Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 257

People of Earth, say cheese! Nasa to take everyone's picture from space

On 19 July, the Cassini probe will take our portrait from Saturn. Let's make it a good one

Earth, are you ready to have your picture taken? On 19 July, the Nasa space probe Cassini will take a photograph of Earth from its vantage point "a billion miles away", in the words of Carolyn Porco, who is in charge of the robot craft's cameras.

Porco wants everyone to wave for this cosmic portrait. We have been told in advance the date and time it will be taken (between 21.27 and 21.42 GMT), so, as she says, "people can celebrate and join in".

Why not make this the ultimate global celebration? After all, it's not every day you have your picture taken from the region of Saturn. To send Cassini so far and control it from here is as amazing an achievement as it was to put humans on the moon.

This picture will be another milestone in our changing perspective on ourselves. Images of Earth from space have changed the way we imagine our world, and our relationship with it. They are about to change human consciousness again.

The manned space missions of the 60s were a revolutionary moment in how we see our planet. The first photo of Earth from space was actually taken by a V2 rocket in 1946, when the US was experimenting with the interplanetary possibilities of captured Nazi technology. But it is the iconic colour photographs taken by astronauts that changed our sense of who and where we are.

In 1968 the crew of Apollo 8 took the captivating photograph Earthrise, in which the blue and white sphere of our planet hangs in the blackness above the gnarled surface of the moon.

Seeing Earth as this island in space was a profound moment for humanity. It intensified our sense of living on a rich and magical astral object. In the photograph, there's an intense contrast between our living planet and its dead moon. This new vision of our home undoubtedly influenced the emergence of green politics, giving a visual punch to theories of the living planet, such as James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.

Images of Earth as seen by astronauts still fascinate us – witness the recent popularity of Chris Hadfield's snaps from the International Space Station. But a stranger and more distant image of our planet is taking shape, and will soon enter popular culture, as Nasa's robot explorers take more and more images from far across the solar system.

In 1990, Voyager took the first great picture of Earth as a distant speck – a tiny dot in the macrocosm of space.

It has been said that the achievement of science is to show us how small we are in the big picture of the universe. Photographs make that decentering visible. They put us in our place.

Let's all wave for Cassini's picture, though it will show us to be small and insignificant. Just don't think you're at the centre of the universe when you pose.

PhotographyNasaSpaceAstronomyJonathan Jones
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Look and learn: live art screenings, a new global phenomenon

Just occasionally, something will crop up that restores your faith in humanity's future. The huge appetite for cinematic 'private views' hosted by experts is one such thing

The phenomenon of live art broadcasts is a heartening example of things getting better and people becoming smarter, more cultured, more curious. The kind of trend that makes you optimistic about the future of civilisation.

This evening, crowds will gather at cinemas all over Britain to watch Pompeii Live, a cinecast of the British Museum's magnificent exhibition about ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum. The event has reportedly sold extremely well and will be shown live in HD at 280 cinemas in Britain and Ireland, with screenings to follow in 51 countries. It will be a "private view" of the show in the company of experts such as Mary Beard and the exhibition's curator, Paul Roberts.

Live art screenings – the National Gallery's Leonardo live event last year was a pioneer – are becoming a global phenomenon. British cinemagoers will soon be able to see Munch 150 live from Oslo, a private view of Norway's blockbuster celebration of its greatest artist.

What does this phenomenon mean? Why do audiences want to watch a live gathering of experts at an exhibition? It clearly reflects the massive popularity of art. It may also exploit the lure of those magic words "private view". But the reason this feels like a victory for civilisation is that these cinema events are not like conventional private views at all.

There are exceptions to every rule, but on the whole, actual private views of exhibitions tend to be purely social events. A posh one might be followed by a dinner, and a pompous one might include a couple of speeches. But basically, it's a drinks party with occasional sidelong glances at the art on the walls.

What's fascinating about these new live art events is the way they totally reinvent the private view, replacing it with a more intelligent style of celebration that has been invented for these occasions. You see the exhibition on screen and learn about it from curators and commentators. It's fun but informative. The featured exhibitions are the likes of Manet and Pompeii. It's serious stuff.

There is currently a debate about the quality of factual television. One thing the appetite for these live exhibition screenings reveals is that all over Britain and far beyond, there is a hunger to learn as well as to look.

PaintingExhibitionsArtHeritageJonathan Jones
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Why the sudden trend to attack paintings?

The defacing of the Queen's portrait is the latest act of art vandalism, including a Mark Rothko at Tate Modern and a Delacroix at the Lens Louvre

Is there a sudden fashion for attacking works of art? The recent paint assault on a portrait of the Queen in Westminster Abbey was the latest in a stream of acts of art vandalism.

Last October at Tate Modern a man scribbled on Mark Rothko's Black on Maroon. He claimed his destructive act was a creative gesture, but this cut no ice with a judge, who sentenced him to two years in prison. This February, a woman defaced one of the icons of French art, Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix, at the new outpost of the Louvre in Lens.

That is three highly publicised art attacks in less than a year. It looks as if a shared spirit is gripping the assailants. In all three cases over just a few months, each attacker thought she or he was making some kind of public statement. This is in contrast with previous art vandals who have attacked works such as Poussin's The Adoration of the Golden Calf or Rembrandt's Danae for more baffling reasons. The latest art attackers are saying something, or think they are. Vladimir Umanets damaged the Rothko in the name of an art movement called "yellowism". The art assailant who picked on the Delacroix wrote "AE911" on it with a marker pen – referring to a website that deals in 9/11 conspiracy theories. The suspected royal-art defacer also has a cause – reportedly wanting to draw attention to his having lost contact with his children.

