Visual Arts

"What do you think an artist is? He’s a political being, constantly alive to heartrending, fiery, or happy events, to which he responds in every way. No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war, for attack and defense against the enemy."

Pablo Picasso

Sunday, 19 February 2017 22:23

The world was theirs to win: revolutionary Russian art at the Royal Academy

Written by Phil Brett

in Visual Arts

Phil Brett enjoys the art at the RA exhibition, but not the simplistic and misleading commentary. Remember the fuss over the art of Hans Holbein the Younger because he painted during the time of an autocratic ruler who had a fondness for decapitating his wives? No, of course not, there…

Sunday, 29 January 2017 19:55

Art of Solidarity

Written by Len Phelan

in Visual Arts

Len Phelan reviews the Art of Solidarity. It's hard to think of a more appropriate venue for Art of Solidarity, a marvellous exhibition of Cuban posters supporting the liberation struggle in Africa from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, than the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool. The museum promotes awareness…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Saturday, 28 January 2017 16:55

Profit and Loss: a drawing by Owen McGuigan

in Visual Arts

Written by David Betteridge

David Betteridge introduces a drawing from Owen McGuigan which 'takes a line for a walk'; and a song on the same theme of shipbuilding on Clydeside. Watching Owen McGuigan taking photographs is an eyeopener, especially when he is at work among a crowd at a public event. It is like…

Owen McGuigan Clydeside

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 10 January 2017 11:18

Unsettling art for unsettling times

in Visual Arts

Written by Sanjiv Sachdev

Sanjiv Sachdev reviews Exhibit A, a witty and politically subversive exhibition of mask images of celebrities by Hugh Tisdale and Dan Murrell. ‘Fame, puts you where things are hollow’ - David Bowie Celebrity masks of the likes of Simon Cowell, Princess Diana and Robbie Williams, are a familiar sight in…

George Orwell Dalai Lama Joseph Stalin Richard Nixon Damien Hirst Marcel Duchamp

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 04 January 2017 17:06

John Berger: an appreciation

in Visual Arts

Written by David Betteridge

David Betteridge offers an appreciation of the late, great John Berger. There are some authors whose way with words not only reflects a way of living, but also excites it. It has a moral force as well as an aesthetic sense. John Berger, who died on 2 January, was an…

John Berger

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 03 January 2017 20:57

A smuggling operation: John Berger's theory of art

in Visual Arts

Written by Robert Minto

For the late John Berger, art criticism was a revolutionary practice. The following article by Robert Minto, outlining Berger's theory of art, is republished with the kind permission of the Los Angeles Review of Books, lareviewofbooks.org Early in his career, John Berger’s weekly art criticism for the New Statesman provoked outraged…

John Berger

Tuesday, 03 January 2017 20:41

Thank you John; thank you

Written by Amarjit Chandan

in Visual Arts

This is the preface to Amarjit Chandan and Yasmin Gunaratnam (Eds.) A Jar of Wild Flowers: Essays in Celebration of John Berger, London: Zed Books, 2016. THE MEANING OF JOHN BERGER This commemorative volume A Jar of Wild Flowers is a small gesture of love and gratitude for John Berger…

Monday, 12 December 2016 16:00

Cuimhneachain nan Gaisgeach - Remembering the Heroes

Written by Matt Bruce

in Visual Arts

The dire accommodation situation in London may seem a long way from the situation in Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, 150 years ago. Not so, explains Matt Bruce, whose wife's grandfather took part in the Pairc Deer Raid of 1886. He writes in response to our request in summer for more…

13C Gold Rhino, hidden by the racist apartheid regime of South Africa because it contradicted their ideology of an empty land

Monday, 12 December 2016 14:52

South Africa: The Art of a Nation

Written by Nick Wright

in Visual Arts

Nick Wright reviews South Africa: The Artof a Nation Filmgoers of a certain age will remember the 1964 film Zulu, which shows a group of British soldiers holding out against the massed warrior formations of the Zulu nation. A relatively minor 1879 episode in this country’s bloody colonial history, it originally…

Thursday, 10 November 2016 15:43

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: Heretical, Subversive and Revolutionary

Written by Mike Quille

in Visual Arts

A radical cultural struggle against the established order: Mike Quille reviews the Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery. Curators sometimes overuse the word revolutionary when promoting exhibitions but it is an apt description of the six paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio which hang alongside those of his admirers, rivals…

Caravaggio Supper at Ammaus The Taking of Christ National Gallery