h 52, w 37.5 cm
Donated by Mrs Eileen Bradshaw, 1994
Bradshaw's Karl Marx memorial shows that sculpture can be a focal point for social unrest and ideological differences. The monument is an other work of art which attracted much negative attention. The piece was paint bombed and blasted off its pedestal.
This time it was, however, not because of the outlook of the work but because of who it was for. People from for all over the world including many important officials came to lay a wreath at the foot of the monument. The monument had a meaning which is p
erhaps hard to imagine now the cold war is over. A hero to one group of people can sometimes seems a threat to another though. An example how serious the animosity was is illustrated by the fact that Communist Party members at the time only knew each oth
er by their undercover names an exception perhaps is one of the demonstrators in the photograph, Tariq Ali. He is now a tv presenter and hosts `The Midnight Hour'. He wrote the novel `Moscow Gold' and is part of New Left and is speaking
on the Marxism'98 conference in London on the 3rd of July. This year it is 150 years after the Communist Manifesto was first published. In 1848 there was a general atmosphere of unrest and many revolutionary constitutional changes took place on the conti
nent. It is also 150 years after the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established.
