MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes
A purpose to pleasure
Tate Liverpool's exhibition reveals the brilliance of Fernand Leger, one of the great painters of realist political art, says CHRISTINE LINDEY
ABC by Fernand Leeger, 1927
New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) grasped life with insatiable optimism and a passion for ideas. He was born in Normandy to a belligerent cattle merchant who died during his early childhood, leaving an impoverished widow. She apprenticed the 16-year-old Leger to an architect, but, in 1900, he fulfilled his desire to study art in Paris, by supporting himself as an architectural draughtsman.
He had grasped the full significance of the recent revolutionary Cubist and Futurist innovations and used them to convey the modernity of urban life, with its simultaneous cacophony of sounds, speeding motorised vehicles and visual stimulation.
More from this author
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
CHRISTINE LINDEY guides us through the vivid expressionism of a significant but apolitical group of pre WWI artists in Germany
CHRISTINE LINDEY salutes an outstanding exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt
CHRISTINE LINDEY surveys the cosmopolitan, enigmatic compositions of an idiosyncratic artist whose work speaks of mystery and exile
