Free Thinking

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: How to Create a Modernist Masterpiece

How to Create a Modernist Masterpiece

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, How to Create a Modernist Masterpiece

Will Self, Alexandra Harris, Kevin Le Gendre and Owen Hatherley build up a manifesto.

Laurence Scott asks four experts to outline key elements of early modernism found in jazz, books, art and architecture.

A "house on chicken legs” in Moscow designed by Viktor Andreyev, Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room first published on 26 October 1922, Coal Cart Blues sung by Louis Armstrong drawing on his own experiences of pulling one round the streets of New Orleans where he started his teenage years living in a Home for Waifs;   Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2 are picked out as novelist Will Self, art historian and literary critic Alexandra Harris, jazz and music expert Kevin Le Gendre and architecture writer Owen Hatherley try to nail down the elements that make something modernist; looking at the importance of rhythm, the depiction of everyday life and new inventions, psychology and how you describe the self and utopian ideas about communal living. The presenter is New Generation Thinker and essayist Laurence Scott.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Image: Will Self in BBC Broadcasting House, London

Part 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.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

How to Create a Modernist Masterpiece

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3