Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 79
December 20, 2019
A Renaissance Christmas and Greta Thunberg's ice float – the week in art
The V&A vrooms into view, Tutankhamun is unearthed and Bridget Riley brings the bombast – all in your weekly dispatch
Jan de Beer’s Renaissance Altarpieces
There’s nothing more seasonal than a nicely painted nativity and this Flemish artist painted some very fine ones indeed.
• Barber Institute, Birmingham, until 19 January.
What to see this week in the UK
From Little Women to Olafur Eliasson, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...December 15, 2019
Top 20 art exhibitions of 2019
Egypt’s golden boy and Bridget Riley’s dazzling arcs of colour join a towering indictment of empire – this year’s stunning art shows hit like a bomb
More on the best culture of 2019 Continue reading...December 13, 2019
Banksy's reindeer and 150 years of Stonehenge snapshots – the week in art
Turner prize winners go back to school, Scotland’s social history is on show and Tate Liverpool evokes the forests of Guatemala – all in your weekly dispatch
Vivian Suter
The forests of Guatemala inspire Suter’s earthy and rain-marked paintings.
• Tate Liverpool until 15 March.
What to see this week in the UK
From Star Wars to Ari Lennox, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...December 11, 2019
Paws for thought: pet portraits are on the rise. But can they ever truly be art?
Want to turn your pet into a Renaissance hero? A new service will let you. But the real artists of that era treated animals with much more respect
Want to make your pet look a bit stupid? Now you can, by commissioning an artwork from Royal Pet Pawtrait. The artists behind this enterprise will turn a photo of your dog or cat into a posed portrait in what is purported to be “Renaissance” style, dressed up as a queen or soldier.
The results look like a joke by someone who hates animals. The artists have seemingly taken that painting of dogs playing poker as inspiration.
Continue reading...December 10, 2019
Have a Banksy Christmas: his Birmingham reindeer are an artistic miracle
Rather than exploit ‘the homeless’, this painting empowers rough sleepers to draw attention to their individuality
Is Banksy the new Charles Dickens? The anonymous street artist’s Christmas creation combines jolly sentiment with genuine compassion in a way that would make the Victorian author of A Christmas Carol tingle all over. What’s more, his latest artwork is both imaginative and thumpingly true – a Christmas cracker with a bang of reality inside.
Related: Red noses appear on Banksy's Birmingham homeless reindeer mural
Continue reading...December 9, 2019
Don't make fun of the $120,000 banana – it's in on the joke | Jonathan Jones
A banana stuck on a wall by artist Maurizio Cattelan has been widely mocked. But it was always making fun of the art market
Before we get to the banana, we should consider where it was eaten. Art Basel in Miami Beach is a franchise of a famous Swiss art fair that takes place far from the Alps, in sunny Florida – presumably because it’s too cold to sell art in Basel at this time of year. This surreal displacement adds to the sense that contemporary art, like haute couture, is a luxury for people with more money than sense, who can afford to follow their favourite art dealers around the planet like migrating birds.
Enter Comedian. That is the title of the artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, renowned for his stolen gold toilet, that has taken this sophisticated trade fair out of in-crowdy art websites and into mainstream news. Cattelan’s Comedian is a banana taped to a wall. Descriptions tend to carefully specify that it is fixed there with grey duct tape. Everyone stresses this somewhat bare technical fact, as if to find physical evidence that it really is, after all, art. At the weekend, after Comedian had already sold for $120,000, an artist named David Datuna joined the queue of fair-goers eager to take selfies with Comedian, but instead peeled back the grey duct tape, removed the banana from the wall and ate it. The piece was remade but then removed from the show, presumably to prevent further stunts. No such luck – a graffitist with few artistic pretensions wrote “Epstien (sic) didn’t kill himself” in the blank space it left.
The duct-taped banana at Art Basel is gone and has been replaced with “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself,” which security quickly covered up. pic.twitter.com/nPtnuCm6sc
Related: One banana, what could it cost? $120,000 – if it's art
Continue reading...December 6, 2019
Futuristic daring and Renaissance reveals – the week in art
Life in the Jewish East End of London, the forgotten history of a 19th century multiracial experiment and a new wave of indigenous art – all in your weekly dispatch
Young Bomberg and the Old Masters
David Bomberg depicted life in the Jewish East End of London in canvases of futuristic daring before 1914 – and drew on Renaissance art to do so, reveals this exhibition.
•National Gallery, London, until 1 March.
What to see this week in the UK
From Motherless Brooklyn to Peggy Sue, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...Jonathan Jones's Blog
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