MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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How scientific advances ushered in one of the best known periods in European painting
Michal Boncza on Impressionism, one of the most enduring instantly recognisable periods in art
(Left) Impression, Sunrise, 1874; (right) La rue Saint Denis - street festivities of 30 June 1878, Paris
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
IN 1874, three years after the bloody and traumatic demise of the Paris Commune, Claude Monet — son of a Parisian greengrocer — showed his work at group exhibition in Paris of like-minded painters.
His canvas, laconically titled Impression, Sunrise, depicts in swift and almost off-hand brush strokes the hazy view of the port of his adopted city Le Havre, as seen from his window at a dawn enveloped by dense fog.
The canvas's title provided the Le Charivary magazine’s art critic Louis Leroy's with the headline “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” for the review — not particularly imaginative, except for the neologism “impressionists.” It stuck like glue.
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