Programme Details

Four of the world's most influential art historians have come together to write a weighty new history of art since 1900. Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin Buchloh offer a year by year account of the century, focusing on individual paintings, events, exhibitions and artists and describing the unfolding of modernism. So, what are we to make of four different theoretical approaches all woven into one? And what conclusions do they collectively reach about the art of the last century? Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss talk to Susan Hitch on Night Waves.

The novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry, writer of the award winning1995 play The Steward of Christendom, publishes a new novel exploring the lives of Irish soldiers during the First World War. A Long Long Way focuses on the experiences in the Belgium trenches of 18 year old Dubliner Willie Dunne, a man who had little knowledge of the political and religious tensions back home as he endured years of hardship and terror fighting for king and country. On Night Waves Sebastian Barry talks about the continuing resonance of the Great War and the Irish involvement in it

Also on the programme, the Dublin based writer and journalist Anne-Marie Hourihane explores the effects of the smoking ban in Ireland, one year after it was imposed upon public spaces.

And the poet Moniza Alvi talks about her latest collection, How the Stone Found its Voice - poems that explore conflicts in war, race and personal relationships.

Night Waves live at 9.30pm, here on BBC Radio 3

Presenter: Susan Hitch
Producer: Anthony Denselow



Additional Information:
1) A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry is published by Faber
2) Art Since 1900 by Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin HD Buchloh, Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss is published by Thames and Hudson
3) How The Stone Found Its Voice by Moniza Alvi is published by Bloodaxe Books