MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Gustave Courbet: The Stone Breakers
Painting which announced the advent of realism in European art
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
THROUGHOUT 1848, Europe was in convulsions as widespread revolutionary unrest ushered in what became known as “The Spring of Nations” and, in February that year, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published The Communist Manifesto.
The political ferment was as wide-reaching as it was spontaneous, with unstable alliances of social strata and classes with disparate political aims that could not endure. Nevertheless, it ushered in the final transformation of an archaic and unproductive feudal serfdom into the “modern” and “efficient” capitalist labour market. But the whip was to stay, albeit wielded by a different hand.
An independent-minded, self-proclaimed republican who supported the poor and oppressed and continuously irked the ruling elites, Gustave Courbet possessed the kind of spirit needed for such a time.
More from this author
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
