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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Ill-advised turn to heritage industry
The Unthanks at Castle Armoury Drill Hall, Bury, Greater Manchester, on 17 October 2015
[Robert Smith/Creative Commons]
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 Unthanks
Leeds Town Hall
BECKY Unthank is considering the parallels between her family and that of the Brontes. They’re sisters. They have bodies of work obsessed by melancholy and death. They have a lesser-known brother.
These similarities are sufficient to qualify the folk band to commemorate the 200th birthday of Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, with a song cycle based on a selection of her poems.
Commissioned by the Bronte Society, the Northumbrian outfit were invited to work and record in the Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Becky and sister Rachel used the time to walk across the moors, “pretending we were Kate Bush,” while composer Adrian McNally played Emily’s five-octave cabinet piano under the watchful eye of curators.
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