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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Listen to his silences
CHRIS DAVIS admires a great communist poet through the lens of a vital and sensitive new translation
House and bust of Yiannis Ritsos, Monemvasia, Greece
[Konstantinos Payavlas/CC]
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
A Broken Man in Flower: Versions of Yannis Ritsos
by David Harsent
Bloodaxe Books, £12.99
A LIFE-LONG communist, Yannis Ritsos was a titan of 20th century Greek poetry, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1975 and nominated several times for the Nobel Prize.
Despite chronic ill-health, he fought with the Greek resistance against the Nazi occupation of Greece and supported the left in the subsequent civil war.
Between 1946-49 he was arrested and spent four years in prison camps.
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