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
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An artist whose glass was aways half full
LYNNE WALSH highly recommends an impressive exhibition of works by Isamu Noguchi who responded to life’s adversity with rare creative panache
(L to R) AKARI (1953); Model for Memorial to the Dead, Hiroshima, 1952; Ruth Page in The Expanding Universe: Costume Sack, 1932
[Credits: (L to R) The Kagawa Museum / Isamu Noguchi / Kevin Noble FS Lincoln]
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
Noguchi
Barbican, London
INTERNATIONALISM was at the very heart of the life and work of sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
His sense of rootlessness and search for identity could well have produced art that was melancholy and bleak; instead it reveals an infectious optimism that the human spirit can triumph.
A few dissenters may dismiss his portfolio as some rather nice lamps, a somewhat iconic coffee table and plenty of marble and stone works sitting in pretty Japanese gardens.
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