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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Faust and furious
GORDON PARSONS recommends the biography of the German polymath whose life provides an interesting take on a revolutionary age
HERALDING THE UNKNOWN: Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull features the Commission of Five submitting the text of the Declaration of Independence. From left to right, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who actually were never in the same room at the same time
[US Capitol/Public domain]
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
Goethe: His Faustian Life
AN Wilson, Bloomsbury, £25
AFTER their detailed and in-depth research, biographers may well end up either loving or loathing their subject. There can be no doubt that AN Wilson has great affection for a man he believes a genius and one of the most remarkable figures in modern history, although the character the reader will meet is not one who emerges as altogether admirable.
Like most biographers, Wilson discovers the figure he is looking for. His study presents an “exquisite lyricist, passionate scientist, soulful lover, conservative statesman, [who was] also a wild man, obscene and out of control, foul mouthed, coarse and alcohol fuelled.”
It would not be unfair to suggest that “the prodigious size of the literary output” of this poet and novelist, playwright, scientist, philosopher and even psychologist, who has the kind of standing in Germany that Pushkin has in Russia or Shakespeare in England, is virtually unknown to British readers.
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PETER MASON welcomes collected writings from Britain’s first black female publisher that focus on the place of black writers in literature
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
JOHN GREEN’s palate is tickled by useful information leavened by amusing and unusual anecdotes, incidental gossip and scare stories
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer