Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 29
August 21, 2023
Sarah Lucas, Philip Guston and women revolt: the best art and architecture of autumn 2023
An American great for the age of Trump, a baroque master’s feminine side and 20 contentious years for women’s art are among the highlights ahead
Chester-born artist Ryan Gander directs this new walking biennial, which features a spoken-word and choral work by Elizabeth Price, Swiss duo Fischli and Weiss, film by John Akomfrah, helicopter blades and a jet fighter in an abandoned shop by Fiona Banner, and much, much more, including Gander’s bespoke cocktails and an original themed tattoo.
• Around Chester, 22 September to 1 December
August 18, 2023
Diane Arbus on tour, recasting a Jewish myth, and capital works – the week in art
The great American photographer goes on show in Shetland, Sebastian Thomas remakes the Golem and economics gets a blockbuster – all in your weekly dispatch
Diane Arbus
The pathos of this remorseless photographer’s portraiture comes to Shetland.
• Shetland Museum and Archive from 19 August to 12 November, Lerwick
August 11, 2023
Edinburgh’s art takeover, sensational saris and a punk icon passes – the week in art
The city’s art jamboree rivals its theatre and comedy onslaught, the traditional garment gets a playful makeover and a tribute to Sex Pistols artist Jamie Reid – all in your weekly dispatch
Edinburgh art festival
Alberta Whittle, Jesse Jones and Grayson Perry lead the exhibitions threaded through Edinburgh, while outside the city at Jupiter Artland is a boozy installation by Lindsey Mendick.
• Various venues, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
August 10, 2023
Jamie Reid’s Sex Pistols artwork was a glorious assault on authority | Jonathan Jones
Taking dada and adding a snotty British energy, the late artist gave punk its sharp edges and revolutionary force – and by attacking Putin, carried it into the present
Jamie Reid, artist of Sex Pistols record covers, dies aged 76Jamie Reid had a premonition of punk years before it hit. His 1972 painting Monster on a Nice Roof portrays a giant green beast perched on the roof of a suburban home as broiling storm clouds gather above: it seems in retrospect to foretell the monster that was punk.
What exactly happened to Britain in 1977 – when Reid’s cover for the Sex Pistols’ single God Save the Queen covered Elizabeth II’s eyes with the title in cut out lettering and her mouth with the band’s name – has been amply picked over by cultural theorists and pop historians. It has been seen as anything from a raw blast of working-class honesty (the interpretation favoured by John Lydon) to an apocalyptic consummation of the most radical ideas of the 20th-century avant garde.
Continue reading...August 8, 2023
Rage, ecstasy and painting turned up to 11 – Edinburgh art festival review
Various venues, Edinburgh
This year’s complement to the fringe is not short of drama in Alberta Whittle and Peter Howson’s impassioned work – and there is balmy colour from Elizabeth Blackadder
You’ve binged on standup, seen enough Belgian drama and it feels half an hour too early to go to the pub. A quiet moment in an art gallery may be called for.
Art at Edinburgh has a festival of its own in August, yet who comes for that? In a city gripped by live performance, exhibitions are bit-part players. Yet this year there are shows that can hold their own with the most charismatic performers, and even give theatre makers an idea or two.
Continue reading...August 4, 2023
Fabulous frauds, handsy surrealists and scary seaside spiders – the week in art
A revealing look at centuries of art fakes, an art movement’s obsession with hands and Louise Bourgeois in Blackpool – all in your weekly dispatch
Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection
The strange and disconcerting history of art forgery is laid bare by the Courtauld’s detectives.
• Courtauld Gallery, London, until 8 October
July 28, 2023
Ukrainian folk art, mysterious totems and AI plays spot the Raphael – the week in art
Maria Prymachenko stared down Stalin and is inspiring resistance again, while new sculptures appear in Llandudno and Wakefield – all in your weekly dispatch
Maria Prymachenko
This beloved folk artist has become a symbol of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom and survival. Her intensely coloured, mythic images miraculously defied Stalinist censorship and now inspire her country to resist Putin.
• Saatchi Gallery, London, until 31 August.
July 24, 2023
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits review – English self-mockery without insight or depth
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
This is a show stuffed with clutter and haunted by Perry’s teddy bear, with works that are too flip to land any satirical punches
Just once in his retrospective at the Royal Scottish Academy, Grayson Perry seems to speak from the heart. In his nearly three-metre-long woodcut print Reclining Artist, he stretches out nude on the sofa, with long fingernails against a slender thigh, his penis dangling over saggy balls, and plump female breasts.
It is a synthesis of who he is and who he dreams of being: “a fantasy version of myself, neither fully male nor fully female”, as he notes in the caption. Yet if it is a fantasy, this 2017 vision is also the most authentic work of art in this entire assembly of Perry’s “Smash Hits”. Here he is, he can be no other. He looks you dead in the eye, serious and for once not breaking out into the blokey laugh that’s familiar to watchers of his TV shows.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits is at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, until 12 November
Continue reading...July 21, 2023
The best of Grayson Perry, a chicken and egg situation and Black erasure – the week in art
The artist takes his smash hits to Edinburgh, a tiny sculpture garden opens and Gary Simmons traces racial history – all in your weekly dispatch
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits
A retrospective of the eloquent artist’s works in clay, textiles, printmaking and more.
• National, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 22 July-12 November.
July 18, 2023
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden review – the scissors I get, but what’s with the frog?
National Gallery, London
Rego’s huge mural, painted 30 years ago for the Gallery’s restaurant, sits alongside the altarpiece that inspired it. Hers is less a feminist revolt than a celebration of perspective itself
In its small but rhetorically charged exhibition Crivelli’s Garden, the National Gallery recasts a painting that Paula Rego created for its restaurant at the start of the 1990s as a Major Masterpiece of Radical Art. I could have sworn it was a gentle, playful work, perfectly judged for its setting in a convivial dining room, full of love for the Renaissance art this museum houses.
But no. According to Rego’s son Nick Willing in the exhibition catalogue, the late Portuguese-British artist saw the National Gallery as a place whose paintings “were made almost entirely by men and reflected the male experience”. When she became its first Associate Artist in 1990, “we joked that she was … in the belly of the beast”, Willing says. But “Paula erupted out of the belly of the beast stronger … exploring themes that quietly challenged the patriarchy to examine itself”.
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