved early in 2013 before all its treasures could be destroyed. The British Museum's Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition showed why the past matters.

Plenty of people care about the world's heritage. Let's hope that 2014 will not see too many marvels lost to hate, violence or indifference. They can't all be saved by raffling a Picasso.

HeritageArtSculptureArchaeologyLebanonSyriaEgyptMiddle East and North AfricaMaliJonathan Jones
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George Zimmerman: American antihero turns big-bucks artist

The Florida neighbourhood watchman acquitted over the death of Trayvon Martin is selling a painting on eBay, and bids have reached $110,100. Why does Zimmerman fascinate America?

Only in America … it's often said, by European liberals, that news coverage in the US is absurdly inward looking and patriotic. Why don't they give world events more coverage on Fox? Where is the curiosity about global affairs?

Instead of saying "100 people were crushed …", a TV anchor in the US will say "100 Americans …". What is the reason for such apparent national narcissism?

It is not mere narrowness of outlook. The simple truth is that if you are inside it – and even if you are on the far side of the Atlantic – the US is a massive and strange fact that is very difficult to ignore. Americans can't take their eyes off America because they have front-row seats for the weirdest show on earth.

Consider this. George Zimmerman, the former neighbourhood watchman acquitted by a Florida jury earlier in 2013 for the fatal shooting of African American teenager Trayvon Martin, has put what is said to be his first painting for sale on eBay. The Los Angeles Times reports that it may be a copy of a well-known photograph – but that has not daunted his fans.

Bids at the time of writing have reached $110,100, with bidders leaving messages of support.

Zimmerman's "art" is a picture of an American flag with the words "God" and "One nation with justice and liberty for all" written across it. It suggests he sees himself as a patriotic hero – and the people making offers apparently agree.

It's reminiscent of Martin Scorsese's most disturbing films, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, in which antiheroes who seemed destined for disaster become media celebrities instead. Will George Zimmerman end up as a regular guest of TV chat shows? Will his "patriotism" even get him his own show?

It's no surprise that Americans only have eyes for America. Who can resist staring at a car wreck?

George ZimmermanArtUnited StatesPaintingTrayvon MartinJonathan Jones
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London at Christmas: Henry Grant's festive photographs

The raw reality of Henry Grant's photographs of London in the 1950s, 60s and 70s brings to mind a more magical festive period

• In pictures: vintage photographs of Christmas in London by Henry Grant

No, these are not actually photographs of Moscow in the cold war but pictures of Christmas in London from the 1950s to the 1970s. Some of the shabby scenes in these images portray what are now the capital's most glamorous and expensive shops and neighbourhoods.

Henry Grant (1907-2004) was a socialist photographer who looked at a different London from the brittle metropolis of exclusive clubs and high society that can be seen in other photographs of the postwar era. There are no Cecil Beaton fashion shoots here. Instead, Hampstead ponds look arctic-like and a display of turkeys at Leadenhall Market has the pathos of a painting of butchered meat by Rembrandt or Soutine. Grant captures the awkward birth pangs of a consumer society in a monochrome Britain.

These pictures look ancient, although the oldest were taken just six decades ago. Christmas, it seems, is an electrifying measure of cultural change. From year to year it feels the same, yet look back in time and the tinsel gets tackier, the shop windows sparser, the school parties more basic. The gifts in West End windows probably looked majestic then but to 21st-century eyes they seem innocent. Where are the iPads and toy drones?

Perhaps we overuse the word "austerity" for our own age. It may be harder for many people to get stuff but there's a lot more stuff around. These images reveal how far from Grant's raw reality modern Britain has floated. At a point in the late 20th century commodities ceased to be dreams of the space age and became … genuinely space-age. The necessities got luxurious and the luxuries went nuts.

Grant's photographs support those who fear the materialism of modern Christmas. The kids in these shots most likely wrote letters to Santa. Today, people take their children to the shops to pick a present. The British Christmas in these pictures may be more basic. Perhaps it is also more magical.

PhotographyLondonJonathan Jones
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Vintage photographs of Christmas in London by Henry Grant - in pictures

Socialist photographer Henry Grant spent decades last century documenting the lives of ordinary Londoners. This set of pictures – from the Museum of London's unique photographic collection of his work – show the festive season during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

Jonathan Jones

Who says David Cameron's no oil painting? | Jonathan Jones

This portrait of Catherine the Great bears a striking resemblance to the prime minister – he should be proud

Ed Miliband has long had to contend with claims that he looks like a plasticine cartoon character. It seems in keeping with David Cameron's posh persona that his own bizarre looky-likey is an oil painting. But it's a pity that it had to be the portrait of an empress.

I had to check against images in art libraries to assure myself that the painting a York history and politics student posted on Twitter of "David Cameron in drag" is no photoshopped fake. Sure enough, the portrait of Catherine the Great (1729-1796) that Sophie Gadd spotted in a Berlin museum, really was painted by Johann Baptist von Lampi I in about 1794. And the resemblance between the enlightened despot Catherine and Britain's prime minister is astonishing.

