World War One - The Cultural Front

Episodes

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0101Words For Battle201403081: Words for Battle. Francine Stock begins her exploration of the culture of the Great War in 1914 with the mobilization of the word. For more than 40 years the next war to come had been a staple of fiction. England had been invaded, bombed and conquered before a shot had ever been fired in anger and now the war was upon us. What unfolded in the first weeks in the towns of villages of Belgium turned the war into a cultural struggle for survival and intellectuals and authors were soon seen as crucial to the war effort. From Arnold Bennett to Israel Zangwill, the literary giants of Edwardian England went to war.

Producer Mark Burman.

In 1914, intellectuals and authors were soon seen as crucial to the war effort.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0102Arf A Mo, Kaiser: Popular Culture On All Fronts20140315While high culture wrestled with the clash of German Kultur and the civilisation of the west, popular culture had no such concern for nuance in the early months of war. In this programme Francine Stock explores the way the music industry, and by 1914 it was a thriving performing and publishing industry in Britain, responded to war. Recruitment songs, patriotic sheet music and poems by the thousand were everywhere. But it was short lived. Once the zeal for righteous war was replaced with the mundane business of fighting, the music makers returned to the escapism their audiences sought.

In France the authorities took complete control of popular culture from the outset and with immediate conscription there was no need for recruitment song. Instead they turned to an established supply of heroic French song driven by the smart of defeat in 1871 at the hands of the Prussians.

In Germany the 'spirit of September' echoed through the Biergarten in the form of the Prussian, now German, anthem, 'Heil! dir im Siegerkranz' (to the tune of our own national anthem) as well as 'Wacht am Rhein'. But as the initial war fever settled Germans turned to Operetta for their entertainment with the British Foreign Secretary Grey and the French Prime minister Poincare the butt of jokes in pieces like 'Immer Feste Druff' by Walter Kollo.

And finally, Imperial Russia saw a flurry of vivid Posters (Lubok) and increasingly postcards extolling the virtues of the Cossack Warrior, while popular singers like Nadezhda Plevitskaia sang emotive songs of pride in the Tsar and Russia in the folk style that spoke to the heart of both her city and rural audiences. But it was an image of an injured soldier by Leonid Pasternak, father of Boris, which captured the popular imagination from the outset. Hated by the Tsar it first appeared in 1914, long before it became a powerful image for the Bolshevik uprisings later in the war.

Francine Stock on popular culture in Britain, France, Germany and Russia as war begins.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0103Kandinsky, Khaki And Kisses20140322At the beginning of the twentieth century, young artists in so many countries were finding their own revolutionary way forward. France had the cubism movement, in Germany the expressionists were in vogue, in Britain the vorticists were finding a voice. It was an exciting time for painters and sculptors. The outbreak of World War 1 fractured the international artistic community with many of the artists enlisting to fight.

In the third programme of the series, Francine Stock explores what was happening in the international artistic community in the run up to World War 1, and how the commencement of hostilities affected artists either side of the conflict. In some cases, it led painters to create some of their most powerful and arresting work.

Francine also hears how the publishing world responded to the outbreak of war. The magazine industry was quick to turn copy around and fashion tips included how to dress appropriately to raise morale.

The book industry, whilst threatened with a lack of staff and supplies, filled the need for entertaining popular fiction. There was a fine trade in sending books to the front, and back home, women's popular fiction was awash with khaki and kisses tales of women falling in love with soldiers. As the first fighting men returned invalided and disabled, there's also a rise in the 'heroic veteran' tale where a missing limb or scarred face is no barrier to virility and love.

Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Francine Stock explores how artists and the publishing world responded to the war.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0201Glimpses Of A Modern World20150418Six months into the Great War and the world is beginning to change and the aftershock is rippling through the cultural establishment.

New technologies like the telephone and the wireless telegram are being used for the very first time. German zeppelins loom over Britain. Poisonous gas is leaked onto the battlefield at Ypres.

