Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 93
April 5, 2019
From Warhol to minimalism: how painting by numbers revolutionised art
Designer Dan Robbins’s concept was inadvertently a parody of 50s modernist reverence, and brought abstract painting techniques into middle-American homes
It took a genius to see the genius of Dan Robbins, the inventor of painting-by-numbers who has died aged 93. For art critics, painting-by-numbers was, and is, a byword for robotic repetition and unoriginality – and that was exactly what Andy Warhol adored about it. In 1962, when he was searching for a mechanical artistic process, he painted a series of homages to Robbins. His Do it Yourself paintings mimic painting-by-numbers landscapes, with blocky areas of flat colour guided by a grid of numbers visible through the paint.
Warhol recognised a great piece of pop culture when he saw it. He and Robbins were both bringing art to the people. In the 50s, the American art world took itself extremely seriously. Abstract painters such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko painted sublime slabs that were praised in hushed voices. Painting-by-numbers may not have been intended as a parody of this modernist reverence – but it sure looked that way. Robbins designed quaint scenes of farmhouses and mountain valleys that anyone could complete – they were good, solid pictures for good, solid middle-American homes.
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Munch's death obsession and Mackintosh's sensual mysticism – the week in art
The British Museum goes beyond the Scream, Liverpool gets a sensual dose of Glasgow, and George Shaw’s hymns to housing estates arrive in Bath – all in our weekly dispatch
Edvard Munch: Love and Angst
The bleak beauty of this darkly ravishing artist’s images infects your soul and ensnares you in his terrifyingly intense reality. And that’s before you even get to The Scream.
• British Museum, London, from 11 April to 21 July.
What to see this week in the UK
From Pet Sematary to Edvard Munch, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...April 2, 2019
Anish Kapoor's Brexit artwork: Britain on the edge of the abyss
Frightening rift tearing the UK apart – or gateway to a new land? Our critic explores the artist’s response to Brexit, created for Guardian readers
Anish Kapoor has exposed a bottomless void at the heart of Britain. You could topple in there and never stop falling. In fact, that is exactly what we have done – and solid ground still seems to be nowhere in sight.
This artwork, which Kapoor has created for the Guardian, is his response to our current predicament and the new Britain that appeared after the leave vote. Although the Mumbai-born artist has given it a title – A Brexit, A Broxit, We All Fall Down – he does not wish to make any further comment about the piece, preferring to let it speak for itself.
Like a black hole of melancholy, something about this bottomless pit is alluring. Part of you wants to fall in
Continue reading...April 1, 2019
What do Andrew Marr’s paintings tell us about his views on Brexit?
The BBC journalist has to remain neutral on the subject, but his views on Brexit may have crept into his artwork
Andrew Marr says making art in your leisure time is a source of wellbeing and has written movingly about sketching after his stroke. So there’s a poignancy in the way the nightmare of Brexit infects his latest paintings of Highland landscapes and circuses.
As an eminent BBC journalist, Marr can’t really speak his mind on the issue paralysing and splintering the nation, but there is no rule against artistic expressionism. So Brexit symbols have danced into his pictures. Gold stars on blue in one of them look to me like a sign that his heart lies in Europe. The more you look at this painting, the more unequivocally it celebrates European civilisation. As well as gold stars, a gold figure dances wildly in the big blue EU yonder.
Continue reading...March 29, 2019
The truth about swimming pools and whimsy from Chicago – the week in art
Joan Snyder makes a fizzy debut, Gladys Nilsson invents and Leon Kossoff dives right in – all in our weekly dispatch
Leon Kossoff
Few people have ever painted London’s streets, swimming pools and churches with the power and truth of Kossoff. This is a career survey of one of Britain’s great artists.
• Piano Nobile, London, until 22 May.
What to see this week in the UK
From Hot Chip to Gary Hume, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...March 26, 2019
Swept away: the art and artefacts destroyed by the world’s greatest museums
Anyone who has ever been told off by a snippy museum guard for getting too close to an artwork may be interested to learn that galleries and their staff are not always the unassailable guardians of culture they appear to be. It has emerged that V&A staff dropped the precious sitar that George Harrison played on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and broke it in two. “It hit the ground and the gourd bounced away,” revealed a whistleblower. The museum was forced to make an “awkward telephone call” to Harrison’s widow, Olivia, to explain. Naturally, museums don’t boast about the accidents and losses for which they are responsible, but enough incidences have come to light to give a tragicomic picture of behind the scenes chaos. Here are just some of them ...
Continue reading...March 25, 2019
Van Gogh and Britain review – gaslit London inspired his starry night? Come off it!
There’s a good show trapped within this flabby blockbuster, which suggests Britain’s peasoupers and smoky tube stations inspired Van Gogh’s light-filled hymns to life
I never thought I’d see Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers wilt. Yet, in this exhibition about his relationship with Britain, this incandescent painting is embalmed in a kind of floral chapel of rest. Dull homages to Van Gogh’s blooms by such early 20th-century British painters as Frank Brangwyn, Matthew Smith and Samuel Peploe only serve to smother the power and heat of the painting they imitate. How could the curators think this is a good way to show Van Gogh’s art?
This version of the Sunflowers normally hangs in the National Gallery, London, where it’s surrounded by revolutionary art made in late-19th-century France. That’s how we picture Van Gogh, staggering in the Provençal sun with his easel and brushes, in search of his vision. Cézanne is at work a few miles away; Gauguin comes to stay. This exhibition wants to shift that familiar scenery. Forget cypresses waving in the heat haze. Think pea-soupers and smoky underground stations. The curators even suggest Van Gogh’s glorious blast of gold and blue, the Musee d’Orsay’s version of Starry Night, is inspired by gaslit London. Somehow we’re supposed to agree that in 1888, when he painted this ecstatic nocturne of the lights of Arles reflected in the river Rhône under a cloudless southern night that shudders with celestial energy, he was thinking of the Thames embankment. We are supposed to swallow the idea that the true genesis of Van Gogh’s art lies in a youthful sojourn in Victorian England.
Related: Squalor, glamour, wealth and cruelty: the Britain Van Gogh saw and loved
Continue reading...March 22, 2019
Vincent in the smoke, leggy sculptures and apocalyptic visions – the week in art
Van Gogh’s British connection, master of pop decadence Gary Hume and Swiss mystic Emma Kunz – all in our weekly dispatch
Van Gogh and Britain
The turbulent painter of the modern inner life spent a short but critical time in Britain and remained a lifelong reader of English literature. How did Britain shape him – and how has he shaped modern British art?
• Tate Britain, London, 27 March to 11 August.
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