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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
Angela Croft - Bleached
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
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
Bleached
Angela Croft
Sipping lime tea on the balcony
of Hotel Maris, I watch a village
skitter off an open lorry, go barefoot
over gravel, saris unfurl, girls shin up
scaffolding, flutter above Cathedral Road,
oxcarts and rickshaws trundle below,
kick up dust like chili powder,
naked toddlers sprawl on rubble,
catch bubbles from a hosepipe
writhing round the building site.
Relays of boys pass pans of mortar
up to the girls poised on girders
four storeys high, fashioning a tableau
in the sky, where oiled youths toil
in bandanas, their sweat sizzling,
except for the dazzler who thrashes
the air with a black umbrella,
calls the shots over rooftops of Madras,
mops his brow, checks his watch
flops back in his chair.
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SETH SANDRONSKY recommends a production that looks back at the political Tinseltown in the mid-1970s when US cinema ‘didn’t pander to trends’
SUSAN DARLINGTON swoons in the presence of a magnetic frontman
TONY FOX invites readers to come and hear the story of the remarkable Liverpudlian International Brigader Alexander Foote
by Widad Nabi