Visual Art

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

Alexander Deineka, Textile Workers, 1927

Thursday, 16 March 2017 09:39

Great art, shame about the curating

Written by Christine Lindey

in Visual Arts

Christine Lindey reviews the current Royal Academy exhibition, and recommends the art - but not the didactic, vindictive and reactionary curation. In January 1918 the Russian Soviet Republic was the first state in the world to officially support the avant-garde. Fired by the revolution’s socialist ideology, artists rejected the tsarist regime’s…

Tuesday, 07 March 2017 17:01

Art is a weapon in the battle of ideas

Written by Stephanie McMillan

in Visual Arts

Stephanie McMillan presents an overview and polemic about political art, the relationship of culture and politics, and the need for critical and revolutionary art as part of the cultural dimension of progessive political movements.

El Lissitzsky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Wednesday, 22 February 2017 16:00

October 1917: The Spark For Great Art

in Visual Arts

Written by Christine Lindey

Christine Lindey explains how the 1917 Russian Revolution inspired the transformation of the visual arts into instruments of popular liberation. “In the land of the Soviets every kitchen maid must be able to rule the state,” said Lenin and the arts were an intrinsic part of the Bolshevik revolution’s attempt…

Lissitzky Rodchenko Stepanova Tatlin Lunacharsky Apsit

Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge by Alexander Rodchenko, 1924

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Tuesday, 21 February 2017 10:52

All Power to the Ideals!

in Visual Arts

Written by Mark Perryman

What kind of cultural celebration, Mark Perryman asks, do the art and the politics of the Russian Revolution deserve? A century ago, on 23rd February 1917, Russian women workers marched out in protest from the St Petersburg factories to defy Cossacks armed with swords, and took control of the city’s…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Sunday, 19 February 2017 22:23

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

in Visual Arts

Written by Phil Brett

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…

K2_PUBLISHED_ON Sunday, 29 January 2017 19:55

Art of Solidarity

in Visual Arts

Written by Len Phelan

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…

Saturday, 28 January 2017 16:55

Profit and Loss: a drawing by Owen McGuigan

Written by David Betteridge

in Visual Arts

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

Tuesday, 10 January 2017 11:18

Unsettling art for unsettling times

Written by Sanjiv Sachdev

in Visual Arts

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

Wednesday, 04 January 2017 17:06

John Berger: an appreciation

Written by David Betteridge

in Visual Arts

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

Tuesday, 03 January 2017 20:57

A smuggling operation: John Berger's theory of art

Written by Robert Minto

in Visual Arts

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