New releases from The Orb, Meredith Monk, and Marconi Union
‘I wanted my drawings to show gay men being happy and positive’
Tom King pays tribute to the subversive illustrator TOM OF FINLAND
RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
THROUGHOUT post-classical art, there’s a venerable tradition of male erotica hiding in plain sight.
Michelangelo’s David, Fabre’s Death of Abel and numerous scantily clad — if a little punctured — Saint Sebastians, to name but a few, indulged homosexual desire as much as they conveyed religious sentiment, and often more so.
For the most part, these works were only ever gazed upon by an elite, privileged few. But, as John Berger pointed out, mass-production democratised the image as much as the printing press did the written word.
Similar stories
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
In an exhibition of the graphic art of Lorna Miller, MATT KERR takes a lungful of the oxygen of dissent
JOHN GREEN surveys the remarkable career of screenwriter Malcolm Hulke and the essential part played by his membership of the Communist Party
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces