history

Art That Made Us episode 8: In the 1950s and 1960s, the generation of artists who recorded the shocks of global war gave way to an explosion of new voices from across the British Isles, reinventing the arts and creating a richer, more diverse culture. Young artists rebelled against the old establishment, kicking against the confines of class, sex, nation and race. Actress Lesley Sharp performs passages from Shelagh Delaney’s breakthrough play A Taste of Honey, which brought the ordinary lives and unheard voices of working class women to a mainstream audience, while Chila Kumari Singh Burman explores the career

Art That Made Us episode 7: Art goes to war during the first half of the 20th century: war with the old imperial order, war with convention and war with the very idea of what it means to be human. This is a story of artists grappling with the destruction, fighting back and transforming the culture of the Isles.       Actress Michelle Fairley performs WB Yeats’s poem Easter 1916, with its resonant phrase ‘a terrible beauty is born’ marking a turning of the tide against the British Empire. Contemporary war photographer Oliver Chanarin traces the story of William

Art That Made Us episode 6: The 19th century saw a decisive shift in power from the countryside to the cities. With the industrial revolution transforming the British Isles, a divide opened up between the urban and the rural, forcing artists to respond to the upheaval to lives and the landscape. Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson reflects on the inspiration of JMW Turner, arguably the first environmental artist, and we encounter Penry Williams’s attempt to capture the beauty of industry with paintings like Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night.     Some artists attempt to capture the poverty and squalor caused by

Art That Made Us episode 5: This episode traces the story of Britain during the 18th century, a period that saw an explosion of creativity and a country with enough money, from trade and conquest, to pay for it. But the money had a dark side: sculptor Thomas J Price visits Harewood House to see the elaborate Robert Adam-designed interiors, Joshua Reynolds portraits and Thomas Chippendale furniture that were paid for by the slave trade.     This was also the great age of mockery, and artist Lubaina Himid reflects on William Hogarth’s scabrous exposure of upper-class hypocrisies, while comedian

Art That Made Us episode 4: A splintering of politics and religion in the British Isles under the Stuart kings leads to more questioning art, new science and architecture. Architect Amanda Levete climbs the Tulip Stairs in the Queen’s House, Greenwich, and reassesses Inigo Jones’ elegant and innovative design, while portrait artist Tai Shan Schierenberg encounters Van Dyck’s monumental portrait of the Earl of Pembroke’s family and finds signs of the dysfunction and tensions which point to the civil war to come.     This was a war that would be waged across three kingdoms, and artist Rita Duffy explores