MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Riveted by Rego's realm
Visceral, confrontational and emotionally charged, the retrospective of scenarios by the great Portuguese artist transfixes JAN WOOLF
TROUBLING TALES: (L to R) The Dance (1988) and The Policeman’s Daughter (1987)
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
Paula Rego
Tate Britain, London
FIGURATIVE art has become fashionable again, apparently.
Yet the extraordinary Paula Rego probably couldn’t care less. Pushing on through the fashionable Young British Artists era of the 1980s, she has always drawn and painted what she needed to.
Born in Portugal in 1935, she was brought to England by parents opposed to the fascist Salazar regime — God, Homeland and Family was one of its guiding slogans and the Female Portuguese Youth was set up to train girls for domesticity.
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JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townshend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
JAN WOOLF applauds the necessarily subversive character of the Palestinian poster in Britain
This is poetry in paint, spectacular but never spectacle for its own sake, writes JAN WOOLF
JAN WOOLF relishes a book of poetry that deploys the energy of political struggle, rooted in post-war working class history and culture
