An Alternative History Of Art

Episodes

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01Eileen Agar2018030520180306 (R4)Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery in London, launches a new series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, Western male perspective. What would an alternative canon look like?

Eileen Agar was a photographer, collagist, painter and sculptor. One of the few women to be included in London's 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition, next to Picasso and Ernst, she became an overnight sensation and honorary member of the British Surrealists. However she has not received the same lasting celebration as many of her male Surrealist contemporaries.

Contributors include Tony Penrose (director of the Lee Miller Archive and the Penrose Collection), contemporary visual artist Anj Smith and Matthew Bradbury (Director of Modern British and Irish Art at Bonham's). With archive recordings of Eileen Agar from the British Library.

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Iwona Blazwick

Producer: Olivia Humphreys

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image (c) The Estate of Eileen Agar, courtesy of Redfern Gallery, London.

Iwona Blazwick on the visionary overlooked British surrealist Eileen Agar.

02Elizabeth Catlett2018030620180307 (R4)Naomi Beckwith, curator at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, continues the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, western male perspective. What would an alternative canon look like?

Born in 1915, Elizabeth Catlett became the first African American woman to receive a Master of Fine Arts. She was blacklisted in the McCarthy era and spent most of her adult life in Mexico City. Catlett was dedicated to representing the beauty and strength she saw in black women in her woodcuts and sculptures. Well known by many black American artists, she's received little attention from the mainstream artistic canon and from international institutions. According to the musician Rufus Reid, she had three strikes against her - she was black, she was a woman, and she made art that was politically motivated.

Contributors include Richard J. Powell (Dean of Humanities and the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University) and Rufus Reid (Jazz bassist, educator, and composer).

Archive audio courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Naomi Beckwith

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image courtesy of Burning in Water Gallery.

Naomi Beckwith examines the overlooked printmaker and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett.

03Karl-heinz Adler2018030720180308 (R4)Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries, continues the series exploring overlooked 20th Century visual artists.

Born in Adorf, Germany in 1927, Karl-Heinz Adler trained as an artist in the war-ravaged Berlin and Dresden of the late 40s and early 50s. His ambition was to create abstract art but, in the Communist GDR, abstract art was seen as decedent and unacceptable to the state. Adler and his professional partner Friedrich Kracht became architects instead, developing a modular form of concrete decoration for buildings. This soon saw their abstract art displayed under the cover of architecture in hundreds of locations across East Germany. By the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, abstract art was out of fashion in the West and it's only in recent years that Karl-Heinz, now 90, has finally begun to see his work receive international attention.

Contributors include Karl-Heinz Adler and Susanne Altmann (Curator and Art Historian).

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 4

Image courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin.

Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist profiles the overlooked artist and architect Karl-Heinz Adler.

Series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

04Marwan2018030820180309 (R4)Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery director, continues the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, Western, male perspective. What if we could revise the canon?

Born in Syria in 1934, Marwan Kassab-Bachi stopped for a brief visit in Berlin on his way to resettling in Paris in 1957. In Berlin, he stumbled on a world of artistic activity that sucked him in and led him to stay for the rest of his life. Marwan's portraits are haunting, drawing the viewer into the inner psyche of his subjects. As Marwan said, 'I paint souls.' Though he has received more recognition in his adoptive home of Germany than in his country of origin, his work continues to reference Syria's socio-political situation. Drawing on influences from both Western and Arab styles, Marwan's work also explores the identity of those who live in a cultural diaspora. According to Iwona Blazwick, he is a true original whose work carries the power and complexity of Francis Bacon.

Contributors include art critic Robert Kudielka, gallerist Michael Hasenclever and collector Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi.

The series features artists selected by curators with varied perspectives - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Iwona Blazwick and Naomi Beckwith. Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Iwona Blazwick

Producer: Olivia Humphreys

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image for episode and series image (c) Gerhard Milting.

Iwona Blazwick on the post-surrealist Syrian painter Marwan.

05Jim Nutt2018030920180310 (R4)Naomi Beckwith, curator at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, continues the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

Born in 1938, Jim Nutt studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1966 he began to exhibit with a small group that critics named The Hairy Who, after the title of their first show. His work drew acclaim for the apparent contrast between its technical skill and elegance, and its brash, scatalogical content. Since the mid-1970s Nutt has been producing just one work a year. But though he's something of a hero in his adopted hometown, he has never achieved the international profile many people think he deserves. Did the strangeness of his art, his loyalty to Chicago or his refusal to feed art world demand prevent him from achieving international recognition?

Contributors include Jim Nutt, John Corbett (writer, musician, radio host, teacher, record producer & gallery owner), Suellen Rocca (Hairy Who member & Director of Exhibitions at Elmhurst College Library), and Gladys Nilsson (Hairy Who member and wife of Jim Nutt)

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Archive audio courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Presenter: Naomi Beckwith

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image (c) Jim Nutt, courtesy David Nolan Gallery, New York.

Naomi Beckwith meets the overlooked Chicago imagist painter Jim Nutt.

06Ibrahim El-salahi2018031220180313 (R4)Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, continues the series exploring overlooked artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, Western, male perspective. What would an alternative canon look like?

Born in 1930 in Sudan, Ibrahim El-Salahi studied at the Slade School of Art in London before returning to teach in Khartoum. In the mid-1970s, El-Salahi was wrongly imprisoned for six months. Afterwards he went into self-imposed exile in Qatar and, later, Oxford in the UK.

His partially abstract painting and drawing incorporates elements of Arab calligraphy and North African symbolism, as well as Western approaches. It's often formed out of small, individual panels using a system of organic development that he evolved while in prison. In 2013, El-Salahi became the first African artist to have a solo retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern.

