Jonathan Jones (journalist)

Jonathan Jones is a British art critic who has written for The Guardian since 1999. He has appeared in the BBC television series Private Life of a Masterpiece and in 2009 was a judge for the Turner Prize. He has also been a judge for the BP Portrait Award.

Jones was brought up in North Wales. Both his parents were school teachers and the family visited Italy in the summer holidays which kindled his interest in art. He studied history at the University of Cambridge and, at one time, wanted to be a professional historian. Jones developed an interest in modern art while living in the United States, where his wife was an academic at Brown University. On his return to the United Kingdom he wrote freelance for magazines and art features for The Guardian.

Jones had a public feud with artist Mark Leckey, who won the Turner Prize in 2008. By 2011, Whitehot Magazine referred to "the ongoing 3 year battle" between the two. Later that year, Jones gave a highly negative review to Leckey's exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, describing it as being "full of lumbering inanities". The review provoked strong responses in art circles and many comments on The Guardian's webpage, including replies from Jones. Writing in frieze.com, Isobel Harbison called the review part of a "trend in broadsheet art criticism of opinion-mongering and reader-goading."

Jones has expressed varying opinions on photography. In January 2013 he wrote that "Photography is the serious art of our time" and the only art that devotes the same "attention to the stuff that matters" as great artists of the past. In December 2014, however, prompted by the high price paid for a print by the photographer Peter Lik, Jones started a column by declaring that "Photography is not an art", and went on to say that, "this hollow and overblown creation exposes the illusion that lures us all, when we’re having a good day with a good camera – the fantasy that taking a picture is the same thing as making a work of art."

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