Jonathan Jones's Blog, page 98
January 8, 2019
Leonardo v Rembrandt: who's the greatest?
As the masters celebrate big anniversaries, who reaches more powerfully across the centuries – and who deserves to hit the canvas?
It’s the art fight of the year, the rumble in the museum. Who is the greatest – Rembrandt van Rijn or Leonardo da Vinci? The two geniuses both have big anniversaries this year. According to the Netherlands, 2019 is officially the Year of Rembrandt. Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Museum De Lakenhall in Leiden are all putting on shows for the 350th anniversary of his death in 1669. Yet Rembrandt isn’t getting his year to himself. This also happens to be the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo in 1519. It’s a great excuse for exhibitions by Britain’s Royal Collection and British Library as well as a grand retrospective at the Louvre.
So which is the bigger anniversary? The smart bet might seem to be Rembrandt. His art is so absorbing, tragic and inward. His portraits are the painterly equivalents of King Lear. He is a painter in whose shadows the soul can linger. By contrast, Leonardo is a pop star who’s still busting the market 500 years after his death – and isn’t that a bit oppressive? It’s hard not to feel alienated among all the smartphone-touting tourists in front of the Mona Lisa. Not much room there for the meditative silent communion you can have with a Rembrandt.
His paintings are absorbing, tragic and inward – but how many copies would The Rembrandt Code sell?
Continue reading...
January 4, 2019
Martin Creed breaks bread and Mat Collishaw reincarnates Elizabeth I – the week in art
Turner meditates on midwinter, Kentridge contemplates science and spacetime and Colishaw presents a shocking robotic portrait – all in our weekly dispatch
Prints I Wish I Had Published
Picasso, Rauschenberg, Blake and Turner are among the galaxy of great artists whose prints are brought together in an exhibition opening soon.
• Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London, 11 January-9 February.
What to see this week in the UK
From The Favourite to Life in the Dark, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...January 2, 2019
Masters and machines: the best art and architecture of 2019
Van Gogh comes to London, Keith Haring scribbles over Liverpool, Jean Nouvel gets weird in Qatar, and the V&A hits top gear
More unsettling than they first appear, Pierre Bonnard’s paintings are often thought of as celebrations of domestic tranquility. With trembling and sometimes overloaded colour, and a touch that always seems nervous, there’s anxiety and disquiet in his interiors and portraits of his wife, Marthe de Méligny, taking her endless baths. Sometimes he catches himself in the bathroom mirror. Tate recommends slowing down to appreciate Bonnard, but you may feel a panic coming on.
Tate Modern, London, 23 January-6 May
December 28, 2018
What to see this week in the UK
From The Favourite to Turner in January, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...December 21, 2018
Trump portrait: you couldn’t create a creepier Yuletide scene if you tried
The formal smartness of the US president and the first lady adds to the emotional numbness of the scene.
The absence of intimacy in the Trumps’ official Christmas portrait freezes the heart. Can it be that hard to create a cosy image of the presidential couple, perhaps in front of a roaring hearth, maybe in seasonal knitwear? Or is this quasi-dictatorial image exactly what the president wants to project? Look on my Christmas trees, ye mighty, and despair! If so, it fuels suspicions that it is only the checks and balances of a 230-year-old constitution that are keeping America from the darkest of political fates.
You couldn’t create a creepier Yuletide scene if you tried. Multiple Christmas trees are currently a status symbol for the wealthy, but this picture shows the risks. Instead of a homely symbol of midwinter cheer, these disciplined arboreal ranks with their uniform decorations are arrayed like massed soldiers or colossal columns designed by Albert Speer. The setting is the Cross Hall in the White House and, while the incumbent president cannot be held responsible for its architecture, why heighten its severity with such rigid, heartless seasonal trappings?
Continue reading...Stargazers get snapping and Turner goes into the wild – the week in art
Renaissance geniuses deliver a festive feast, Pankhurst storms the Tate and the secret of ancient astronomy is revealed – all in our weekly dispatch
Mantegna and Bellini
You want heavenly scenes? Look no further than this survey of two Renaissance brother-in-law geniuses that stresses their religious works.
• National Gallery, London, until 27 January.
What to see this week in the UK
From Mary Poppins Returns to The Wizard of Oz, here’s our pick of the best films, concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance over the next seven days
Continue reading...December 20, 2018
Is this how parliament ends – not with a bang but a row about a whisper? | Jonathan Jones
It is a superbly theatrical tableau of passion. As MPs harangue the Speaker during this week’s row in the House of Commons over what Jeremy Corbyn did or didn’t say about Theresa May, their gestures and facial expressions are so eloquent and contrived it is hard to believe the picture wasn’t elaborately staged by some great history painter. That is because everyone in this photograph is fluent in a language of gesture and facial expression that goes back to ancient Roman oratory, and was used by artists including Titian, Caravaggio and David to communicate heightened drama.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn to MPs: I did not call Theresa May a 'stupid woman'
Continue reading...December 19, 2018
Jonathan Jones's top 10 art shows of 2018
Rodin’s wild works electrified the art of ancient Greece, Bruegel gave ice-skating an apocalyptic undertow and the Summer Exhibition got a stunning makeover from Grayson Perry
British Museum, London
This awe-inspiring encounter between the first modern sculptor and the classical artists he revered set off so many ideas, emotions and epic time travelling connections that it was like being injected with distilled aesthetic essence. I saw the art of ancient Greece with new eyes – Rodin’s eyes. His passion for its myths and sensuality made for an electrifying rediscovery of what great art is.
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