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
Latest editorial
Gothic greatness in Sean O'Brien's page-turners
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
Quartier Perdu
by Sean O’Brien
(Comma Press, £9.99)
THE GOTHIC tale is to literature what the tardigrade is to animal biology — an astonishingly adaptable and resilient form. It was established by William Thomas Beckford and Horace Walpole, popularised by Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens and rejuvenated by modern practitioners such as Angela Carter, Sarah Waters and Stephen King.
It ought to be running out of steam by now, stuck in a rut of familiar images and over-rehearsed language. Not as far as Sean O’Brien is concerned. His second story collection Quartier Perdu includes old fashioned spine-chillers, intensely lyrical tales of ambiguous perception and in-your-face stories of supernatural threat.
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Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer