Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 68

Ray Harryhausen's art raid: where the effects genius found his terrifying monsters

From his sword-swinging skeletons to a horn-headed cyclops, a new show reveals how the gruesome godfather of special effects plundered antiquity for ideas – and his own art collection

The skeletons rise up from the scorched earth, lithe yet lifeless arrangements of loose yellow bones that leap over ruins to advance into mortal combat with Jason and the Argonauts. Swords swinging and shields held high, they are the perfect warriors, dispensing death with no fear of it themselves. But are they scarier than Kali, the multi-limbed goddess who fights Sinbad the Sailor with weapons clutched in all six hands, her blue arms scything through the air as our mariner hero scurries for his life?

These are the images that terrorised me as a kid, quaking in front of the big screen at the Odeon in Rhyl, Wales. That first encounter with the monsters of Ray Harryhausen remains with you for ever. When I think of Kali, I can still taste the Kia-Ora and the terror.

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Arctic review – stark eco warnings from the ice-braving hunters who battled whales

British Museum, London
From sleds made of bones to supernatural sealskin hunting suits, this stirring show celebrates the heroism and ingenuity of humans who survive in balance with nature

A whaling suit towers up, as if some muscular occupant is still inside, looming over you. The suit, one of the highlights of this mind-expanding dive into Arctic cultures, is the Moby-Dick of clothes. Created by the Kalaallit people of south-west Greenland some time before 1834, it is like a modern survival suit: it could even be inflated by blowing into a tube. Except – it’s made of sealskin. Wearing this watertight armour, a hunter would leap from a small boat on to a whale’s back and spear it with a harpoon. But it’s not just a buoyancy aid. It is also a magical garment, thought to give its occupant the power of a seal, allowing them to stay afloat and endure the iciest water.

Animals are everywhere here, as images and subjects of myth, but also as a resource – ivory, skins, scales and guts

At the British Museum, London, 22 October to 21 February.

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Shocking news from the 70s and a chilling message from the far north – the week in art

Gilbert & George’s images of a divided Britain reveal an enduring immediacy, while the British Museum takes an immersive tour of the Arctic – all in your weekly dispatch

Arctic: Culture and Climate
Human beings have interacted with the Arctic ice for millennia. This immersive journey into an extreme and endangered ecosystem reveals it is a part of ourselves, as well as our planet, that we stand to lose as the ice melts.
• British Museum, London, from 22 October.

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Tracey Emin steals a kiss and Damien Hirst resurrects the dead – the week in art

Art’s original sinners, a challenge to white supremacy in painting, and falling in love with nature all over again – all in your weekly dispatch

Damien Hirst: End of a Century
This is a hugely entertaining and memorable epic trip to the 1990s when Hirst captured the dark mood of a fin de siècle. His personal collection of his own work is big enough to make a museum, his obsession with death once again urgent.
• Newport Street Gallery, London, until 7 March.

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Gods, nipples, Warhol and wickedness – Sin review

National Gallery, London
From provocative Renaissance nudes to church-goer Andy Warhol’s pleas for repentance, this absorbing show reveals how western attitudes to desire became so tangled

This free exhibition, which peppers up works from the National Gallery collection with a handful of spunky loans, reveals how much has changed since the 19th century, when the dazzling Venus – lit up in this show by a Tracey Emin neon – had her erect nipple painted out.

In Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid, painted in about 1545, the goddess of love cavorts naked with her adolescent son Cupid, who is subtly squeezing that nipple between long slender fingers. Both their bodies are smooth as silk. Their passion holds back time – literally. Father Time is one of a strange crowd of envious onlookers who are helpless to defeat sexual love.

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Damien Hirst review – just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

Newport Street Gallery, London
Shark tanks, cow’s heads, feasting flies and pill bottles … Hirst’s death-obsessed early work hits home just as hard now disease is all around us

There was widespread disgust a couple of years ago when Damien Hirst unveiled paintings consisting of thousands of butterflies trapped in acrylic. All I can say is, if you share that revulsion at the use of dead animals to make art, you may want to avoid this spectacular survey of his early work.

