Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 84
September 20, 2019
What to see this week in the UK
From Ad Astra to Antony Gormley, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
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September 19, 2019
Damien Hirst flutters round the cosmos on butterfly wings – Mandalas review
White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London
In this mystical, hypnotic show, the artist challenges us to look afresh at the beauty of the universe – through the mind-bending iridescence of butterfly wings
Countless butterfly wings spin around Damien Hirst’s new paintings, in expanding circles of iridescence. These wheels of brightness seem to have a light inside them, a neon heart, but it’s just how the light in the gallery reflects off the wings. Ultramarine blue, fire orange, ebony black – the fabulous paint chest of nature is raided to hypnotic and alluring effect.
Is this extravagant use of bits of animals unethical? If so, the Natural History Museum is a far worse sinner, with its millions of animal specimens. Ever since he started making art in the late 1980s, Hirst has claimed the same privilege for art that science has taken for granted since the 17th century – to pin the natural world to a table, to dissect and examine it. Except that his specimens are not explained or analysed. At his most imaginative, as he is in this show, Hirst metamorphoses science into sheer wonder. He wants you to feel the awe-inspiring miracles of life. What if you were in the sea with a shark swimming towards you, mouth open? Or a forest full of multicoloured butterflies?
Continue reading...September 17, 2019
Death on a toilet: the shocking Paris show that almost sank Francis Bacon
It was meant to put the artist on a par with Picasso. But it was thrown into chaos by the suicide of his lover and muse. As Bacon returns to haunt the French capital, we recall a tragic, game-changing show
Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial piece of 70s art cinema, begins with an oil painting of a man on a red bed wearing just a T-shirt, flashing fleshy legs as his face explodes in inky smears. He’s in a room with a green carpet and yellow walls. For a few moments, Bertolucci shows just this portrait – of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon – then a sensual jazz score slowly starts, and the film’s opening credits roll alongside this unmoving canvas. It is succeeded by a brutally dissected female figure sitting on a wooden chair – another Bacon portrait, this time of Henrietta Moraes. Eventually, the two paintings are seen side by side. Then we cut to Marlon Brando in a camel overcoat on a Paris bridge, yelling: “Fucking God!”
Behind Bertolucci’s eerie use of these oil paintings is the shocking story of an art exhibition that gripped Paris, established Bacon as the great European artist he had always dreamt of being – and left a man dead in a hotel toilet. Bertolucci was so astounded by Bacon’s solo show at the Grand Palais – which opened in October 1971, just as he was preparing to make his film in the French capital – that he took Brando to see it. He urged the actor, he later recalled, to “compare himself with Bacon’s human figures because I felt that, like them, Marlon’s face and body were characterised by a strange and infernal plasticity”.
Realising he couldn’t directly bid for Picasso’s crown unless he painted the female body, Bacon got in training
Continue reading...September 16, 2019
The best art of the 21st century
Steve McQueen in bed, Ai Weiwei in trouble, Pussy Riot in church and Ragnar Kjartansson in the bath – they’re all included in our countdown of the best art since 2000
An interview with the creator of our No 1 pickMore of the best Film | TV | Albums | ClassicalAlmost an hour long, Tacita Dean’s film is a summation of her work to date. Poet Anne Carson and actor Stephen Dillane move through the world on an imaginary day, as the sun is eclipsed. Set in multiple locations and weathers (Bodmin Moor, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming and Illinois), and with innovative technical manipulations (the entire film was edited in-camera), atmospheres and startling imagery, the whole thing is a delight. AS
Read the review.
Related: The maddest house party ever – Ragnar Kjartansson on making The Visitors
Continue reading...The stolen golden toilet: the perfect punchline to an 18-carat joke
Maurizio Cattelan is right to enjoy the loss of his fully-functioning conceptual wonder. It makes his comment on art, money and Trumpian desire even more brilliant
It feels like a huge honour to have been, quite possibly, one of the last people to pee in Maurizio Cattelan’s golden toilet. If his artwork, the solid gold lav stolen from Blenheim Palace on Friday night, is not recovered soon, it may never be seen again. For it seems unlikely this crime was commissioned by an anally obsessed collector or planned by gangsters to use the loo as underworld collateral. “Don Corleone, to mark our deal, please accept this golden toilet.” Let’s face it, the thieves stole Cattelan’s conceptual wonder for the metal it is made of.
Related: Hitler in Churchill's birthplace more shocking than the golden toilet – Maurizio Cattelan review
Continue reading...September 13, 2019
Bathers, Bauhaus and a bounding bunny – the week in art
Hares rise in the Midlands, laughing gas intoxicates London and Matisse’s graphics flood Bath – all in your weekly dispatch
Barry Flanagan
A welcome retrospective of the 1960s conceptual artist who later became a figurative sculptor of leaping animals. Hare raising.
• Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 18 September to 24 November.
Hitler in Churchill's birthplace more shocking than the golden toilet – Maurizio Cattelan review
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
The Italian art prankster redecorates Churchill’s birthplace with an 18-carat loo, hideous union jacks and Hitler himself. What a fitting show for a country unravelling into madness
At a time when Britain is slipping further down the toilet day by day, it is curious to visit Blenheim Palace, a colossal monument to our finest hours. The Battle of Blenheim in 1704 may not be remembered as one of those now, but John Churchill’s victory over Louis XIV’s France was so significant in its day that a grateful nation paid for this jaw-droppingly spectacular baroque palace. What kind of child might be born among its triumphant martial memories? Winston Churchill, that’s who. A set of memorabilia-crowded rooms commemorate the cigar-chomping hero’s childhood here.
Related: Your chance to feel very flush: the 18-carat golden toilet hits Britain
At Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, until 27 October
Continue reading...What to see this week in the UK
From Downton Abbey to Khalid, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...September 9, 2019
Ban Marvel's gay kiss? You might as well ban the Sistine Chapel
The mayor of Rio de Janeiro’s attempts to censor an Avengers comic isn’t just bigoted. It ignores the fact that Christian artists pioneered same-sex snogging
He may be an evangelical bishop, but you do have to wonder how much Christian art the mayor of Rio de Janeiro has seen. Marcelo Crivella ordered an Avengers comic book to be removed from a book festival, because it featured two men kissing – a move that triggered a dramatic response from Brazil’s biggest newspaper, Folha de S Paulo, which reproduced the image on its front page, to highlight this attempt at censorship.
The mayor was so incensed by Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, he insisted it be given a black plastic wrapper. In a video posted on Twitter, he said it was not right for children “to have early access to subjects that do not agree with their ages”. But to find fault with this kiss is not just bigoted. It shows an ignorance of the origins of same-sex kissing in art.
Continue reading...William Blake review – blazing heresies from the artist who blows Constable and Turner away
Tate Britain, London
We rightly acclaim his writing, but this exhibition brings us Blake the consummate visual artist, depicter of humanity’s divided nature
The poster for Tate Britain’s exhibition of William Blake uses the three Rs to sell this icon of the Napoleonic age to the turbulent Britons of 2019: “Rebel, Radical, Revolutionary.” It may seem an over-eager attempt to contemporise him – but Blake was all these and more. You could add pacifist (albeit a militant one who once got arrested after a heated debate with a soldier) and anti-racist, for as Blake’s devastating portrayal of a hanged slave in this show illustrates, he passionately protested against Africa’s subjugation.
Related: Heavenly visions of hell: Alan Moore on the sublime art of William Blake
William Blake is at Tate Britain, London, from 11 September until 2 February.
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