Badges of honour

An unremitting five billion or so Chairman Mao badges were designed and manufactured during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - of which the British Museum has only a few hundred in its collection. Must try harder then, you might say. But what a great subject for a show. Fashionable ironists will wish to pass over the themes of social and political struggle and their profound human consequences, and attend to the excessive iconography – which is utterly splendid. And, it could be true to say, the little badges look best crisply enlarged on screen, where exaggerations of scale create a sense of poignant monumentality. With posters and books also in the show, this one comes highly recommended.

Neal Brown