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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Studious rebel
Intriguing account of Lenin's time in London
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 Spark that Lit the Revolution: Lenin in London and the Politics that Changed the World
By Robert Henderson
IB Tauris, £25
Lenin warned against turning leaders into icons after their deaths. Unlike most of the biographies of a man whose ideas increasingly resound amid the world’s accumulating crises, Robert Henderson’s archival snapshots put human flesh on the intellectual and political bones of a figure who remains either revered or hated to this day.
Seeking a base to edit and publish Iskra (the spark), the official paper of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), safe from the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, Lenin made a number of fleeting visits to London in the first decade of the 20th century.
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