Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 88
July 1, 2019
Designed by Banksy, worn by Stormzy: the banner of a divided and frightened nation
The artist chose Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage as the place to unveil his latest artwork – a stab-proof vest – and helped the rapper speak for England
It’s not what he does, it’s where he does it that makes Banksy modern Britain’s most effective artist. The pseudonymous street artist from the West Country picked the perfect platform yet again this weekend – the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival, no less, where Stormzy headlined in a stab-proof vest decorated with a near-monochrome union jack flag. It added a punch of visual tension to his verbal mash-up of modern Britain from knife crime to Boris Johnson. Only after the rousing show did a photo of Stormzy in his discomforting vest appear on Banksy’s instagram with a claim of responsibility: “I made a customised stab-proof vest and thought – who could possibly wear this?”, adding on a separate line: “Stormzy at Glastonbury”.
Stormzy, it turned out, had not been simply wearing a stage costume, but art.
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June 28, 2019
Good vibes in the physics lab and an outbreak of emojis – the week in art
Manchester International festival rings a bell, an eerie French visionary plays with physics, and a 400-year-old art form embraces Picasso and punk – all in your weekly dispatch
Takis
Feel the good vibrations of the electromagnetic field in the art of Takis, whose scientific sculptures probe the realities uncovered by modern physics.
• Tate Modern, London, 3 July–27 October
What to see this week in the UK
From Yesterday to Ed Ruscha, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...June 21, 2019
Cindy Sherman's many masks and Romantic Scotland – the week in art
The hugely influential artist arrives at the National Portrait Gallery, sculpture invades Yorkshire, and the National Museum of Scotland takes a hike through Highland history – all in your weekly dispatch
Cindy Sherman
Masks, disguises and film fantasy abound in Sherman’s hugely influential art of self-invention.
• National Portrait Gallery, London, 27 June – 15 September.
What to see this week in the UK
From Toy Story 4 to Glastonbury, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...June 17, 2019
The Paper Museum review – the pelican paintings that changed art forever
Barber Institute, Birmingham
From mammoth fossils to a civet’s anal glands, these drawings of the natural world prove how modern nature photography can be traced back to the pioneering work of Galileo
On 17 August 1603 – they chose the day for its excellent astrological alignments of Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury – a group of friends got together in Rome to found a society to study and record the natural world. They wanted to emulate the lynx, believed to be the most keen-eyed of animals, so they called themselves the Academy of Linceans. Their mission was to look at nature with the bright, sharp eye of the night-hunting cat.
The Barber Institute’s exhibition of the pioneering masterpieces of natural history this secretive society commissioned is a journey to the dawn of modern science. Keen eyes look back at you everywhere. A pelican glares with a fierce, blue-pupilled orb, surrounded by circles of pink skin that resemble the orbits of planets. A civet stares out of another of these bold yet precise watercolours while also turning its anus to face the onlooker – the Linceans were interested in its anal musk gland as a source of precious scent.
Continue reading...June 14, 2019
Eye-boggling Bridget Riley and black British pioneers – the week in art
Keith Haring’s first major UK exhibition opens in Liverpool, Leonardo da Vinci visits the British Library and op-art invades Edinburgh – all in your weekly dispatch
Bridget Riley
This retrospective of one of modern Britain’s most brilliant and original artists is guaranteed to fool your eyes and stretch your mind.
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 19 June–22 September. Hayward Gallery, London, 22 October–26 January.
What to see this week in the UK
From Diego Maradona to Bridget Riley, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...June 12, 2019
Bartolomé Bermejo review – the satanic fears of a paranoid age
National Gallery, London
A Spanish Jew born in a Muslim city who was forced to convert to Christianity – no wonder these Inquisition-era paintings of religious triumph reveal nightmarish twists
Bartolomé Bermejo painted the most outlandish face in the whole of the National Gallery. Its glass eyes, like evil snowglobes, contain bloody discs pierced by jet black holes. There’s an owl-like beak, the ears of a bat, and a widely grinning mouth full of lethal-looking teeth.
It grabs you. Maybe we are drawn to extreme and troubled art that mirrors our fearful age
Continue reading...June 10, 2019
Kiss My Genders review – a sinful, sensational walk on the wild side
Hayward Gallery, London
From glammed-up deer-hunters in high heels to operatic characters from Lou Reed songs, these dazzling works of transgender art are a glorious assault on our assumptions
The sea has no gender. It is the definition of fluid, which is probably why so many photographs of bodies of water are included in this exhibition of artists who question the very existence of stable gender identities. Peter Hujar’s photographs of the transgender community in 1970s New York are shown between two pictures of the dark, untamed waters of the Hudson River. Catherine Opie’s photographs of the Pacific capture a nature that is infinitely suggestive, sea and sky merging in misty paleness until it is hard to tell what’s air and what’s ocean. Why should male and female be any easier to separate?
Kiss My Genders celebrates artists “whose work counters entrenched gender narratives”. There’s certainly not much left of those narratives by the end. From Del LaGrace Volcano’s photographs of drag kings to Ajamu’s shot of a man caressing his erect penis with a hand gloved in black lace, it’s a bonfire of categories. Yet it does more than contribute to the impassioned politics of identity. It touches, in profound ways, on what it is to be human, and why we need this great river of the unfixed.
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