To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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The alternative to zionism
Given the dehumanising vision propagated by Israel, how vital it is to highlight the radical, humane and beautiful world of the Bund, says HENRY BELL
IN THE BEGINNING: The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia - the Bund, was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in October 1897 by a group of Jews who were profoundly influenced by Marxism - their goal was to attract East European Jews to the emergent Russian revolutionary movement
[Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner]
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
The Bund
Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner
Between the Lines, £22.50
THE late Scottish Marxist Neil Davidson described the political division in Jewish Europe as one between two different responses to the brutality of anti-semitism.
One was to see that the oppression and persecution of Jews necessitated a new society in a Jewish majority state: this was zionism and ended in the catastrophe we see today. The other response was to view the oppression and persecution of Jews as inherent and brutal aspects of capitalist oppression that necessitated a new society for everyone: a society free from capitalism, and from the state. This was socialism, communism, Bundism, and its many lives and legacies continue to exist today, though they are often erased or suppressed.
One such legacy is the beautiful new graphic novel The Bund by Sharon Rudahl and Michael Kluckner.
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