Picasso, Baka Documentary, Speed-Dating, Josie Rourke
With Matthew Sweet. Includes Picasso at Tate Britain, Phil Agland on his new documentary about the Baka, Free Thinking, and Josie Rourke on her plans for London's Donmar Warehouse.
With Matthew Sweet
Artist Brad Lochore reviews a new exhibition at Tate Britain:Picasso and Modern British Art. It aims to explore Picasso's evolving critical reputation in Britain and how a range of British artists - from Wyndham Lewis and Henry Moore to Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland - responded to his work.
Phil Agland talks to Matthew about his new documentary about the Baka people, a rainforest-dwelling pygmy tribe he first filmed 25 years ago in Cameroon, west Africa. The children in that film now have families of their own - how has life changed for the new generation, and is the community coping as the resources needed to lead a traditional Baka lifestyle disappear?
In anticipation of Valentine's Day there's speed-dating with a difference: at last year's Free Thinking Festival at the Sage Gateshead Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers pitched their thoughts to an audience hungry for ideas. They had two minutes per 'date' to persuade their listeners that theirs was the "thinkiest thought". Ian Macmillan was the ringmaster with the Radio 3 honky horn.
And last month Josie Rourke took over from Michael Grandage as Creative Director of London's Donmar Warehouse theatre, once referred to by Stephen Sondheim as 'the greatest theatre in the English-speaking world'. Rourke talks to Matthew about how she intends to make her tenure distinctive and the careful balance of philanthropy and subsidy which has helped the Donmar build such a formidable reputation.