JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge
Doing something for Jews
CHRISTINE LINDEY surveys the cosmopolitan, enigmatic compositions of an idiosyncratic artist whose work speaks of mystery and exile
(L) Synchromy with F.B. - General of hot desire (1968-69); (R) Besht Imaginary Portrait of The Baal Shem Tov (1987)
These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO
The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review An Army of Women, Julie Keeps Quiet, The Friend and The Ugly Stepsister
GORDON PARSONS squirms at a production that attempts to update Shakespeare’s comedy to a tale of Premier League football
Above a Gothic bar just down from Brighton station, something spooky is happening, suggests JAMES WALSH
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
R B Kitaj
Piano Nobile, London
AN outsider, who would forever define himself as such, R B Kitaj was born in 1932 in Cleveland, Ohio as Ronald Brooks. The following year his Hungarian father left his Jewish-American mother Jean, and she reared her child alone while working as a secretary and as a school teacher.
In 1941 she married Dr Walter Kitaj, a Viennese Jew and her son adopted his stepfather’s surname. The family moved to Troy, upstate New York in 1942 and by 1950 the young Kitaj escaped small-town life to become a sailor on cargo ships until 1954, during which time he read avidly.
Thus began what would remain an enduring and restless quest for adventure, learning and travel, all the while drawing and reading avidly.
More from this author
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
CHRISTINE LINDEY guides us through the vivid expressionism of a significant but apolitical group of pre WWI artists in Germany
CHRISTINE LINDEY salutes an outstanding exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt
