A visual treat taking in town and gown Introduction. 1. Ashmolean Museum 2. Turl Street

Unbroken Taichi Flow 1 Ashmolean Museum Another Time

Length: 2.26 miles This walk begins at the Ashmolean Museum, the UK’s oldest public Turn left out of the Ashmolean Museum until you reach the crossroads Start: Ashmolean Museum museum. The new modern extension designed by Rick Mather uses and then turn right down Magdalene Street. Take the next left into Finish: Nuffield Collage clean, white lines and simple bold shapes. Minimal decoration and Broad Street and continue until you reach the corner of Turl Street. Dur: 2 hours light is the key to this design and Mather clearly follows in the tradition Le Corbusier created in Twenties. Le Corbusier was inspired by his Look up above Blackwell’s Bookshop to the top of the building and you This walk through the dreaming spires of Oxford University encom- friend Picasso’s cubist works, with their emphasis on reducing images will see the figure of a man, looming close to the edge. Another Time passes a diverse and surprising collection of modern art including masterpieces by Picasso and Matisse, a lone iron man overlooking to simple shapes. Le Corbusier wanted to bring that simplicity and is by popular British sculptor Antony Gormley and was commissioned the city centre, a gleaming cubist box and a quartet of bronze lighting purity into architecture. by Exeter College, which owns the building. masts.

N.B. It is important that when planning to visit art works held within Make your way up to the third floor and into gallery 62. Here you will Gormley uses casts of his own body, in this case in iron, and places college boundaries you call ahead, as there are times - for example during final exams - when the colleges may be shut. find an early Picasso called Blue Roofs, Paris which was painted just the naked figures in thought-provoking contexts. The figure casts a before the start of his famous blue period in 1901. Here he was ex- stark silhouette against the sky and marks a contrast to the medieval You can access this walk via your mobile phone on, www.bbc.co.uk/modernmasters perimenting with limiting his palette to just a few colours. Right next and gothic figures nearby. to the Picasso is Matisse’s Nude on a Sofa from 1919. In this period Or text the code ART WALK to 81010, and you’ll receive a link to the Modern Masters mobile site. Texts cost between Matisse became increasingly preoccupied with the female form and Gormley’s work has taken sculpture of the human body into a new 12 -15p. throughout his career he would try to perfect his own interpretation era, like Matisse and Picasso before him, changing perspectives and of the nude. transforming ideas about what it can tell us. Download the audio version at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/modernmasters/art-walks/birming- ham/ Also to be found in room 62 are works by Picasso’s fellow Cubist This is where the art works resided at the time of writing pioneer Braque, and artists who have since been inspired by both Pi- but if you want to double check that a specific art work will casso and Matisse, Barbara Hepworth and Howard Hodgkin respec- be there when you undertake your walk then phone ahead to the Museums and institutions involved. You’ll find links on tively. each of the pages.

bbc.co.uk/modernmasters 4. Oxford University Museum of Natural 3. Wadham College History, Pitt Rivers Museum 5. University of Oxford, Economics Faculty

Maurice Bowra Pitt River Museum University of Oxford, Economics Faculty

Carry on down Broad Street, turning left at the crossroads into Parks Turn right out of Wadham College and continue up Parks Road. On Leave the Pitt Rivers museum and continue along South Parks Road. Road. A few minutes up the road you will find the entrance to Wadham the corner with South Parks Road you will see the Oxford University Follow the road to the right into St Cross Road. Just before you turn College. The college is usually only open after 2pm so do check be- Museum of Natural History. Enter the building through the grand hall left into Manor Road, you will see the Norman Foster designed Uni- fore setting out. Go through the porter’s lodge and towards the far left filled with dinosaurs and head to the back until you find the Pitt Rivers versity of Oxford, Economics Faculty, opened in 2003. hand corner of the quad. Turn right into the Fellows Garden and then Museum. The museum was founded in 1884 and is dedicated to the take the right path towards the back wall. study of archaeology and anthropology. Explore the museum to find Foster is famous for London’s Gherkin and Millennium Bridge, and the ‘primitive’ art, which inspired Picasso and Matisse and whose use is renowned for his high-tech modern designs using bold, simple As you get near the wall, look right and you will see the extraordi- of it transformed the history of western art. shapes. Here it is the simple cube, beloved of modernist architects nary sculpture of one of Oxford’s most famous Dons: Maurice Bowra. like Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe both of who were hugely Bowra was famous for his wit, and this humour is captured by the Matisse visited North Africa several times and collected African ar- influential to Foster. It is a testament to the enormous impact of the sculptor John Doubleday who transforms the conventional seated fig- tefacts; he is, in fact, credited for introducing Picasso to this differ- Cubist movement that the cube itself remains such an inspirational ure of more traditional monuments into something modern, amusing ent art form. Both artists found these ancient art forms inspiring, they and permanent feature of contemporary building design. and surreal. It follows in the Salvador Dali tradition of transforming were visually simpler and less realistic than the paintings of the day ordinary objects like chairs or telephones into something entirely new, but seemed to have a more direct impact on the viewer. In this art, using humour to make us approach art from a different perspective they found a new way to represent the human figure, stylised and and unlock deeper meaning. often distorted and the influence of geometric forms. Picasso was also interested in ancient Spanish art and Matisse in Persian and Central American textiles – both of which would influence their own developing styles.

bbc.co.uk/modernmasters 6. St Catherine’s College 7. Modern Art Oxford 8. Nuffield College

Achaean St Catherine’s College Modern Art Oxford Flower Fountain Flayed Stone IV

Continue down Manor Road and a few paces further, you will reach Retrace your steps back along Manor road and turn left into St Cross Turn right into Pembroke Street and right again onto St Ebbes Street. St Catherine’s College, a brand new college built by Arne Jacobsen Road. At the end of the road turn left into Longwall Street and con- Take the first left onto Queen Street and head past Bonn Square, in the Sixties. The building in front of you is strikingly modern and tinue until you reach High Street. Walk along High Street turning left which has recently been modernised to include four 15m high bronze characteristic of Jacobsen’s own brand of Danish modernism. It is into St Aldates, past the Town Hall and Oxford Museum. Turn right lighting masts that provide a bold and stark addition to the traditional an all-inclusive approach, with Jacobsen designing everything from into Pembroke Street until you reach Modern Art Oxford. surroundings. Carry along onto New Road, passing the Oxford Castle light fittings to chairs and the gardens, in a clean and functional style, Mound on your way. Before you reach Worcester St, turn right into which we now associate with Scandinavian design. Jacobsen, like This is the home for contemporary art in Oxford with an ever-changing Nuffield College. Foster and Rick Mather, was influenced by the move towards simple, array of exhibitions and displays, everything from painting, sculpture functional, abstract yet beautifully proportioned design. It was a move that began in the Twenties and owes a debt to Matisse who changed and film to installations and contemporary music. See if you can spot Go through the entrance, into the garden and you will see Hubert Dal- our notion of what was beautiful. It was Matisse who embraced the the influences of our modern masters in today’s artists. Even if you’re wood’s abstract water sculpture Flower Fountain. Just beyond is Peter idea that less is more and it imbued every aspect of his work. The no- unsure about the artworks on display here, it’ll be a crash course in Randall Page’s Flayed Stone IV - sculpted from a single piece of gla- tion still influences artists, designers and architects today. today’s contemporary art. cial stone. Both of these works demonstrate the lasting legacy of the move from straightforward representation in art towards abstraction. As you approach the building, look to your right and you will see a Picasso and Matisse were at the forefront of this move, shedding the bold abstract sculpture by Barbara Hepworth called Achaean. When restraints of the old methods and ushering in a new age where feeling, Hepworth visited Picasso’s studios it made a distinct impression. emotion and deeper meaning could be accessed by reducing images Picasso’s innovations in abstracting images were taken on and ad- down to their simplest and most powerful shapes. This garden is the vanced by Hepworth. perfect place to stop and reflect on the way even our most traditional

In the opposite direction to Achaean is a sculpture by Taiwanese artist cities have been influenced by our Modern Masters. Ju Ming. Ju Ming is regarded as one of Asia’s most pre-eminent con- temporary artists and this work Unbroken Taichi Flow 1 is an abstract If you’ve enjoyed this walk then try one of our other Art Walks around expression of movement and energy. 100 years earlier, Henri Matisse the UK. was experimenting with how art can evoke physicality, rhythm and the joy of life itself. In Dance II from 1909-1910, the primal and elemental are celebrated. At the time it was shocking but it paved the way for future artists to explore this new idea. bbc.co.uk/modernmasters Oxford Map

Route: Length: 2.26 miles Start: Ashmolean Museum Finish: Nuffield Collage Dur: 2 hours

Key:

: Walk : Step : Landmark

Steps:

1 Ashmolean Museum

2 Turl Street

3 Wadham College

4 Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Pitt Rivers Museum

5 University of Oxford, Economics Faculty

6 St Catherine’s College

7 Modern Art Oxford

8 Nuffield Collage

bbc.co.uk/modernmasters