It begins with a shark sliced in sections, each preserved in its own tank of formaldehyde. But that’s nothing, even if you’ve noticed this appears to be a juvenile tiger shark, killed before it could breed. I say appears – the gallery just calls it a “shark”. The double freezer in the next room is where things really get creepy. Peer inside and dead eyes stare back at you from a closely packed heap of severed cows’ heads. Like a frightened child, I had to ask a staff member if they are real. They are. A small herd has been slaughtered just for this. What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Damien Hirst: End of a Century is at Newport Street Gallery, 7 October-7 March.

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Gentileschi's shocking genius and Bruce Nauman's Clown Torture – the week in art

The RA has a starry summer exhibition, Nauman’s black humour is on full display and a knock-out Artemisia Gentileschi show opens at the National Gallery – all in your weekly dispatch

Artemisia
The genius of Artemisia Gentileschi is so immediate, shocking and moving that it is hard to believe she died more than 350 years ago. She takes the modern art world by storm in this extraordinary exhibition that reunites all her great paintings – they’ve come from German castles, Italian palazzi and even Hampton Court to form the most dazzling show you will see this year. It’s not often you can feel history change in an exhibition but this is epochal in its revelation of one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Read my full review.
• National Gallery, London, from 3 October until 24 January.

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From Llandudno to Stromness: 10 of the best hidden gem art galleries

A selection of the best art off the beaten track, featuring skeletal effigies, glowing landscapes and Victorian polymaths

Salisbury
Britain’s medieval churches are the nation’s oldest art galleries, where peasant and lord alike once pondered the latest depictions of hell. Salisbury, like other cathedrals around the country, has an ambitious programme of contemporary art among its skeletal effigies and soaring vaults, including an Antony Gormley, as part of a big contemporary show for its 800th anniversary this year, Spirit and Endeavour.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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'A blood-spattered thrill ride into vengeance' – Artemisia review

National Gallery, London
Artemisia Gentileschi took revenge on her rapist – and the chaotic battlefield of her life – through shockingly violent works. This magnificent show finally secures her reputation as one of the greats

This revolutionary exhibition of the work of a forgotten genius is like being on a film set, with the actors right in your face, and the lights revealing who they really are deep down inside. Bodies rush towards you out of the canvas, anguished faces, huge hands, explosions of blood. It’s a thrill ride from beginning to end, a Scorsese film shot in 17th-century Italy’s meanest streets, and it starts with a blow right to the heart.

In 1610, the year she turned 17, Artemisia, daughter of the moderately successful artist Orazio Gentileschi, painted a blinding masterpiece in her bedroom. Susanna and the Elders lights a fire in your soul. Susanna sits naked on a grey stone seat, her left foot dipping into the clear waters of a pool she’s just bathed in. But as she rests there, two looming male figures force themselves into the confined space of the canvas. These creeps don’t just spy on Susanna, they push right up close to her.

Related: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition review – as if the pandemic never happened

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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition review – as if the pandemic never happened

Royal Academy, London
Amid a sea of tasteful landscapes, only the BLM room and apocalyptic works by Tracey Emin and Anselm Kiefer are in tune with our troubled times

For some reason I expected a sense of urgency. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has been directly hit by the pandemic – delayed until they’ve had to scribble “Winter” over its traditional title. The Academy itself is facing such financial chaos as a result of this year’s revenue loss it says it will have to sack 150 people, or maybe sell its Michelangelo. But if you arrive, as I did, anticipating a survey of the state of our harrowed souls, a great gathering of lockdown projects that take the rapid pulse of the time, you’re thinking of a very different institution. This place is more than 250 years old and, boy, does it feel like it.

The exhibition at least begins as if the artists have been watching the news. The first room recognises the year of Black Lives Matter with a gathering of black Royal Academicians including Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling and Yinka Shonibare. The most arresting piece is Isaac Julien’s wall-filling photographic assemblage Lessons of the Hour, London 1983 – Who Killed Colin Roach? This history painting made of black and white photographs reminds you suffering and protest have a long story to tell. Colin Roach died of a gunshot wound in the entrance of Stoke Newington police station in 1983.

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