Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 75
March 20, 2020
Art books to self-isolate with, from Patti Smith to Lucian Freud – the week in art
Picasso’s inner beast, a sizzling take on Bacon and Buñuel’s last breath are among our art biographies to curl up with – all in your weekly dispatch
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Stuck at home and want to read a vivid book that’s more living art than dead art history? An eyewitness memoir might do the trick. They don’t come better than Patti Smith’s beautifully written, utterly intimate and frank account of her love for Robert Mapplethorpe. This not just one of the best books you can read on contemporary art but a classic of American literature.
• Just Kids is published by Bloomsbury.
March 17, 2020
Plague visionaries: how Rembrandt, Titian and Caravaggio tackled pestilence
Much of Europe’s greatest art is haunted by outbreaks – but amid the death are testimonies of love. Can these masterpieces guide us through today’s crisis?
• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage
It seems incredible that we should find common cause with the people of 500 years ago, who faced disease without any understanding or remotely adequate treatment. But on Sunday, Pope Francis walked the streets of Rome, left empty by coronavirus, to visit the church of San Marcello on the Corso – and revere a cross that supposedly protected Rome from plague in 1522.
We now find ourselves in the same plight – menaced by an illness that seems to have the upper hand and that is turning our assumptions upside down. Even the methods being used, including quarantine, come from that plagued past. As does much of Europe’s greatest art. These masterpieces might console us, or make us see this unfamiliar moment in a new light, or even give us practical ideas to cope. Here are some of those images, perhaps to be used as guides – for Rembrandt, Titian and Caravaggio trod this path before us.
Continue reading...March 16, 2020
With coronavirus, the curse of Artemisia Gentileschi strikes again | Jonathan Jones
Abused, dishonoured and forgotten, the great artist’s terrible luck continues – her National Gallery exhibition is the latest cultural victim of Covid-19
• Coronavirus and culture – a list of major cancellations
Four centuries is a long time to wait for justice, but Artemisia Gentileschi hasn’t got it yet. What a cruel joke that, after being assaulted and dishonoured in her lifetime, forgotten for centuries, then slighted by art snobs who affect to prefer her father Orazio, the greatest, most revolutionary woman artist before modern times has now become a cultural victim of the coronavirus. The National Gallery in London has postponed its exhibition Artemisia. It had no choice, with works due to come from locked-down Italy and loans from America facing global air paralysis.
This is a tragedy for anyone who likes to see a wrong righted. Artemisia should be a household name – and this exhibition promised to make her just that. As long ago as last summer, I met with its visionary curator Letizia Treves to find out what she planned to include. I was thrilled.
Artemisia Gentileschi by Jonathan Jones is published by Laurence King, £12.99.
Continue reading...March 13, 2020
Titian's answer to the Sistine Chapel and Lucas Cranach's kinky German nudes – the week in art
Titian’s Ovid paintings are brought together for the first time in 300 years, Lucas Cranach the Elder displays a Helmut Newton quality and Cecil Beaton shows a surreal side – all in your weekly dispatch
Titian: Love, Desire, Death
Related: Titian: Love, Desire, Death review – whims of the gods made flesh
British Museum, London, until 8 September.
Marian Goodman Gallery, London, until 25 April.
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, until 14 June.
National Portrait Gallery, London, until 7 June.
Continue reading...What to see this week in the UK
From The Hunt to Kelis, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
March 11, 2020
Titian: Love, Desire, Death review – whims of the gods made flesh
National Gallery, London
The artist’s epic series of paintings drawn from the poet Ovid hang together for the first time in three centuries, and tell a tale of sex, power and subversion
The women are the stars in Titian. Men barely get a look-in – and that look-in can be fatal. In his painting Diana and Actaeon, a young man out hunting has chanced on the goddess Diana and her court bathing naked in a woodland hideaway. As he pushes aside a soft pink hanging, he sees inside this female realm. His punishment is shown in another painting here: he will be turned into a stag and torn apart by his hounds. In Diana and Actaeon we see what he sees: women kneel and crouch, turn in horror and rush to cover. Titian’s brush shapes their flesh in ethereal yet weighty flicks of colour that capture form while being smokily suggestive. He called these paintings “poesie”, poetic pictures, with good reason, for they hover in a cloud of carnality and dreams.
This theatre of human flesh hasn’t been experienced in the way you can in this show for more than 300 years. It is Titian’s answer to the Sistine Chapel. In the mid 16th century he started a series of big oil paintings on canvas for King Philip II of Spain, ruler of a global empire that stretched from Flanders to Peru. They were to illustrate the Greco-Roman myths as told by the ancient Latin poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses: Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a sea monster; Venus pleading with her lover Adonis not to leave her. Titian paints these stories as very adult fairytales.
King Philip II can have had no inkling Titian was sending him portaits of sex workers under a mythical guise
Titian: Love, Desire, Death is at the National Gallery, London, 16 March-14 June.
Continue reading...March 6, 2020
The dark side of Andy Warhol and Britain's side-road surrealists – the week in art
What we will see in the king of pop art’s mirror, British stand up to be counted and a rare Canaletto gets an outing – all in your weekly dispatch
Andy Warhol
Once Warhol was dismissed for pop cultural shallowness. Today he’s loved for pop cultural savvy. Both those views are wrong. Warhol was a very serious artist with a darkly moral view of the modern world. And he is still teaching us to see ourselves in his mirror.
• Tate Modern, London, 12 March to 6 September.
What to see this week in the UK
From Onward to Andy Warhol, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...March 5, 2020
Barry Flanagan review – a hare-brained scheme that wasted three decades
Waddington Custot, London
The artist once daring enough to put a hole in the sea then devoted himself to making hare sculptures – a decision that now looks hopping mad
Barry Flanagan, the bronze hare guy, has enjoyed a revival since his death in 2009. His hares have even materialised at Frieze art fair in London, dancing among the trees in Regent’s Park. These rustic images of beastly freedom suit our mood of ecological guilt. Or so I thought, until I decided to take a closer look at them – only to discover what a bizarre, obsessive and private artist Flanagan was.
One of his hare sculptures can be funny and memorable. A gallery full of them is quite alarming. His greatest strength as an animal artist is that he doesn’t anthropomorphise. There’s nothing human about his agile creatures, even when they tower on hind legs. The longer you look into their bulging blobs of eyes – or sometimes a hole where one should be – the less you discern a recognisable mind. They’re comic yet sinister, animated by a force that may be malign. The colossal sculpture at the start of the show depicts one melancholy hare sitting pensively in a garden grotto while three more of the varmints cavort in a crazy jig above it. If the sad thinker is an image of sensitivity, it is mocked by the braying dancers.
Continue reading...February 28, 2020
Erotic reveries from Beardsley and a Jedi robe – the week in art
Decadence and scandal from Victorian Britain’s most subversive artist, female wrestling and a cultural history of the kimono – all in your weekly dispatch
Aubrey Beardsley
The devil is in the detail of Victorian Britain’s most subversive artist. Prostitution, homosexuality and many more un-Victorian realities are portrayed in his black and white erotic reveries. Hogarth on absinthe.
• Tate Britain, London, 4 March to 25 May.
Jonathan Jones's Blog
- Jonathan Jones's profile
- 8 followers
