Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 250
September 16, 2013
A history of Australian art – interactive timeline
From nature studies by settlers to contemporary photography, with a national classic or two thrown in, here's our Australian art compendium
Paddy AllenJonathan JonesKarin Andreasson
Seamus Heaney: justly honoured for revealing the greatness of our language
The National Portrait Gallery has done right to hang Tai-Shan Schierenberg's painting of this extraordinary British elegist
Portraiture is a strange and impure art. It includes many of the most profound masterpieces of painting and sculpture. Rembrandt's self-portraits, Bernini's bust of Costanza Bonarelli, Velázquez's Pope Innocent X – at its most elevated, the portrait can be an intense analysis of the human condition.
But at the same time, a portrait is a record of a particular person – and however much art critics may bang on about the meanings of portraits, many people simply want to see someone honoured by art.
Me too, when it's someone I revere. That's why I am really pleased the National Portrait Gallery has just hung a portrait of Seamus Heaney.
Tai-Shan Schierenberg's portrait is – as far as I know – the first such official commemoration for Heaney on a British stage. I thought it a poor show that no major figure from the British government attended his funeral, given his eloquent anticipation of the peace process in poems that enact reconciliation in language.
Heaney was a war poet who wrote about a war on British soil. Memory was at the heart of that war, and elegy one of his great gifts. Grief seeps out of the peat in his great collections North and Field Work. It was strange to read in some appreciations that his was a soft, rustic voice. Too many readers seem to have stopped at his early poem Digging.
Violence cuts across Heaney's pastoral passions and makes him speak out as a citizen. Like the first world war poets, who were torn from a rural Edwardian bliss to the fields of hell, Heaney's destiny was to find a voice that could rise to the horrors and losses of the Troubles.
In North, he finds analogies for his time in sacrificial victims preserved in bogs and Vikings buried with their swords. In Field Work, he translates Dante's story of the revenge of Ugolino, who could not forgive his persecutor and so has to chew on his head forever in the depths of the Inferno. Heaney's poetry is eternally relevant, and speaks of every conflict, especially civil conflict. His elegies for friends killed in the Troubles are timeless poems of loss.
In Wales for the funerals of my parents last winter, it was Heaney I kept reading, again and again.
A statue in central London should be raised to the poet, who revealed the inner goodness of our language. Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery has done right to hang the portrait of this truly great man.
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September 13, 2013
Revealed: an off day for Van Gogh – the week in art
A newly discovered Van Gogh work is a dud. Plus, punks take over London and Terry Richardson stands accused
Exhibition of the weekDaniel Silver: Dig
This project commissioned by Artangel takes a derelict site in the middle of modern London and makes it as mysterious as a lost city discovered by archaeologists.
Odeon site, off Tottenham Court Road, London WC1E until 3 November
Yinka Shonibare MBE
The satirist and post-colonial history painter takes on Greenwich, once the centre of British maritime power.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich SE10 from 18 September until 23 February
Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr
Brutally honest portraits of the British at a new art and media gallery in the the Science Museum. But is it science?
Science Museum, London SW7 from 21 September until 16 March
Richard Serra
New drawings by the master of modern sculpture.
Courtauld Gallery, London WC2R from 19 September until 12 January
Thinking with the Body
An exhibition about the work of Wayne McGregor/ Random Dance.
Wellcome Collection, London NW1 from 19 September until 27 October
Georges Seurat
Bathers at Asnières (1884)
I am haunted by the pale ghosts of tall industrial chimneys as working class men and boys pose still as statues beside and in the waters of the river Seine. Seurat's figures are as rounded and pale as people painted by Piero della Francesca. His light is as ethereal as Monet's. This painting is a frozen pastoral of stolen time, in which reality melts and assumes new, idealised forms.
National Gallery, London WC2N
Terry Richardson is officially a pervert
What Bashar al-Assad's palace tells us about about dictator's regime
That the ICA are delving into London's post-punk subcultures for a new show
SculptureArtPaintingVan GoghJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Revealed: an off day for Vincent van Gogh – the week in art
A newly discovered work by the master painter is branded a dud. Plus, post-punk takes over London and Terry Richardson chucks a Wrecking Ball at conventional ideas of taste
Exhibition of the weekDaniel Silver: Dig
This project commissioned by Artangel takes a derelict site in the middle of modern London and makes it as mysterious as a lost city discovered by archaeologists.
• Odeon site, off Tottenham Court Road, London WC1E, until 3 November.
Yinka Shonibare MBE
The satirist and post-colonial history painter takes on Greenwich, once the centre of British maritime power.
