Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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The long reach of the medieval Islamic workforce
WILL PODMORE is enthralled by the convincing case that guilds of Islamic craftsmen were responsible for the European gothic style
EVOLUTION OF GOTHIC FROM ISLAMIC: Arches of the former mosque, the Cordoba Mezquita, in traditional Islamic style and completed in 971, are incorporated into the Gothic style of the transept of the Main Chapel (1523)
[Daderot/CC]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
Islamesque: the forgotten craftsmen who built Europe’s medieval monuments
Diana Darke, Hurst, £25
THIS is a wonderful book, fully and colourfully illustrated. Diana Darke is an Arabist and cultural expert who has lived and worked in the Middle East for over 30 years. She describes beautifully hundreds of cathedrals, churches, monasteries, palaces and castles.
She challenges the conventional wisdom that only Rome could be the source of Christian architecture. The accepted idea is that the “Romanesque” style simply emerged between 1000 and 1250 across the whole of Europe, making it the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman.
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HENRY BELL notes the curious confluence of belief, rebuilding and cheap materials that gave rise to an extraordinary number of modernist churches in post-war Scotland
KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents
LOUISE BOURDUA introduces the emotional and narrative religious art of 14th-century Siena that broke with Byzantine formalism and laid the foundations for the Renaissance
JAMES CROSSLEY charts how anti Jewish sentiment developed from ancient days and the dawn of Christianity to the Middle Ages, the birth of Protestantism and the sinister era of of the Nazis