Free Thinking -Joseph Crawhall; Madame Bovary by Peepolykus; Rona Munro's The James plays; and Matthew Parris on biography.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2016
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anne McElvoy profiles the painter Joseph Crawhall (1861-1913). Born in Northumberland, he exhibited alongside Degas and Whistler and has been credited as the leader of the young radical Scottish painters The Glasgow Boys. His father was also an artist who published "A Beuk o' Newcassell Sangs Collected by Joseph Crawhall" in 1888 - a pictorial book illustrating the lyrics and music with woodcuts. Anne will be joined in her quest by the director of the Fleming Collection in London, James Knox, where a new Crawhall show has opened and by the art critic, Bill Feaver.
Anne will also be hearing from the director, Gemma Bodinetz who with the touring theatre company, Peepolykus, is staging a comic version of Madame Bovary at the Liverpool Everyman and from Laurie Sansom, who's directing a revival of Rona Munro's acclaimed trilogy of James plays. And in the week that sees the publication of a life of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Matthew Parris discusses the art of political biography.
Joseph Crawhall: Masterworks from The Burrell Collection which runs from 4 February – 12 March 2016 is on at the The Fleming Collection in London and it's the first time in 25 years that an exhibition of his his works is on show in London.
Rona Munro's James Plays are on at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre from February 3rd to 13th and then the UK and international tour stops in Glasgow, Inverness, Newcastle, Salford, Birmingham, Leicester and Plymouth
Madame Bovary performed by Peepolykus is touring. Liverpool Everyman 5th to 27th February and then on to the Nuffield Theatre Southampton, Bristol Old Vic, Royal & Derngate, Northampton.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Image Credit: The Flower Shop, by Joseph Crawhall c.1894-1900. The Burrell Collection © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection
Transcript
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| 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 is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Thank you, John, and hello. |
| 0:34.1 | Tonight we're going to hear how history, poetry and politics collide in a new version |
| 0:39.2 | of Rona-Munro's cycle of the James plays, which open in Scotland this week. We'll meet |
| 0:45.0 | Joseph Crawhall, one of British arts neglected masters, and bump into an old acquaintance |
| 0:50.3 | in unfamiliar guise. When Jeremy Corbyn arrived in North London in 1973, |
| 0:56.9 | he felt himself immediately among friends, |
| 0:59.7 | in a world instantly more of a fit than that of his upbringing. |
| 1:03.4 | Politics was in the air in the way that it hadn't been in the countryside. |
| 1:07.3 | People were engaged, interested in their fellow men and women, and prepared to become involved, |
| 1:13.9 | to fight for what they believed in. In an interview with the new statesman many years later, |
| 1:19.7 | Corbyn named as his favourite novel Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the story of a bored |
| 1:26.8 | French housewife who seeks escape from the banalities of |
| 1:30.2 | provincial life in adulterous adventures. For Corbyn, London and the activism he undertook there |
| 1:36.9 | became a means of escape from the clawing confinement of his rural upbringing. |
| 1:42.8 | The young Jeremy Corbyn as Madame Bovary, a striking comparison made in Rosa |
| 1:47.8 | Prince's biography Comrade Corbyn published this week. |
| 1:51.5 | We'll be discussing the art of political biography with Matthew Paris later on, and coincidentally |
| 1:56.8 | Madame Bovary will also be making an appearance in Gemma Baudenay's new stage version for Liverpool's Everyman and Playhouse. |
| 2:04.8 | First, though, something rather different. |
... |
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