• National Maritime Museum, Greenwich SE10, from 18 September until 23 February.
Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr
Brutally honest portraits of the British at a new art and media gallery in the the Science Museum. But is it science?
• Science Museum, London SW7, from 21 September until 16 March.
Richard Serra
New drawings by the master of modern sculpture.
• Courtauld Gallery, London WC2R, from 19 September until 12 January.
Thinking with the Body
An exhibition about the work of Wayne McGregor/Random Dance.
• Wellcome Collection, London NW1, from 19 September until 27 October.
Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières (1884)
I am haunted by the pale ghosts of tall industrial chimneys as working-class men and boys pose still as statues beside and in the waters of the River Seine. Seurat's figures are as rounded and pale as people painted by Piero della Francesca. His light is as ethereal as Monet's. This painting is a frozen pastoral of stolen time, in which reality melts and assumes new, idealised forms.
• National Gallery, London WC2N.
Terry Richardson is officially a pervert.
What Bashir al-Assad's palace tells us about about the Syrian dictator's regime.
That the ICA are delving into London's post-punk subcultures for a new show.
And finally …SculptureArtPaintingVan GoghJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
September 11, 2013
Jurassic Park, London SE26
In Crystal Palace Park, Victorian artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins created a collection of vast, primeval dinosaurs. Far from kitsch, they are instead visionary artworks
As the much-delayed fourth instalment of Jurassic Park finally gets a release date it seemed the right time for me to take a trip to the world's first dinosaur theme park this week.
They skulk in the bushes, their horned noses sniffing the south London air. The green water around the island is perilous as plesiosaurs raise snakelike necks out of the placid pool. Safe behind low metal railings we admire the prehistoric beasts, these "terrible lizards", who keep so still while birds land on their scaly heads. These are the Crystal Palace dinosaurs – and sadly they are not alive. But are they art?
In my opinion these statues of iguanodons, megalosaurs and other colossal extinct reptiles that the artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins created in the 1850s in Crystal Palace Park are masterpieces of British sculpture. Waterhouse Hawkins was an eminent wildlife artist, but he got the commission of his life in 1852 when he was asked to make life-sized ancient creatures to educate the Victorian public about the strange animals whose fossilised remains had recently begun to be understood.
What he created survives as a marvellous detour into Victorian fantasy, a lurid landscape painting brought to life. Among English trees, primeval monsters brood.
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins combined the precision of a naturalist with the imagination of an artist. He was advised by Richard Owen, founder of the Natural History Museum. Of course, the Crystal Palace dinosaurs no longer reflect modern scientific models – but then, dinosaurs had only just been recognised as a subject of study.
As science they may be outmoded. As art they are beguiling. Today we turn to special-effects teams to bring dinosaurs to life. In the Victorian age it was a job for an artist. The Crystal Palace dinosaurs belong with the paintings of Turner and John Martin. They are masterpieces of visionary art.
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September 10, 2013
Van Gogh's Sunset at Montmajour – even great artists have bad days
How could Van Gogh have painted this clogged and clumsy 'new' work – and in the same summer his genius reached the heady heights of Sunflowers?
Not all works of art that happen to have been painted by great artists are sizzling masterpieces. Even Van Gogh had his off days, as we've learned from the Van Gogh Museum's discovery of a "new" painting by their man this week. Sunset at Montmajour (1888) was until recently dismissed as a fake or misattribution, its authenticity rejected by the same museum that has now announced it as an exciting discovery.
What has changed? Scientific knowledge, it turns out: this painting uses the very paints Van Gogh had on his palette in 1881, and the museum is now able to identify them in precise detail because it is engaged in a comprehensive study of the inner structure of Van Gogh's art.
But it is all too easy to see why previous examiners were reluctant to call this a Van Gogh. The painting is just not that wonderful. If it vanished again tomorrow the world would not be much poorer, for this uncharismatic daub is a mere footnote to Vincent's brilliance.
His intense, explosive touch is there – just. But the clogged colours and clumsy composition show his originality struggling to overcome influence, tradition and nerves. He is visibly overburdened here by the heritage of the great Millet and the awful Adolphe Monticelli.
Van Gogh's Sunset actually looks as if it could be a homage to Monticelli's Sunrise (1882-4); his vinegar colours haunt the muted spectrum of this "new" painting. Monticelli is forgotten today, but this 19th-century painter from the south of France was a hero to Van Gogh, maybe even one of the reasons he moved to Arles in 1888, a couple of years after Monticelli's death.
