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
PAUL KNOX’s London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (Yale, £25) is a salmagundi of celebration, inquest, polemic and prophecy.
Each chapter is the biography of a building in which architectural analysis triggers thoughts on fashion, morality, marketing, celebrities, ergonomics, local government and the collision of past and present. These apparently digressive ideas coalesce into a meta-narrative of the city’s evolving identities.
The oldest building considered is a neoclassical townhouse of the 1750s; the newest is Google’s state-of-the-art UK headquarters (opening in 2025).
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
JOE GILL appreciates a lucid demonstration of how capital today is an outgrowth of the colonial economy
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer
MOLLY DHLAMINI welcomes a Pan-Africanist and Marxist manifesto that charts a path for Africa’s resurgence