On the cultural front we see these startling innovations reflected back in the rise of modernist literature, such as The 39 Steps by John Buchan, and art. C.R.W. Nevinson's 'La Mitrailleuse' or 'The Machine Gun' marked a definitive break from the Victorian interpretation of war as one of 'valour' and 'sacrifice', glorified in Rupert Brooke's poems published posthumously in 1915.

Cinema is the most popular form of entertainment with the demand to see international stars like Charlie Chaplin changing the inner workings of the film industry.

In the first of the second series on how the Great War changed art, words and society, Francine Stock returns to The Cultural Front looking for glimpses of a modern world.

With contributions from Genevieve Bell, Pat Mills, Samuel Hynes, Guillaume de Syon, Richard Slocombe, Stewart Kelly and Bryony Dixon.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

Francine Stock continues her exploration of the culture of World War I in 1915.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0202A Cubist War20150425The First World War was the great military and political event of its time; but it was also an imaginative event, an occasion when writers and painters were pulled from their homelands to fight on the front line.

In 1915 we start to see how artists, like poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Rudyard Kipling, are responding to war, and explore an unlikely alliance of the avant-garde and the military.

World War One altered the ways in which men and women thought about the world, and about culture and its expressions.

During the bloody battle at Gallipoli, Australia's sense of identity started to take shape. But national bonds were also beginning to weaken as war shattered allegiances and fractured borders.

We look at the ways in which new perspectives entered the public consciousness as France and Britain drew on soldier from Empire and colony.

The poetry of Rabindranath Tagore was read by people around the globe. American ragtime has reached British shores with popular African-American musicians like Dan Kildare and Joe Jordan.

In episode 2 of The Cultural Front, Francine Stock explores a fragmented world through the prism of the art it created.

With contributions from James Taylor, Nicholas Rankin, Susan Harrow, Santanu Das, Peter Stanley and Christian Liebl.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0203War On The Mind20150502In the last in the series covering 1915, Francine Stock looks at how the harrowing effects of World War I began to make themselves apparent in art, music and poetry. For the first time, the condition which would become known as 'shellshock' was becoming apparent, and the full psychological effect of trench warfare on soldiers began to take its toll.

We look at Sigmund Freud's Essay 'Reflections on War and Death' and look at how the newly diagnosed mental conditions were being addressed. Poetry, music and art begin to reveal the underlying traumas of this sustained conflict. Propaganda and patriotism did not always win the day, as we find in the German Expressionist paintings revealing the true nightmare of the trenches.

In music, we find patriotism still a driving force. British concert parties were travelling to the front to help encourage the troops, headed by the remarkable actress, impresario and suffragette Lena Ashwell. The French composer Debussy was deeply affected by the war, yet managed to make 1915 his most creative year.

In poetry, Robert Frost had written 'The Road Not Taken' after taking country walks with an English friend, Edward Thomas. Frost posted a copy of the poem to Thomas as a way of chiding him about indecision, but his friend was not amused. Within a short space of time he decided to enlist and go to war.

By the time 1915 drew to a close, any hope of a quick end to the war had faded, and the cultural front revealed a new fragility in the face of the such a bleak outlook.

With contributions from Dr David Code, University of Glasgow, Dr Anna Farthing, Professor Edgar Jones of King's College London, John Forrester, Dr Dorothy Price, University of Bristol, and poet Matthew Hollis.

Producer Mark Rickards.

How the harrowing effects of WWI became apparent in art, music and poetry.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0301Bleeding France20160409Francine Stock continues her annual exploration of the culture made in the years of war. 1916. A year of slaughter on an industrial scale at Verdun & The Somme. Paris, the city of eternal light was now darker, greyer & more French than before 1914. Under fire from above. A place of departure and arrival for the thousands of Poilu (hairy ones) sent up the line to death at Verdun, a 10 month artillery duel that would define France's war.

Many Poilu on leave (Permissionaires) just wanted a bed, a woman & entertainment to distract them from the memories of ceaseless bombardment. Picasso was painting portraits including poet Apollinaire. Home from the front with a star shaped wound & verses to match. Americans like Edith Wharton wrote fiction & fact in support of France's war, including The Book of the Homeless for which Stravinsky contributed an anti-German march.

Henri Barbusse, recovering from his wounds, broke new ground with his novel Under Fire. At the Musee de L'Armee hangs a remarkable canvas unlike any other created in the career of 'Nabi' painter Felix Vallotton. 'Verdun' is a boiling world of destruction with no place for man, pierced by deathly searchlights of colour & power.

Fernand Leger recorded his frontline experiences mainly in letters, able only to sketch not paint, but his watercolour La Cocarde shows the crumpled & broken aircraft that littered the battlefield. Some of those aircraft had carried aces, the new heroes of the war to either glory or destruction or both. Their deeds were vital morale boosters for both publics & governments. The flying Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille were instrumental in selling a good, clean war back home to a reluctant American public & young men eager for adventure.

Producer: Mark Burman.

1916. The year of Verdun and the Somme. Could artists and writers convey this new hell?

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0302The Tank And The Home Fires201604161916: Francine Stock continues her series on the cultural responses to the conflict with a focus on the tank. Prefigured in drawings by Leonardo and H.G. Wells' short story 'The Land Iron Clads', the tank appears at the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916. Quickly becoming a British icon, it attracts enormous public interest and sparks the production of popular souvenir items like handbags, teapots, toys and cartoons, popular songs and musical shows. The first officially commissioned war artist Muirhead Bone is sent out to the Somme and creates a series of dramatic charcoal drawings to illustrate its mesmerising appearance.

Meanwhile, hugely popular musicals like The Bing Boys are Here, Theodore and Co and Oscar Ashe's Chu Chin Chow provide distractions for maimed soldiers or those returning on leave from the horror of war. At cinemas across the country, twenty million people crowd to see the war first hand and spot their friends and family in The Battle of the Somme. As Mallins and McDowell lug their huge cameras around muddy trenches, you can lip-read men saying hello to their mums and see the naked fear on their faces before going over the parapet.

With huge swathes of children back home losing their fathers, Francine discovers how books such as 'War in Dollyland', tried explain the alien world of war from a child's point of view. And she visits the study in Essex where H. G. Wells wrote one of the best-selling works of wartime fiction, Mr Britling Sees it Through. Many parallels can be drawn between Wells and the protagonist, not least the question, which Britling often poses, of whether an intellectual can really capture the realities of war from the comfort of his armchair.

Producer Clare Walker.

1916: Tanks capture the public imagination, but the comforts of home are shattered by war.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

0303Dada And Defiance20160423That endless, terrible year of '16. Francine Stock explores the struggle for meaning, freedom, sanity and possibility.

The supreme talent of Franz Marc is snuffed out in the first days of the battle of Verdun. In Berlin you can have a day out and knock a nail into a gigantic statue of war leader Hindenburg. On a street in Stepney they are knocking up a parody of him. In a Zurich night club strange sounds are conjured up by the weird magicians of a new movement - Dada. Shouting defiance of the madness of war. Britain's still disturbed by the losses at the Battle of Jutland are stunned by the death of Kitchener, icon, recruiting poster and war hero. An omen of terrible things to come in the months ahead? Sir Hubert Parry takes on a commission to put the words of Blake to music for The Fight to Right movement and Jerusalem sounds for the first time.

For the Jewish civilians of Eastern Europe there is no escape from war. Drafted into the armies of the Czar in disproportionate numbers, surrounded by anti-Semitism, displaced either by their own side or by invading German or Austro-Hungarian armies. The writings of Sholom Alecheim had brought the old world of the Shtetl to new, international audiences. His passing that year is marked by thousands in a grand funeral in New York. But back home all is disaster. Ethnologist S.Ansky travels from St Petersburg to the Pale of Settlement in a desperate attempt to document this disappearing world and bring aid and relief. Back in St Petersburg Maxim Gorky, Russia's senior literary figure, gathers together a host of writers in The Shield, to condemn the continued persecution of the Jews & celebrate their role in helping create the possibility of a new Russia to emerge from the chaos of the old.