For centuries, downcast, tobacco-stained colours were thought to be the mark of taste and truth in landscape art. It's fundamental to Van Gogh's genius that he breaks with all that muggy mud to paint living light. But in this work, his vision is hobbled. We are told it was painted in Arles in his golden summer of 1888, when he hit new heights of genius. But are they really, really sure it's not a fake? The science is unquestionable, I suppose.
Academics love to complicate the picture, and finding a painting that's so botched, dating from the very summer when he painted Sunflowers, will delight those who revel in art history's finer ironies.
For the rest of us, this painting is one to shrug off – a tired afternoon in a life of incandescent creativity.
Van GoghPaintingArtMuseumsJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
September 9, 2013
Africa's renewed appetite for its own art heralds a welcome renaissance | Jonathan Jones
Endangered by modernity, neglect and ideology, traditional African art has been thrown a lifeline from within
The birth of a market for African art within Africa is a welcome sign of renaissance for one of the world's richest visual traditions. It has been reported recently that Nigerians are becoming more and more interested in collecting pre-modern African art. Oil wealth is going partly into art, and dealers in traditional carvings claim they are seeing new interest from local collectors.
Not only does Nigeria have an affluent elite, it also has what is arguably Africa's greatest art history. The country's heritage includes the brass casts of Benin and the compelling portrait heads of Ife. Wood carving, too, was at its most powerful in the forests of west Africa before European colonists in the late 19th century tore African culture apart. Even as art dealers started selling African masks in Europe, rapidly making the continent's art an inspiration for artists like Andre Derain, missionaries attacked the traditional belief systems embodied by such works.
Today, the threat to traditional African art comes from a complex pattern of modernity, neglect and ideology. Global art dealers still sell it. The highest praise of the international art world, however, is reserved for modern African art, and recycled materials are more highly rated critically than handmade carvings. There tends to be an assumption that modern African art has to be urban and industrial, just like art created by other continents this century.
It is just as oppressive to impose such an aesthetic ideology on Africa as it is to impose it on British art. There are still figurative painters in Britain, and there are pockets of traditional art (and life) all over Africa, for instance among Fante fishermen in Ghana, whose wooden boats are traditional art objects. Ghana also invented the modern folk art of painting coffins in the shapes of cameras, fish or bottles in recent decades, although it has yet to become a well-established tradition.
It is good news that Africans are collecting Africa's stupendous heritage of art. The respect for African art that was once a byword of modernism has decayed, and Africa needs to remind the world of its beauty and power.
ArtSculptureAfricaJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
September 6, 2013
The Syrian presidency's Instagram account shows the banality of evil
A bloody civil war is raging across Syria, but you wouldn't know it from President Bashar al-Assad's Instagram account. Here is a sun-kissed world of kindness, charity and saintly leadership
Asma al-Assad looks poised and fragrant as she ladles food out of a vast silvery bowl to children who wait patiently for their portion. The first lady of Syria is dressed down for the occasion in a pale blue blouse, caught in an ethereal white light as she tends to the needs of her people. The woman is a saint.
In another photograph she sits on the ground with girls in Guide-like uniforms, and in another, she gives a little girl a new doll. She chats and smiles with grateful (and perhaps nervous) recipients of her bounty, in touchy-feely pictures that show her physically touching the poor and disabled.
These are some of the images from the daily rounds of the wife of president Bashar al-Assad that are puzzling a world riven by debate about claims that Assad used sarin gas in an attack on his people in the suburbs of Damascus on 21 August. While the Syrian regime's responsibilty for the attack is disputed by Russia, China, Ed Miliband and many more who refuse to accept US accusations at face value, reactions to these photographs have been pretty much a universal "ugh". From Israel's Haaretz to Britain's Daily Mail, the bland, Hello-like images of Asma al-Assad posing with little conviction as a friend of the people while her husband's civil war with rebels is devastating the country seem to strike most observers as "shameless" and grotesque.
The smiling, sun-kissed world of the Assads – while she does charity work, he holds decorous meetings with dignitaries – come from the Syrian presidency's Instagram account. The hugely popular photography site and app allows users to display and share pictures in a visually seductive way. You can see the temptation for Assad to use this benign tool for propaganda. But his Instagram smilorama appears to be backfiring: while argument rages over his alleged use of poison gas, his Instagram is drawing sneers. Perhaps the UN could even agree to condemn its bad taste.
It's no laughing matter. In a curious way, these pictures of Asma al-Assad reveal the truth about Syria. Their blatant phoney quality – the first lady serving hot lunches while in reality Assad's forces have been accused of targeting bakeries, and refugees are streaming hungry for the borders – allows us to recognise the embattled Syrian regime for what it is. They stir a sinister sense of recognition, for who has not heard of the banality of evil?
