MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
The challenge of proletarian simplicity
GORDON PARSONS finds that it is the ambiguity with which Caravaggio’s art now challenges the beholder that establishes his ‘modernity’
COMPASSION AND REGRET: David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1609–1610), Galleria Borghese, Rome
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity
Troy Thomas, Reaktion Books, £14.95
NOT another book on the life and work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio!
Troy Thomas’s admittedly attractive and easily transportable book on a Renaissance painter whose theatrical paintings insist upon attention, so different from the static biblical masterpieces that for the non-expert gallery visitor demand no more than a passing glance, may seem superfluous.
Even adding “the Creation of Modernity” would appear to promise a journey over well-trodden ground, given the ready recognition of Caravaggio’s influence on many modern artists, film-makers and art critics.
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CHARLOTTE DIXON recommends an exhibition that spits in the face of politicians, police and oil giants
ROSIE NELSON applauds a graphic novel that asks what does it mean to exist as a fat person in a fatphobic society?