1916. Dada is born and Jerusalem is sung. Gorky defends Jewish life in print.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

04An Intimate War2017082620171006 (R4)By 1917 soldiers had been fighting what seemed like a never ending war. They yearned for entertainment, an escape from the horror surrounding them.

In the final episode of this year's series on the Great War, Francine Stock finds out about popular cross-dressing theatre troupes who by 1917 were taking the Front Line by storm.

Female impersonators with names like the Sensual Salome and Bodo Wild would perform in front of huge crowds of admiring soldiers, who would send them love letters, perfume and stockings.

Although there was a widespread expectation that war would cause society to return to Victorian ideals about the roles of men and women, instead it started challenged traditional norms.

There was tension between the model of the war hero - as depicted in popular literature - and the private experience of the combatants who read these books and poems. Novels spoke of war as a "rattling good adventure yarn", but the real life battlefield told a different story.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

Francine Stock considers the intimate impact of war on society and culture.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

By 1917 soldiers had been fighting what seemed like a never ending war. They yearned for entertainment, an escape from the horror surrounding them.

In the final episode of this year's series on the Great War, Francine Stock finds out about popular cross-dressing theatre troupes who by 1917 were taking the Front Line by storm.

Female impersonators with names like the Sensual Salome and Bodo Wild would perform in front of huge crowds of admiring soldiers, who would send them love letters, perfume and stockings.

Although there was a widespread expectation that war would cause society to return to Victorian ideals about the roles of men and women, instead it started challenged traditional norms.

There was tension between the model of the war hero - as depicted in popular literature - and the private experience of the combatants who read these books and poems. Novels spoke of war as a "rattling good adventure yarn", but the real life battlefield told a different story.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

Francine Stock considers the intimate impact of war on society and culture.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

04Reality And Reconstruction2017081920171005 (R4)In this week's Cultural Front, Francine Stock explores how artists reacted to the bitter reality of conflict.

First she learns from the meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh, an event that directly lead to Owen becoming one of the greatest War Poets in the British Canon. To commemorate their meeting, fiddle maker Steve Burnett has been commissioned to make an instrument for both men, and we get to hear them played together for the very first time.

Next we travel beyond the Eastern Front to the Russian Revolution. In time theatre and film will create an enduring myth, but we delve into the poetry that acts like snapshots of history, preserving the truth of the messy, divisive revolution and showing what it was really like to watch the entire social order crumble and reform into a new world.

Of course, not all artists tackled war head on in their art. 1917 was the year that saw Pablo Picasso begin his collaboration with The Ballet Russe and the creation of his biggest ever piece of work - The Parade Curtain. How would the public react to a piece that was all about youth, joy and defiance of war, when the people they loved were still fighting at the front?

Back home, sculptor Francis Derwent Wood was volunteering in a London hospital when he saw first hand what happened to the men who had been injured in the line of duty. Seeing the profound psychological impact on patients suffering facial injuries Wood decided to set up a studio within the hospital, with the goal of sculpting tin masks that would make the patient look as close as possible to how he had been before he was wounded. A century later, we're left puzzling about what these masks really are - a well intentioned but flawed medical tool, or a kind of anti-portraiture that shows the realities of war in a way that still feels visceral even today.

Francine Stock explores how the First World War transformed the arts across Europe.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

04The Jazz Kings Go To War2017081220171004 (R4)In the first episode of a new series of The Cultural Front, Francine Stock tells the little known story of the 15th New York Regiment of the National Guard, who through acts of bravery and daring, came to be known as the Harlem Hellfighters.

They were an African American unit who, along with their military band, were sent to France in 1917.

It was a time of segregation in America; a time when Jim Crow laws still dominated society. The American military would not allow black soldiers to fight alongside white recruits so they gifted the 15th regiment to the French, following their terrible losses at the Somme and Verdun the year before.

The regiment was viewed as war fodder, they would entertain French villages before being sent off to the Frontline to fight, and most likely die.

But that did not happen.

The Harlem Hellfighters would not only go on to be the most decorated regiment in the American Expedition Force, but are credited with bringing jazz to Europe; a musical form which would define a generation.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

The story of the Harlem Hellfighters and how jazz conquered France.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

051918: Chaplin Goes To War2018090820181107 (R4)As large numbers of U.S. troops start arriving on the Western Front in 1918, Francine Stock examines the response of artists and movie stars to their country's commitment to war.

The Bryce report on alleged German outrages causes George Bellows, one of the most acclaimed American artists of his generation, to drastically change his views on the war effort. The nephew of modernist painter Claggett Wilson talks about his uncles ability to portray the feeling, not just the sight, of war.

And Charlie Chaplin moves away from what he calls 'sausage pictures' to make Shoulder Arms - a film about a private with dreams of becoming a war hero.

Plus, in Britain, the mysterious lost film of David Lloyd George, and how Shakespeare was misquoted in the name of war.

Presenter: Francine Stock

Producers: Georgia Catt and Mark Burman

Production Coordinator: Anne Smith

The propaganda and protest art that comes from America at war

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

051918: Vienna And The Fall Of An Empire2018091520181108 (R4)Francine Stock travels to Vienna to examine the rich cultural and artistic life of the city in the final days of the Hapsburg Empire.

In November 1918 the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire was lost overnight. The removal of the dual monarchy from the European map left the imperial capital of Vienna and its staggeringly well equipped civil service with no empire to run. Vienna had fallen from grace and with it, decades of rich artistic life were lost.

And yet right up until the Empire's last days, Vienna had continued to be a cultural hub at the heart of European modernism. Despite food shortages and the hardships of war, the Viennese continued to frequent cinemas, salons and cafes. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka continued to paint and exhibit their work internationally, Franz Schreker composed one of his most popular operas, while writers Karl Kraus and Stefan Zweig documented everyday life.

Producer: Sarah Shebbeare

Production Coordinator: Anne Smith

Francine Stock examines the cultural life of Vienna in 1918.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

Francine Stock travels to Vienna to examine the rich cultural and artistic life of the city in the final days of the Hapsburg Empire.

In November 1918 the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire was lost overnight. The removal of the dual monarchy from the European map left the imperial capital of Vienna and its staggeringly well equipped civil service with no empire to run. Vienna had fallen from grace and with it, decades of rich artistic life were lost.

And yet right up until the Empire's last days, Vienna had continued to be a cultural hub at the heart of European modernism. Despite food shortages and the hardships of war, the Viennese continued to frequent cinemas, salons and cafes. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka continued to paint and exhibit their work internationally, Franz Schreker composed one of his most popular operas, while writers Karl Kraus and Stefan Zweig documented everyday life.

Producer: Sarah Shebbeare

Production Coordinator: Anne Smith

Francine Stock examines the cultural life of Vienna in 1918.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.

05The Return Of The Soldier2018092220181109 (R4)Francine Stock concludes her 4 year exploration of how artists responded to World War One. As the war enters its final deadly year Marc Chagall becomes Cultural Commissar of Vitebsk, Isaac Babel sends fevered dispatches from revolutionary Petrograd & everyone asks Elgar what music he will write for the Armstice. Meanwhile young novelist Rebecca West makes her literary debut with the Return of the soldier whilst a desperate Stanley Spencer longs for his return to his beloved Cookham amongst the killing fields of Salonika.

Producer: Mark Burman.

Francine Stock concludes her four-year exploration of how artists responded to WWI.

Francine Stock explores how World War I changed art, words and society.