Free Thinking: Art in the Age of Black Power; History of Racist Ideas in US
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2017
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tate Modern offers a retrospective on the Art of the Black Power Movement in America and explores how 'Black Art' was defined by artists across the United States and its interplay with the civil rights movement. Rana Mitter is joined by Gaylene Gould, writer and artist and Head of Cinema and Events at the BFI, who reviews the 'Soul of A Nation' exhibition. Rana is also joined by the reggae poet and recording artist, Linton Kwesi Johnson "Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon"', as well as the film director H O Nazareth to talk about the artists and intellectuals who made up the British Black Panther leadership. Also joining in the conversation, Sandeep Parmar, a prize-winning poet and New Generation Thinker who argues that a new generation of critics and reviewers must be found to highlight the work of poets of colour in the UK. Also, Rana Mitter talks to intellectual historian Ibram X Kendi as his award-winning account of racist ideas in the United States comes out in the UK.
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at London's Tate Modern 12/07/2017 - 22/10/2017
Pres: Rana Mitter Guests: Linton Kwesi Johnson Gaylene Gould H O Nazareth Sandeep Parmar 'Eidolon', Winner of the inaugural Ledbury Forte Prize for Second Collections, is out now. Ibram X Kendi 'Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America' is out now.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. This is the BBC. |
| 0:34.7 | Hello, I'm Ron Amitter and thank you for downloading this edition of Radio 3's Arts and Ideas program, Free Thinking. |
| 0:40.8 | Let me take you back to a hot summer half a century ago. |
| 0:44.1 | As a new exhibition titled Soul of a Nation, Art in the Age of Black Power, opens Tate Modern. |
| 0:50.2 | In the mid-1960s, the temperature and the politics heated up big time on the streets of Chicago and San Francisco as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis launched themselves into political immortality by taking the fight for rights for African Americans to a new level. |
| 1:08.3 | But what were the question that painters and sculptors asked themselves |
| 1:12.3 | as the political world exploded around them? |
| 1:15.4 | As curator Zoe Whitley explains, |
| 1:17.7 | soul of a nation explores the varied responses that those artists provided. |
| 1:22.3 | I would say that the story of this exhibition is how artists convened, |
| 1:30.3 | the questions that they asked themselves, and the questions that they asked each other, what does it mean to be a Negro artist? What does it mean to make art? |
| 1:36.5 | Do you make art for self or do you make it for your community? Do you make art in the figurative |
| 1:41.1 | tradition or is it acceptable as a black artist to make abstract |
| 1:45.7 | work? And also artists who rejected the questions outright, artists who said, I refuse to be |
| 1:51.6 | constrained by being called a black artist. That's not a discourse or question I'm willing to answer. |
| 1:57.3 | And having all of that in this exhibition is really about showing a range of answers |
| 2:02.8 | rather than are dictating a set of answers to the questions. Soul of a Nation opened at Tate Modern |
| 2:09.0 | earlier today, and Galen Gould, artist, curator, a new head of cinema and events at the British |
| 2:14.1 | Film Institute is here now to give us a first take on the exhibition. |
| 2:21.8 | Gailene, I've seen the catalogue and it certainly seems to provide a feast for the eye, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.