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
Radical counter-culture winning war against neoliberal ideas
CHRIS JURY, co-founder of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival, draws inspiration from a new generation of artists taking on the political and artistic establishments
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
I’VE been working at the intersection between politics and popular culture since the mid-1970s and, for all those four decades, people have been saying to me things like: “Relax, Chris, it’s only television... only a film... only a song... only a play... it’s only entertainment... the arts never changed anything... art for arts sake, money for God’s sake...”
But, as Bob Dylan once said in one of those supposedly pointless political songs, “The times, they are a-changin’.”
I am a co-founder of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival, Creative Director of Public Domain Arts & Media and Producer of the GFTU’s Liberating Arts festival. For the last couple of decades raising money and generating enthusiasm for counter-cultural initiatives like these have been a pretty hard slog.
Similar stories
The Bard does Bearded Theory, and lodges a complaint about bandnames
Wales is second from the bottom in terms of cultural services in the EU. HELEDD FYCHAN believes that needs to change if the country is to prosper
As Ash Regan’s Unbuyable Bill sparks debate in Scotland, the real issue remains unaddressed: a digitalised sex industry and a neoliberal economy that repackages exploitation as empowerment while leaving women’s material conditions unchanged, argues LAUREN HARPER
CLIVE HASWELL introduces the latest edition of Cardiff’s left-wing conference, which will take a broad and non-sectarian approach to who the left should vote for, welcoming approaches from all major progressive parties that hope to transform the world