A Cubist War

The First World War was the great military and political event of its time; but it was also an imaginative event, an occasion when writers and painters were pulled from their homelands to fight on the front line.

In 1915 we start to see how artists, like poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Rudyard Kipling, are responding to war, and explore an unlikely alliance of the avant-garde and the military.

World War One altered the ways in which men and women thought about the world, and about culture and its expressions.

During the bloody battle at Gallipoli, Australia's sense of identity started to take shape. But national bonds were also beginning to weaken as war shattered allegiances and fractured borders.

We look at the ways in which new perspectives entered the public consciousness as France and Britain drew on soldier from Empire and colony.

The poetry of Rabindranath Tagore was read by people around the globe. American ragtime has reached British shores with popular African-American musicians like Dan Kildare and Joe Jordan.

In episode 2 of The Cultural Front, Francine Stock explores a fragmented world through the prism of the art it created.

With contributions from James Taylor, Nicholas Rankin, Susan Harrow, Santanu Das, Peter Stanley and Christian Liebl.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

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