Does this mean Cameron was born to rule? Or does the leader of the Conservative party have some Germanic blood in him, with actual kinship to Catherine? That would be a gift to Ukip.

Catherine the Great was born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, in Prussia: she changed her name to Catherine when she married into the Russian royal house. We're in the world of blue bloods here. Cameron is an aristocrat, remember, with all kinds of hifalutin genealogical connections. It seems entirely possible that his resemblance to Catherine the Great in drag is no coincidence and that he actually comes from the same Europosh gene pool.

Family historians have claimed that Cameron is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of George II. That is, he is descended from Britain's the House of Hanover – the German protestant dynasts who stepped in to rule Britain in 1714. So for starters, Cameron is no pure Brit (any more than the Queen is).

Catherine the Great did not come from the House of Hanover – but it is rumoured that she had many lovers, so much so that Lord Byron made his antihero Don Juan sleep with her. Did some ancestor of Dave's visit St Petersburg and conduct a bit of nocturnal diplomacy with the empress? It all gets a bit foggy in these aristocratic family trees and a connection with Catherine's horse, who she is also rumoured to have had relations with, might even be something to boast about.

Part horse or not, the prime minister seems not to be quite all man in this painting. But the idea that it shows him in drag works both ways. Catherine was famous for dressing in men's clothes, as well as for being a far more effective ruler than most male monarchs of her age. She may have had her husband murdered to get power – but she used power well. She was an enlightened ruler who attempted to apply philosophical and, for the time, "liberal" ideas in government and to take Russia into the 18th century. She played a dynamic part in the cultural life of Europe and was a patron of Voltaire. In short, she is called the Great for a reason.

So Cameron should be proud of the resemblance – and if there's some sort of horsey connection between their families, perhaps it's better than his descent from George II, who authorised the butchery of the Highlanders at the Battle of Culloden.

David CameronArtHeritageTwitterBerlinRussiaJonathan Jones
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The British Library is still one Flickr away from making all art free

The British Library has made a million of its images available online – but not its masterpieces. Isn't it time to go where Nasa has boldly gone and make all pictures free?

The British Library may have pushed at a bigger door than it knows. Britain's pre-eminent research library has just put a million images from its collections on to Flickr. These pictures are free not just to browse but to use and reuse: the library even wants members of the public to research them in an experiment in crowdsourced history.

Which is all great fun – but it raises massive questions about whether it is ethical to copyright or restrict the publication of any historical art, ever. The images set free by the British Library come from books published between the 17th and 19th centuries, but they do not include masterpieces. They are curiosities. A collagist like Max Ernst could have a lot of fun pasting them together to create surreal fantasies – and perhaps that is exactly what the internet will do with these steampunk exotica.

But let's be clear what the British Library has NOT done. It has not offered free use of its real visual treasures. You won't find its Leonardo da Vinci manuscript in this public archive, or the Lindisfarne Gospels. The images that have been released are the kind of curios that have for many years been published by companies like Dover for free use.

This big bold act of generosity only scratches the surface. When will holders of great art recognise that it now circulates freely online, and stop charging print publishers, authors, magazines and newspapers for its use?

Every time one of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings from the Royal Collection is published in a book, the Queen gets a pay day. Every time a historian puts a picture by, say, Hogarth in a book, the owner of the original – it might be the Tate, say, or the National Gallery – collects a considerable fee. This is true of all works of art regardless of when they were made: I have personally forked out for paintings that predate 1500.

The British Library's brave move implicitly recognises the absurdity of this kind of pictorial restriction in the digital age. It invites the question: why not put everything into the public domain for free – even the Leonardos?

One institution that leads the way may seem unlikely – it is Nasa. Unlike collections that merely happen to have a Filippo Lippi painting and so can charge for its publication, the American space agency is the "creator" of space photographs taken by the Hubble telescope. Yet it makes these images freely available for universal use.

Nasa knows the free circulation of images is the reality of our time anyway. People are sharing and reusing famous art all the time. I can select "save image" on my iPad and download any work of art instantly.

However, when an author or publisher or media outlet wants to formally publish such an image, especially in print, copyright over the works of artists who died centuries ago is lucratively enforced. It costs a bomb to publish art books because the rights have to be paid for each picture.

Museums, collectors and libraries all have an interest in charging for the works of the dead. Yet all of them ought to consider the disadvantage this now places on books, as opposed to the internet. Do museums want books to survive? The end of all copyright restrictions on art made before 1900 would do a lot to level the playing field. It would make beautiful books (and dare I say it, beautiful art and design sites) more affordable to write and publish. And that would keep the marvellous collections of the British Library growing.

PaintingBritish LibraryLibrariesFlickrInternetJonathan Jones
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