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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Postwar Modern: a lovingly created show with touches of the sublime
LYNNE WALSH is thrilled by an exhibition of post-war British art
John McHale, First Contact, 1958
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New
York, © Estate of John McHale
[Brenda Bieger for Albright-Knox Art Gallery]
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
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945-1965.
Barbican
IF Jane Alison does little else in her career, she can look back on this lovingly curated show with pride.
Head of visual arts at London’s Barbican Centre, Alison has been in the job for nearly nine years; this exhibition has been two and a half in planning and execution. There are 48 artists represented, and some 200 works including painting, photography, sculpture and installations.
The curtain-raiser is John Latham’s Full Stop, a monumental piece with its giant black disk. A planet, black hole, an eclipse? One edge gives way to dots emerging — this full stop may not represent an ending, after all.
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GEORGE FOGARTY is dazzled by a breathtakingly skillful puppet version of Shakespeare’s greatest love poem
MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
JOHN GREEN is stirred by an ambitious art project that explores solidarity and the shared memory of occupation