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The Art of Innovation

The Art of Innovation: Art as Protest

Art as Protest

BBC Radio 4 - The Art of Innovation, Art as Protest

Ian Blatchford and Tilly Blyth on the furious artistic reaction to WW1 mechanised warfare

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth focus on the Dada art movement's furious reaction to the First World War technology that tore soldiers apart and then put them back together

Sir Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum Group, and the Science Museum’s Head of Collections, Dr Tilly Blyth, continue their series exploring how art and science have inspired each other from the Enlightenment to dark matter.

They focus on the anarchic and furious response to the devastation and trauma of the First World War by the 20th century’s most extreme art movement - Dada. It used noise, cut ups and chaos to feign the irrational and repudiate mechanised warfare.  
 
As Ian reveals, the outrage at the senseless slaughter led many Dadaists to opt for violent and fragmented depictions of a mechanised society, expressed potently in the work of Berlin based Dadaist Otto Dix. His Card Players in which disfigured war veterans have their limbs replaced with contorted versions of prosthetic limbs, amounts to one of the most significant anti-war works by a German artist.

With an urgent need to turn around the ailing post war German economy, new efficient instruments of work for the many physically injured war veterans became a priority. As artificial limbs held in the Science Museum Group’s collection reveal, new multifunctional arms and legs literally plugged a worker into his work station like a semi optimised new part, leading many to question whether technological advance was a confinement, or a truly liberating force.

Producer  Adrian Washbourne

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group

Photograph (C)  Scottish National Gallery

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

How art and science have inspired each other.

Sir Ian Blatchford and Dr Tilly Blyth explore how art and science have inspired each other.

In this landmark series, art historian and Director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford and technology historian and Head of Collections of the Science Museum Tilly Blyth explore the art of invention and the invention of art and reveal the symbiotic relationship between the two. Many feel science takes the magic out of creativity. These programmes show how scientific advance facilitates creativity. And further, how artistic and scientific endeavour are inspired by the same desires and, often, are the result of intimate conversations between good friends. Galileo's painter friend Ludovicio Cigoli paints a maculate moon on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and what does Galileo see when he looks through his telescope? A maculate moon. The poet Samuel Coleridge and the chemist Humphrey Davy were very close friends. Scientific innovators are creative thinkers. And the creation of art is dependent on technological development, as well as an aesthetic sense. Throughout history, artists and scientists have both desired to make sense of the world around them and change it, 

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group. 

Image credit: Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.

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