APURBA CHATTERJEE explains how British artists in India used the “picturesque” to reshape colonial landscapes and celebrate imperial power
Working Aesthetics: Labour, Art and Capitalism
by Danielle Child
(Bloomsbury, £21.99)
UNUSUALLY for a young art historian, Danielle Child bases her discussion of the relationship between contemporary art, labour and capitalism on the “Marxian” ideology that art, as part of the superstructure, is defined by its economic base.
Focusing mostly on US and British art, where neoliberalism has been strongest, she argues that its managerialist, fragmented, individualised and precarious working models are mirrored by new artistic practices since the 1990s.
JAN WOOLF welcomes the initiative of St Mungo’s, a charity for the homeless, to use use outdoor art to explore the lives of those it has helped
MARJ MAYO recommends a well illustrated and very positive account of an extraordinary period in local government history
JAN WOOLF invigilates images that meditate on Palestine, and the people who witness them
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist



