MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
The challenge of proletarian simplicity
GORDON PARSONS finds that it is the ambiguity with which Caravaggio’s art now challenges the beholder that establishes his ‘modernity’
COMPASSION AND REGRET: David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1609–1610), Galleria Borghese, Rome
[Public Domain] 
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
Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity
Troy Thomas, Reaktion Books, £14.95
NOT another book on the life and work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio!
Troy Thomas’s admittedly attractive and easily transportable book on a Renaissance painter whose theatrical paintings insist upon attention, so different from the static biblical masterpieces that for the non-expert gallery visitor demand no more than a passing glance, may seem superfluous.
Even adding “the Creation of Modernity” would appear to promise a journey over well-trodden ground, given the ready recognition of Caravaggio’s influence on many modern artists, film-makers and art critics.
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