The war in Syria has been made easier for Bashar al-Assad by powerfully enforced reporting restrictions. The death of the renowned war reporter Marie Colvin in Homs in February 2012 sent out a powerful message (it is unclear whether she and the other reporters killed or injured with her were deliberately targeted) about how hard it would be to get the truth from this killing zone. Many images of horror have come out of Syria since, but have to be examined carefully. Was a video that surfaced on YouTube early in the war, in which the cameraman observes a sniper at work until he is shot himself as the gun turns on him, an authentic piece of citizen reporting?
Reality has proved easy to destroy in Syria. Facts are hard to come by and have to be peered at through a bloody fog. The old adage that truth is the first casualty of war has never been more brutally proven – because Bashar al-Assad attacked truth from the start. As the civil war – we called it a rebellion then – started in 2011, he simply banned most foreign journalists from Syria. This is such a familiar fact it may seem obtuse to restate it. Yet it is no coincidence that two years into the conflict, international onlookers are debating fundamental issues of fact and evidence, with many people giving Assad the benefit of the doubt on last month's chemical attack.
Amid this uneasy global debate, Assad's Instagram comes as a luminous portrait of the ruler, his marriage and lifestyle. It is a glittering triumph of banality. The Assads really seem to believe that they are the perfect couple, the dashing man of power and his beautiful and gracious first lady.
It's too simplistic to describe these images as "propaganda". Propaganda for whom? Can the regime really think pictures of Asma al-Assad meeting the people will efface dead bodies, blasted cities and homeless children? It can only appear monstrous to outsiders to see this myth of a sanitised Syria promoted by a government at war with a large part of its own people.
Yet the Syrian president must think the pictures have purchase, that he can smile his way to success – and this can only be because he and his supporters drug themselves with such images. Dictators don't just fool the people. They fool themselves first. Dictators' private lives are often kitsch fantasy worlds that enable a ruler to believe in a myth that is then projected outwards and buttressed by violence. The Assad Instagram world of glossy magazine glamour is just another such self-empowering fantasy.
It has something in common with the photo albums found when Libyans stormed Muammar Gaddafi's family compound. Pictures of the dictator and his children posing with pet camels mingled with Gaddafi's pictures of Condoleezza Rice. These albums – like the desert-disco decor of the Gaddafi residences – were not intended for public consumption. They were not "propaganda". The dictator himself liked to look at images of his private life that strengthened his sense of identity.
Adolf Hitler, similarly, worked on a private fantasy of who he was. He did not conduct his affair with Eva Braun in the public eye – her existence was a secret from most Germans. Yet plenty of photographs record their relationship and celebrate the leisure life of the Führer in Bavaria and Berlin. Braun and his dog feature heavily in these eerie pictures. Both appear to have been props in his own self-image. Hitler's real relationship with Braun is a mystery – observers said he was awkward in her company.
No one would doubt that the Assads have a "real" marriage – but what is real in the life of dictators? In the glory days of the Arab spring, the image of dictatorship as a corrupt, abusive form of rule was widely excoriated across the Middle East and in the west. It was easy for all parties to join in portraying Gaddafi as a tyrant reminiscent of Caligula or Nero. Today, so soon, disillusionment is such that even calling Assad a "dictator" may be seen as a caricature legitimating US aggression. But the Instagram says it all. Here is a ruler just as deluded as Gaddafi, just as intoxicated with his own myth. To live in this false world is the nature of absolute rulers.
The ancient Romans knew that. Their historians describe with terse fury the madness of Tiberius, hiding from the public gaze at his villa on Capri among his young sex slaves, and Nero, setting fire to Rome to clear land for a new palace.
In the 20th century Hannah Arendt, witnessing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust, coined that phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the strange emptiness and unsatisfying lumpenness of history's criminals. Assad's Instagram world is supremely banal. Rather than a Nero fiddling while Rome burns or a Hitler dreaming of architectural follies in his last days in the bunker, the Syrian president in these pictures just wants to come across as a great guy with a lovely wife. But the space between these images and the stench of war is so manifest that it reveals a true dictator's loss of touch with reality.
The smiling fantasy of Assad's Instagram is blandly psychotic. It reveals a terrible gulf between reality and the ruler's fictional self-image. Banality may not be in itself a proof of evil. But in the psychology these pictures reveal, what lies are not possible? The mind that can believe in these pictures might easily order a war crime then go home to kiss his beloved wife.