Museums hate articles such as this one, for a good reason: they fear that publicising art vandalism invites more. And it is plausible that a real lust to attack art is gripping people who have noticed the sheer publicity it can bring to what might otherwise be lost causes.

This is an age of protest. If you have a cause you can share with lots of other people, you take to the streets. But what if your cause is too strange or overlooked for mass protest? Attacking an authority figure is one way to get it in the headlines, and as authority figures go, paintings are vulnerable. A portrait of the Queen has a lot less security around it than the woman herself. A museum is a tranquil place where a moment of destruction can catch guards unaware. The results can be gratifying, if you are desperate to get your voice heard.

PaintingArtProtestJonathan Jones
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Paul Gauguin in London and the discovery of Paris – the week in art

The French capital as seen through the eyes of Britain's 19th-century painters, plus subversive graphic art and a celebration of camp – all in your favourite weekly artistic roundup

Exhibition of the week: Collecting Gauguin

Is Paul Gauguin a great artist? His paintings can seem brittle, cold, histrionic. He was not as intense or as suffering as his friend Vincent van Gogh. Side by side, their works look very different and it is Van Gogh who usually looks more profound. But Gauguin has a special quality of ironic romanticism. Like the novels of Joseph Conrad, his pieces subtly take apart the mind of European 19th-century imperialism. They are haunting in the way early photographs are haunting. They take you to where he was, in an unsettling rhapsody. They strongly appealed to the collector Samuel Courtauld, which is why some of his best works are in London – as this show explains.
• Courtauld Gallery, London WC2R, from 20 June until 8 September

Other exhibitions this week

Keep Your Timber Limber
Saucy drawings galore in this show, which celebrates graphic art as a personal and subversive activity. Tom of Finland is in it – say no more.
• ICA, London SW1Y, from 19 June until 8 September

The Discovery of Paris
Paris is revealed here as it was seen by British artists who went there in the early 19th century.
• Wallace Collection, London W1U, from 20 June until 15 September

Notes on Neo-Camp
A group of 21st-century artists, including the excellent Pablo Bronstein, who are influenced by 20th-century camp.
• Studio Voltaire, London SW4, until 20 July

Through American Eyes
The landscape art and sea scenes of Frederic Church bring American romanticism to Edinburgh.
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, until 8th September

Masterpiece of the week

Henri Rousseau's Surprised!, or Tiger in a Tropical Storm (1891)
This painting is a joyful fantasy of wild nature by an artist who never visited the jungles that filled his dreams. Rousseau creates a world that is totally self-enclosed and richly alive yet has no "realism" at all. It is a decoration with bite.
• National Gallery, London WC2N

Image of the weekWhat we learned this week

Why Broomberg and Chanarin were worthy winners of the Deutsche Börse prize

What Jeanette Winterson thinks of LS Lowry's rage against the machine

Red is the colour of money (when it comes to selling art)

Why Prism PowerPoint was the real horror of the NSA scandal

Defacing the Queen's portrait was a backhanded compliment

And finally …

Share your artworks in progress with us

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Paul GauguinPaintingArtLondonParisFranceJonathan Jones
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Defacing the Queen's portrait is a backhanded compliment | Jonathan Jones

This proxy attack on the Queen by a Fathers4Justice campaigner demonstrates the strength of the monarchy

The spray painting of a portrait of the Queen in Westminster Abbey shows why republicanism is a dead cause in Britain. The violence shown below in the best photo available – a man has apparently tried to write "Help" across the painting – is probably the most effective piece of royal iconoclasm perpetrated in Britain since the Sex Pistols had a go at the Queen in Silver Jubilee year. So is this attack on a fairly ordinary work of art a subversive act of lese majeste? No, it just reveals how much the monarchy is loved.

To see why that is, ask yourself: why did a Fathers4Justice campaigner pick this particular painting to attack? It is not exactly a national treasure. Yet the man who decided that Ralph Heimans's picture of the Queen standing on the colourful medieval pavement of the abbey where she was crowned was a good candidate for a bit of graffiti, made a wise choice. He has hurtled himself and his cause higher up in the news than he might have if he just trashed a Poussin in the National Gallery.

This is because the person in this case matters more than the painting. There's something primitive about our attitude to royal portraits; they are tokens of the ruler herself. Just like Jamie Reid, who in 1977 committed an act of dada on the Queen's portrait for the cover of the Pistols' God Save the Queen, this protester has chosen to defile something the nation holds sacred. In Britain, there is nothing more sacred than Her Majesty. That's why this iconoclasm is a shock: not because the royal image is vulnerable, but because it really does feel outrageous to desecrate the Queen's image.

Accidentally, this assault reveals an underlying truth about Britain and the monarchy. Iconoclasm only works when the image you attack means something. It meant something for 17th-century Puritans to smash the windows of Westminster Abbey with their religious scenes, because these stained glass windows carried a powerful charge of the sacred. In breaking them, radical Protestants made a statement about the revolutionary nature of their faith and their repudiation of "popery". But if someone walked into Westminster Abbey today and attacked a religious image, the act would have little meaning: it would be classed as straightforward criminal damage. Instead, the frustrated father went to the Chapter House, where this painting has recently been hung, and attacked the Queen by proxy.

That got him noticed. As an art lover, I welcome the fact that he didn't damage a great painting in a museum. Perhaps here is a new function for royal portraits – to provide a safety valve for rage and save more important works of art from destruction.

Yet the reason this painting, its attacker and Fathers4Justice have hurtled into the headlines is that 60 years ago a young woman was crowned Queen in the very abbey where the damage has been done. As she approaches the end of her reign, the Queen is handing on a monarchy that has never looked so strong. This bit of political theatre is a backhanded compliment to that regal achievement.

The QueenMonarchyArtProtestJonathan Jones
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