Art

Arty stuff.

Why art fairs are thriving

“Frieze Art Fair” was held in Regent’s Park, London, from 17 to 20 October. Solidarity asked Lisa Le Feuvre, an art curator, about it. The interview started with Lisa putting a question to Solidarity . Lisa Le Feuvre: My first response would be to ask Solidarity why you are choosing Frieze Art Fair as the impetus to talk about art, given that this is the most commercial side of art? Are you not simply fuelling the market side of art by making this your choice of art to discuss? Indeed, why is it that you want to talk about the market and not the art? Solidarity : We don’t have the resources to...

The spirit of utopia and the art of healing

“Sanatorium” is one of ten installations that make up the Whitechapel Gallery’s summer exhibition, “The Spirit of Utopia”. The title alludes to Ernst Bloch’s three volumes, written in 1917. The exhibition is described as “a remarkable series of installations and events [which] engage us in playful, provocative and creatively pragmatic models for social change”. Here, Isobel Urquhart reviews “Sanatorium”. In “Sanatorium”, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes creates a mockup of a clinical setting, with six rooms offering a different “therapy”, which is facilitated by volunteers in white lab coats in the...

Illuminating Marx

Robert Ford is a visual artist based in London. He is currently working producing an illustrated edition of Karl Marx’s Capital. He spoke to Daniel Randall from Solidarity about the project. Around eighteen months ago, I was attending some Capital reading groups, including one run by Workers’ Liberty. I was also watching David Harvey’s lectures. It seemed to me that many people, including many people around the Marxist left, didn’t have any engagement with Capital or grasp of its key concepts. So I wanted to undertake an original project that would make people more interested in the book and...

Marxism and art

This is the text of a speech given by hip-hop artist and spoken-word poet The Ruby Kid at a Workers' Liberty meeting at Goldsmiths University in November 2012. He was speaking alongside the screenwriter Clive Bradley . I’m going to talk quite mainly about music, and some poetry, although I’ll touch on other art-forms too. I’ll say now that I’m not going to talk particularly about my own work. Although if anyone has any questions about that maybe you can get at me afterwards. To answer the question that titles this meeting – I think the short answer is “no”, and the longer answer is “not really...

Robert Hughes, 1938-2012

Robert Hughes, one of the world's foremost art critics and also author of the best book on Australia's convict-settlement history, died on 6 August. Review by Belinda Weaver of The Fatal Shore , Hughes's history. Review by Belinda Weaver of Nothing if not critical , one of Hughes's books of art criticism.

National Gallery workers strike

A lively picket line of striking gallery assistants on Friday 27 July was bolstered by Unison and Unite reps from nearby workplaces, as well as activists from the nearby National Portrait Gallery and both Tate Galleries. Bemused Olympic tourists, armed police, and soldiers looked on as workers leafleted and chatted with the public, explaining the reasons for the dispute. Timed to coincide with the opening day of the Olympics, it is hoped these “mini-strikes” will have the desired effect of causing maximum disruption during the peak hours of the museum’s own cultural Olympiad, drawing attention...

Building the revolution

I bought tickets back in November for the “Building the revolution” show at the Royal Academy and was given a 10 am admission time. When I phoned to ask if it would be possible to come later, they told me not to worry — the show was not very popular and it wouldn’t be crowded at any time. So the good news is, they were wrong. When I finally did get to see this exhibition, subtitled “Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935”, it was absolutely packed with people. Clearly many are interested in the subject. On a cold Saturday afternoon in London, there were hundreds of people of all ages walking...

Another side of the Tyne

Lawrie Coombs applauds the work of Newcastle’s Side Gallery Operating in the shadow of Tyneside’s burgeoning official cultural quarter, Side Gallery operates as a radical space bereft of the level of financial support available to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art or the Sage Gateshead music venue. As part of the Amber Collective it promotes independent, radical and quirky expositions of cinema and photography. Side Gallery has consistently sought to chronicle unheard voices and perspectives, highlighting working class struggles and experience. Since opening in 1977, Side Gallery has...

John Berger: art and politics

Whatever the vagaries of his political positions and assessments since the early 50s (including a softness on the Stalinist regimes, a huge silence about the Nazi death camps, and a disposition to support essentially feudal resistance movements to capital) John Berger remains an important resource in thinking about the nature of oppression and its relationship to art. His critical writings on art (certainly his work on Picasso and Soviet sculpture) are fundamentally questionable whilst his critical survey of everything from Guevara to Rushdie, the Hungarian uprising (where he stood with the...

Reviews: John Palmer; SWP; Foley; Wates and Knevvit; Pauline Kael; Davis and Huttenback; Liebman; Marquand

Martin Thomas reviews "Europe without America", by John Palmer. Clive Bradley reviews "Revolutionary Rehearsals", published by the SWP's Bookmarks. Stan Crooke reviews "Ireland, the case for British disengagement", by Conor Foley. Neil Stonelake reviews "Community Architecture", by Nick Wates and Charles Knevvit. Belinda Weaver reviews "State of the Art", by Pauline Kael. Rhodri Evans reviews "Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: the Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912", by Lance Davis, Robert Huttenback, and Susan Gray Davis. Gerry Bates reviews "Leninism Under Lenin", by Marcel...

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