SyriaInstagramAsma al-AssadBashar al-AssadMiddle East and North AfricaAdolf HitlerSocial mediaDigital mediaPhotographyPhotographyJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Francis Bacon and Henry Moore pair up in Oxford – the week in art
The Ashmolean compares two of Britain's most famous 20th-century artists, East Anglia celebrates its art heritage and Tacita Dean salutes JG Ballard in film
Exhibition of the WeekFrancis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone
The paintings of Francis Bacon look extraordinarily powerful in this comparison of Britain's two most famous artists of the mid-20th century. It also includes a handful of moving nudes by Michelangelo, a hero to both men, from the Ashmolean Museum's outstanding collection of drawings.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford OX1 from 12 September until 19 January
Tacita Dean
JG, the latest film by one of Britain's most intelligent artists, is a meditation on her hero and friend, the writer JG Ballard.
Frith Street Gallery, London W1F from 13 September until 26 October
Richard Serra
Trenchant prints by the supreme sculptor of our time.
Alan Cristea Gallery, London W1S from 11 September until 8 October
Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia
The art of East Anglia since antiquity is explored in what may be a model of how regions should celebrate their heritage.
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich NR4 from 14 September until 24 February
Women of the Pleasure Quarters
A sumptuous painted screen portrays the sex industry in 18th-century Japan.
Room 3, British Museum, London WC1B until 3 November
Auguste Rodin, The Kiss (1904)
The seed of Rodin's sensual sculpture can be found in his design for The Gates of Hell, a monumental homage to Dante's Inferno. In this great medieval poem, Dante describes the sufferings of the damned, including the adulterous lovers of Rimini portrayed here. For Rodin, at the dawn of modern art, their sins become heroic as human passion throbs with pathos.
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh EH2 2EL until 2 February
Van Gogh expert Martin Bailey has tracked down a previously unknown 1920s print of Six Sunflowers – a work by Van Gogh that was destroyed during the second world war. For the first time since the war, it can been seen in its original vibrant colours, and with the original frame that Van Gogh painted to complement the colours of the subject.
What we learned this weekIf you have to park your car in the City on a hot summer's day, it's best to avoid Fenchurch Street.
Not all student accommodation deserves the Carbuncle cup
Pitting Francis Bacon against Henry Moore is a cruel, one-sided brawl
Think you've seen all of David Bailey's work? Think again.
And finally …Richard SerraFrancis BaconTacita DeanHenry MooreExhibitionsArtJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Strangers in Hong Kong? Ai Weiwei's Jackie Chan rebuttal more than bluster | Jonathan Jones
Ai has responded strongly after the actor claimed not to know of him – and Chan's remarks remind us how lonely and courageous the artist's stand really is
Artist Ai Weiwei has used many means to dramatise the political responsibilies of artists, from flipping his finger at authority to sowing Tate Modern with fake sunflower seeds. Now, though, he is making it personal with a public attack on Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan.
In a recent interview, Chan – famous for his courageous stunts and comic action movies – was asked repeatedly about Ai, whose conflicts with the government of China and provocative artworks have made him a global celebrity. Chan insisted he had no idea who Ai is, claiming not to recognise the name.
The pugnacious artist is not taking that insult lightly. Publicising an exhibition opening in Ontario on the Canadian radio programme Q this week, he said Chan deliberately belittled him as a critic of China's political system. Ai dismissed the notion that Chan hasn't heard of him: "He knows me very well," he told listeners. "He's very much a pro-government actor. And he's acted so extremely on the side of authority."
On the face of it, Ai might seem to be protesting too much. After all, it is just possible a popular film actor might not be totally up to date with the contemporary art scene. Yet a quick check on Chan's political statements reveals a troubling basis for the accusation that Chan is a proponent of authoritarian views.
The actor has called for a crackdown on protest in Hong Kong and publically questioned the value of freedom, arguing that people need to be controlled. While Ai speaks up for freedom, Chan has on occasion spoken out against it – although "speaking out" against liberty is arguably a contradiction in terms, and Chan's controversial statements are in their way as individualistic as Ai's art.
But the actor's readiness to sing China's tune is a reminder of how lonely and courageous Ai's stand really is. Ai's fame (if not with Chan) may make it seem he has won a big battle; in reality, he's one man fighting an enormous enemy.
The tendency to condone China's regime has grown with its economy, and often takes the form of complacent relativism. From governments seeking lucrative deals to museums borrowing art, plenty of people have found plenty of reasons to ignore Ai's insistence on the universality of human rights.
So his fight goes on. In his Ontario exhibition, on tour from the US, he protests with art of considerable power. Chan should take a trip to see it.
Ai WeiweiSculptureArtJackie ChanChinaJonathan Jonestheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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