Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 77
February 7, 2020
Steve McQueen takes over the Tate and civil rights heads to Margate – the week in art
The Oscar-winning artist has a major retrospective in London, an American visionary messes with perceptions and a punk artist reaches new heights – all in your weekly dispatch
Steve McQueen
A major retrospective for the only person who has won an Oscar as well as the Turner prize.
• Tate Modern, London, from 13 February to 11 May.
What to see this week in the UK
From Parasite to Angel Olsen, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...February 3, 2020
Sleaze, sex scandals and mountains of fruit – British Baroque review
Tate Britain, London
It was a pungent age, with accusations flying about the monarchy and adultery in high places. What a shame this comically inadequate show is more sniff of disdain than blockbuster
Restoration Britain may have been outrageous and dirty (in every sense) but it was not boring. Even the lecherous diarist Samuel Pepys was perturbed by the sexual scandals of Charles II’s court. Theatres reopened in 1660 after being banned for decades, and women acted in them for the first time. This hedonist age would soon be put to the test by bubonic plague and the Great Fire of London.
Tate Britain’s survey of this pungent age is more a sniff of disdain than a blockbuster. It sucks out every last drop of drama, character and energy, let alone narrative clarity. It misdefines its subject and seems to have no sympathy for the people of the era or their art. What exactly is British baroque? A wall text explains the baroque in a nutshell: “It was an age when art was used to support and advertise the authority of the monarchy.” This is a comically inadequate view of a rich and complex aesthetic.
It all collapses into a weary sigh, with the reign of Queen Anne getting a perfunctory, portrait-heavy survey
British Baroque: Power and Illusion is at Tate Britain, London, 4 February to 19 April.
Continue reading...January 31, 2020
Ghent's godlike glory, horror at sea and Britain goes baroque – the week in art
Ghent completes a magnificent restoration, Marc Bauer follows Hokusai and Géricault to sea, and a coffee controversy brews at the Tate – all in your weekly dispatch
British Baroque: Power and Illusion
From domes in the sky to Peter Lely’s paintings of Nell Gwynn, there was a new artistic energy in Restoration Britain.
• Tate Britain, London, from 4 February to 19 April.
What to see this week in the UK
From The Lighthouse to The Haystack, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...January 29, 2020
'A godlike, pounding power': Van Eyck and the Ghent Altarpiece Restored – review
Ghent, Belgium
The stupendous restoration of the altarpiece, and the magnificent exhibition nearby, confirm Van Eyck as a painting colossus. Get yourself to Ghent!
According to the Italian art critic Giorgio Vasari, writing hundreds of miles away and more than a century later, the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck “delighted in alchemy”. As he mixed up compounds by candlelight in a workshop by a canal in Bruges, he hit on the secret of oil painting. There’s no proof of any of this – but as you look at his uncannily perfect paintings in the epochal new survey of his genius at Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts, it’s easy to believe he dabbled in magic.
The proof twinkles between the thumb and index finger of Jan de Leeuw, in Van Eyck’s 1436 portrait of this fellow craftsman. De Leeuw was a leading Bruges goldsmith and, as he fixes a sharp, clear gaze straight at you, he holds a ring he has made. It’s as much rivalry as homage. The jeweller’s art is intricate, but painting is something else. The ring glints in dazzles of yellow, catching a beam of light. The goldsmith made a reflective object, but Van Eyck has made the light itself.
Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, from 1 February until 30 April.
Continue reading...January 24, 2020
Picasso's paperwork and Whistler's Peacock Room – the week in art
The dark side of the American dream, romantic visions of a war photographer and the legacy of More’s Utopia – all in your weekly dispatch
Picasso and Paper
The boundless creativity of the greatest modern artist is dazzling even when confined to a single, fragile material.
• Royal Academy, London, from 25 January to 13 April.
What to see this week in the UK
From The Personal History of David Copperfield to Madonna, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...January 23, 2020
Filthy Lucre review – peacock problems for Whistler the avant-garde cowboy
V&A, London
Darren Waterston’s remake of the painter’s opulent Peacock Room is a vision of dripping stalactites, decay and ruin. But this ‘showette’ all feels rather ordinary – unlike Whistler’s work
The trouble with Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined is that it isn’t filthy enough. US artist Darren Waterston has created a ruinous installation full of misted mirrors and eerie sounds. It should squat there like a disease. but it’s a well-behaved evocation of decay that fades from the mind.
When did American art become so ordinary? Not on Whistler’s watch. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was the first modern artist the US produced – a dandified 19th-century avant-garde cowboy who got thrown out of West Point military academy before mingling with Manet and Baudelaire in Paris and rivalling Wilde as leader of Britain’s aesthetic movement. Whistler’s most splendid claim to be King of the Aesthetes was the Peacock Room, an opulent dream-place in blue and gold that he created for London art collector Frederick Richard Leyland, today preserved by the Smithsonian in Washington DC.
Continue reading...January 22, 2020
Why laugh at the humanoid sheep in the Ghent altarpiece? It is majestic
The original sheep, which had been painted over, has now been revealed, ‘freaky’ eyes and all. No wonder – it is a symbol of Jesus, and he was more man than baa-lamb
Let’s all have a good laugh at Jan and Hubert van Eyck. Nearly 600 years ago, the brothers painted a vast multi-panelled altarpiece in St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, that includes the oldest lifelike faces and figures in any western painting and announces the Renaissance. But get a load of that creepy lamb! It’s got freaky “humanoid” eyes!
The painstaking, scientific restoration of the most enigmatic section of the Van Eycks’ masterpiece, which shows saintly hosts gathering to witness the sacrifice of the Holy Lamb, has attracted some bizarre criticism. Take moth dad, who opines on Twitter: “The lamb of the Ghent Altarpiece was a mistake and whoever painted over it was right to do so.”
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