Arts & Ideas

The red-haired Joanna Hiffernan was James McNeill Whistler's Woman in White. An exhibition curated by Margaret MacDonald for the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the National Gallery of Art, Washington uncovers the role she played in his career. An instagram account about the women painted by Viennese artist Egon Schiele has amassed over 100,000 followers. Now Sophie Haydock is publishing a novel called The Flames, which imagines the story of Schiele's wife and three other women who modelled for him. Ilona Sagar has been working for over 2 years in social care services and community settings in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to make art reflecting the consequences of asbestos exposure involving social workers, carers, organisers and residents. Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation about famous artists and their sometimes less famous models.Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan runs at the Royal Academy in London from 26 February — 22 May 2022 https://www.ilonasagar.com/ https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/radio-ballads/ On view at Serpentine (31 March – 29 May) and Barking Town Hall and Learning Centre (2-17 April), Radio Ballads presents new film commissions alongside paintings, drawings and contextual materials that share each project’s collaborative research process. The original documentary series Radio Ballads produced by musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, working with radio producer Charlie Parker, were broadcast by the BBC from 1957–64. Sophie Haydock's novel The Flames is published in March 2022.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a playlist on the Free Thinking website exploring Art, Architecture, Photography and Museums with discussions on colour, trompe l'oeil, world's fairs, and guests including Veronica Ryan, Jennifer Higgie, Eric Parry and Alison Brooks, the directors of museums in London, Paris, Singapore, Los Angeles, Washington https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl

Travelling in Woody Guthrie's footsteps inspired a new history of hitchhiking written by Jonathan Purkis. He joins Matthew Sweet for a conversation which ranges across hitchhiking in the UK and in Eastern Europe, where Poland operated a kind of voucher system. We look at the influence of film depictions from the Nevada desert depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the hippie vibe of Easy Rider to the horror of The Hitcher and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the female focus of Je Tu Il Elle by Chantal Akerman. Has the idea of hitchhiking now had its day? Joining Matthew to assess the idea of risk and our perception of thumbing a lift is Timandra Harkness, film critic Adam Scovell, plus Sally J Morgan, winner of the Portico prize for her book Toto Among the Murderers, based on her experience of being offered a lift by Fred and Rosemary WestJonathan Purkis's book Driving with Strangers is published in February and you can find more here https://www.jonathanpurkis.co.uk/ Sally J Morgan's book Toto Among the Murderers is out now. Timandra Harkness is the author of Big Data: does size matter? has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a show called Take a Risk and contributes to and presents programmes on BBC Radio 4. Adam Scovell writes about film for Sight and Sound magazine and is a published novelist. His latest book was called How Pale The Winter Has Made Us and his new book Nettles is out in April 2022.Producer: Jessica TreenWe've a whole playlist of discussions exploring The Way We Live Now with topics ranging from Breakfast, to Gloves, Toys to Punk, Rationality and Tradition. Find them on the Free Thinking programme website and available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b

The bombing of Chongqing, Freud’s collection of ancient Chinese artefacts, the boom in science fiction amongst Chinese readers and an increasingly influential generation of educated tech-savvy millennials. We look at how Chinese culture and history looks different, when we look at it through the eyes of Chinese readers and writers, its innovators and its consumers.Freud and China is curated by Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Oxford and it runs at the Freud Museum in London from 12th February to 26th June 2022.Melissa Fu’s novel Peach Blossom Spring is available from 17th March 2022.The Subplot: What China Is Reading and Why It Matters by Megan Walsh is published in paperback on February 24thProducer: Ruth WattsCultural recommendations: Novels: Tang Jia San Shao, Master of Demonic Cultivation; Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem; Yan Ge, Strange Beasts of China TV (all available on YouTube): Nothing But Thirty; Da Ming Feng Hua; and, In The Name Of The PeopleThere’s plenty more about China in the Free Thinking archives. You can find Xue Xinran exploring China's recent history through the lives and relationships of one family: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002h89 Is the Shadow of Mao still hanging over China? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bmty Frank Dikott considers Mao in a programme looking at ideas about leadership and dictators https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009bf3 – including a discussion of how Cantonese poetry has fuelled Hong Kong’s democracy movement.Image: Readers perusing books at Zhonshuge bookstore in Shanghai. Image credit: Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

The Nebra Sky Disc, a blue-green bronze dish around 30 cm in diameter, is thought to feature the oldest description of the cosmos on its surface. It's one of the exhibits in a new exhibition at the British Museum. Anne McElvoy looks at culture and travel between Britain and Europe from 4000 to 1000 BC, what we understand about the building of Stonehenge and other sites of that period in Scotland and Wales. Her guests are three archaeologists: Mike Pitts, Susan Greaney and Seren Griffiths. and the British museum exhibition curator Neil Wilkin.The World of Stonehenge runs at the British Museum in London from February 17th to July 17th 2022. Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge. Susan Greaney works for English Heritage at Stonehenge as a Senior Properties Historian and is studying for a PhD at Cardiff University. She's a New Generation Thinker, on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio - and on the Radio 3 website and BBC Sounds you can find an Essay by her, and a short Sunday feature based on her trip to explore connections between the Neolithic peoples of Britain and the ancient Jomon civilisation of Japan https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hgqx Seren Griffiths is also a New Generation Thinker. She teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and has co-curated exhibitions and projects at Oriel Môn Museum Anglesey and written an Essay for Radio 3 about world war one battlefield finds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vgvbProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The doomsday clock stands at less than two minutes to midnight, but how alarmed should we be and how can art respond to humanity's apparent vulnerability? Shahidha Bari is joined by author Sheila Heti, theatre director Omar Elerian and New Generation Thinker SJ Beard.Sheila Heti's new novel Pure Colour, a kind of fable about end times, is published on 15th February. You can find her discussing a previous novel exploring motherhood in the Free Thinking archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fjvgThe Chairs (Les Chaises) by Eugene Ionesco, translated and directed by Omar Elerian, runs at the Almeida Theatre, London until 5th March. First staged in post-war Paris in 1952, it features two characters, Old Man and Old Woman, who spend the play preparing chairs for a series of invisible guests coming to hear a revelation which could be the meaning of life, or could be about the end of the world.SJ Beard is Academic Programme Manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share academic research on the radio. You can find their Essay about AI and what we learn from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vz70dProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The first underwater film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests:In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from washed-up carcasses.Author and artist Philip Hoare has written extensively about whales, encountering them often in his daily swims in the sea. His most recent book, Albert and the Whale, explores the life of Albrecht Dürer. You can hear him talking more about this link in another Free Thinking episode called Dürer, Rhinos and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001212cRachel Murray is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sheffield whose current project examines the presence of marine life, particularly invertebrates, in contemporary and modern literature and both she and Philip Hoare look at the poetry of Marianne Moore. You can hear her presenting a Radio 4 feature Lady Chatterley's Bed Bugs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qwtxEdward Sugden, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at King’s College, is undertaking a biography of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which turns the novel itself into a character and tracks its turbulent history from near-obscurity to becoming one of the most enduring novels of all time.Producer: Tim BanoYou can find a playlist exploring prose and poetry of all kinds on the Free Thinking website and a series of programmes exploring Modernist ideas and writing and there's also an episode devoted to Jaws: Sharks and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryfImage: A sperm whale

The first under-water film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests: In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from washed-up carcasses.Author and artist Philip Hoare has written extensively about whales, encountering them often in his daily swims in the sea. His most recent book, Albert and the Whale, explores the life of Albrecht Dürer. You can hear him talking more about this link in another Free Thinking episode called Dürer, Rhinos and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001212cRachel Murray is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sheffield whose current project examines the presence of marine life, particularly invertebrates, in contemporary and modern literature and both she and Philip Hoare look at the poetry of Marianne Moore. You can hear her presenting a Radio 4 feature Lady Chatterley's Bed Bugs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qwtxEdward Sugden, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at King’s College, is undertaking a biography of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which turns the novel itself into a character and tracks its turbulent history from near-obscurity to becoming one of the most enduring novels of all time.Producer: Tim BanoYou can find a playlist exploring prose and poetry of all kinds on the Free Thinking website and a series of programmes exploring Modernist ideas and writing and there's also an episode devoted to Jaws: Sharks and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryf

New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar is joined by four scholars whose work on composers has fed into concerts being recorded by BBC Philharmonic.Musicologist and pianist Dr Samantha Ege from the University of Oxford, is working on the American composer and pianist Margaret Bonds (1913 – 1972)Dwight Pile-Gray, who is studying at the London College of Music at the University of West London, is researching the Canadian American composer, organist, pianist, choir director and music professor Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882 – 1943)The ethnomusicologist and instrumentalist Ahmed Abdul Rahman, doing his PhD at Bath Spa University is investigating the music of Sudanese composer Ali Osman (1958 – 2017)Musicologist and pianist Dr Phil Alexander is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh working on the Scottish Jewish composer Isaac Hirshow (1883 – 1956)You can find a previous episode of Arts and Ideas looking at three more composers: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Kikuko Kanai and Julia Perry.Produced by Amelia ParkerIf you want more information about the Diverse Composers project you can find that on the website of UK Research and Innovation https://www.ukri.org/news/celebrating-classical-composers-from-diverse-ethnic-backgrounds-2/If you enjoyed this – there’s a playlist called New Research on the Free Thinking website where you can find discussions about everything from conserving fashion and putting it on display in museums to recording the accents found around Manchester, so do dip in. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

"The beauty of speed. Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created the eternal, omnipresent speed." Part of the 1909 manifesto drawn up by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti that declared the aims of the groundbreaking futurist branch of modernism. Their rejection of the past included embracing the march of machinery, the power of youth and of violence so how do we view this now ? Matthew Sweet is joined by Steven Connor, Selena Daly, Rosalind McKever, and Nathan Waddell.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Murals which aimed to synthesise the history and culture of Mexico, Japanese novels exploring urban alienation, an exhibition of Bauhaus paintings from Germany which inspired a generation of Indian artists. Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by Jade Munslow Ong, Christopher Harding, Maria Blanco, and Devika Singh.Amongst the Modernist writers and artists mentioned are: Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and poet Manuel Maples Arce Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, and painter Wifredo Lam Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges Indian writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, and artist Amrita Sher-Gil South African writers Olive Schreiner, Roy Campbell, Solomon Plaatje, Rolfes Dhlomo Japanese theorist Okakura Kakuzō, and writers Edogawa Ranpo, and Ryūnosuke AkutagawaProducer: Luke MulhallImage: the Indian polymath and modernist Rabindranath Tagore Image credit: Keystone France/Getty ImagesPart of the Modernism season running across BBC Radio 3 and 4 with programmes marking the publication in 1922 of Ulysses by James Joyce, a reading of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a Words and Music playlist of readings from key works published in 1922 and a Sunday Feature on Radio 3 looking at the "all in a day" artwork.Show less