His story highlights the apparently wilful ignorance to, and patronising exclusion of, modern African and Arab art by the British art establishment between de-colonisation in the 1950s and the opening up of attitudes which began in the 1990s.

Contributors: Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ahmed Elhassan (painter and friend of Ibrahim), and Elvira Dyangani Ose (Goldsmiths, University of London).

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Naomi Beckwith. The series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Hans Ulrich Obrist

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image courtesy of Vigo gallery and the artist.

Hans Ulrich Obrist on the overlooked Sudanese modernist painter Ibrahim El-Salahi.

Series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

07Helen Chadwick2018031320180314 (R4)Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery in London, continues the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

Born in Croydon in 1953 and settling in a squat in Hackney, Helen Chadwick with her distinctive pulp-fiction bob and deep Croydon laugh was a loved and admired character in the London art scene of the 1980s and 90s. Chadwick interrogated the frailty of the human body, especially her own, in her photographs. She crafted sculptures out of food compost and cast imprints of urine in snow and chocolate, intending her work to provoke disgust and desire simultaneously. Chadwick died suddenly of a heart attack at 42 years old. Her influential style can be seen today in the Young British Artists she taught and inspired, but her own name has faded into relative obscurity.

Contributors include gallerist Maureen Paley and artists Pete Smith and Cathy de Monchaux. With audio recordings from the British Library Sound Archive.

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Iwona Blazwick

Producer: Olivia Humphreys

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 4

Image (c) Kippa Matthews, Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery.

Iwona Blazwick profiles installation artist and photographer Helen Chadwick.

08Ben Patterson2018031420180315 (R4)Curator Naomi Beckwith continues the series exploring overlooked artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, western, male perspective. What if we could revise the canon?

Born in Pittsburgh in 1934, Ben Patterson was the only African American member of the avant garde Fluxus movement. After rejection from the American Symphony Orchestra because of his race, Patterson left the USA for Cologne. There, he was instrumental in a series of musical and artistic experiments which gave birth to Fluxus. However, after just a few years, Patterson took an almost 20 year hiatus from the art world, only reappearing in the 1980s. Patterson redefined the boundaries of art but was, in many cases, quite literally written out of Fluxus history. Was his race the reason for his obscurity? Patterson died last year, just after his first invitation to take part in the prestigious documenta 14.

Contributors include Bonaventure Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Mary Bauermeister (artist), George E Lewis (Composer, and trombonist for George E Lewis) and Kenny Goldsmith (poet and Fluxus historian).

The series features artists selected by three curators from different backgrounds - Iwona Blazwick (Director of the Whitechapel Gallery), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries) and Naomi Beckwith (Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago). Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Naomi Beckwith

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image (c) Christian Lauer 2012.

Curator Naomi Beckwith profiles overlooked artist and Fluxus founder-member Ben Patterson.

Series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

09Dorothy Iannone2018031520180316 (R4)Hans Ulrich Obrist, Creative Director of Serpentine Galleries, continues the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century.

Born in Boston in 1933, Dorothy Iannone began painting as a self-taught abstract expressionist, exhibiting alongside her husband James Upham in the 1960s. In 1967 on holiday in Iceland, she met artist Dieter Roth and fell in love, leaving her husband the same week. Roth became her muse and her style changed radically taking in bright, cartoon-like paintings, sound recordings and large format artists books.

Her often autobiographical work unapologetically celebrates heterosexual female sexuality and erotic love. In the 70s and 80s, Iannone's art was aggressively censored by police, customs officers of several countries, galleries and even other artists. Where it wasn't censored it was, in her words, 'mildly ridiculed...or just ignored.' Dorothy is starting to come to prominence as a new generation of female artists take inspiration from her work , which will be displayed on New York's High Line this year.

Contributors include Dorothy Iannone and gallery owner Barbara Wien.

The series features artists selected by curators with varied perspectives - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Iwona Blazwick and Naomi Beckwith. Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Producer: Michael Umney

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image (c) Jason Schmidt courtesy Air de Paris, Paris.

Hans Ulrich Obrist profiles overlooked visual artist Dorothy Iannone.

10Rotimi Fani-kayode2018031620180317 (R4)Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery London, concludes the series exploring overlooked visual artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, western, male perspective. What if we could revise the canon?

Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1955, Rotimi Fani-Kayode fled the Nigerian Civil War with his family and arrived as a refugee in the UK at the age of 11. He used the black male body in his photographs to explore themes of diaspora and belonging, racism, mortality and the tensions between his homosexuality and his Yoruba upbringing. Fani-Kayode suffered a fatal heart attack while recovering from an AIDS-related illness at just 34 years old, only six years into his career. He is one of a generation of gay artists who died prematurely in the 1980s and 1990s - how different might the art scene have been if these artists had lived?

Contributors include Robert Taylor (Photographer), Mark Sealy (director of Autograph ABP) and Femi Fani-Kayode (Politician and brother of Rotimi Fani-Kayode).

The series features artists selected by curators with varied perspectives - Hans Ulrich Obrist, Iwona Blazwick and Naomi Beckwith. Told broadly chronologically with inter-changing presenters, the series explores why these artists have been obscured and why some are now being reinstated into the 20th century artistic canon.

Presenter: Iwona Blazwick

Producer: Olivia Humphreys

Researcher: Jessie Lawson

Executive Producer: Joby Waldman

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

Image: Untitled (Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil), Rotimi Fani-Kayode 1985, Courtesy Autograph ABP.

Iwona Blazwick examines the legacy of photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode.