Another sneaky lunchtime cultural escape from an otherwise shitty day at work: to the British Museum for the 'Revolution on Paper - Mexican Prints 1910-60' exhibition. It's a small (and free) two-room show but very powerful.
The combination of print-making and radicalism personally makes this a must-see. I knew something about Diego Riveira and Freida Kallo but the other artists - mostly members of the TGP - the People's Graphic Workshop - were new to me.
I was struck by a couple of things - the essentially democratic and populist nature of the work of these graphic artists - posters, leaflets and murals, as opposed to the essentially intellectual and private nature of 'fine art'. And the uniquely Mexican nature of their styles - combining European trends of surrealism and futurism with folk traditions.
And whilst I also like the classic early Soviet graphics I can't really see them working as tattoo's - on the other hand some of this Mexican stuff would be perfect ...
2 comments:
Are you going to do a review for Socialism Today? It would make a change from Manny's usual reviews of very obscure and extortionately expensive exhibitions...
Finally got to see it just before it closed, really excellent exhibition marred by some rather idiotic curatorial labels, which contained a lot of sentences beginning 'presumably'. If you're curating an exhibition it's part of the job to find out anytyhing you don't know or keep quiet about it, not pass off dubious speculation as scholarship....
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