Free Thinking

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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: Artists' models and fame

Artists' models and fame

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Artists' models and fame

Egon Schiele's women, Whistler's Woman in White, new radio ballads. Shahidha Bari hosts.

Author Sophie Haydock, curator Margaret MacDonald and artist Ilona Sagar join Shahidha Bari for a conversation about famous artists and their sometimes less famous models.

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 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 two 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 MacLeod 

You 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

Image: James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Purple and Rose: the Lange Leizen of the Six Marks, 1864.  Oil on canvas.

Image credit The John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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.

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Free Thinking

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