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A unique insight into the vibrant art scene of mid-1960s America from an archive of recordings made then.

In 1965, painter and teacher John Jones headed to the USA for a year, intending to record the most important and most influential artists he could find. His wife Gaby and their two young daughters went with him. One of those daughters, Nicolette Jones is now a writer and critic and she tells the story of how they lodged in New York, while her father grabbed interviews with Yoko Ono, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and many more.

This was the moment of Happenings, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, while the long shadow of Dada and Surrealism, represented on the tapes by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, reached forward to Louise Bourgeois.

Later, with nothing planned at all, the family set off on a three month road-trip in their old Ford station wagon, travelling America from East to West Coast, turning up in little towns on the off chance of getting an interview with artists like Jasper Johns in Florida or a young Ed Ruscha in California.

The unique archive of over 100 recordings, gathered by John Jones, lay in boxes in the family home for decades, waiting for him to write a book based on the tapes. He wasn't able to do this and so the family offered the whole set of recordings to the Tate Archive, which acquired them in 2015.

Listen out for a tantalising sample of this extraordinary material, airing a pivotal moment in 20th century art and revealing John Jones to be on a par with some of the great audio collectors like Alan Lomax and Studs Terkel.

The mood of the time is evoked by interweaving the artists' reflections with a soundscape of mid-60s American music, TV and location sound.
Art historian and Artistic Director of the Royal Academy, Tim Marlow gives a powerful sense of the artists' achievement, as Nicolette Jones conjures up the feeling of a great American road trip through the eyes of the child she was.

Extracts by kind permission of:

The Easton Foundation/DACS, London/VAGA, NY 2018
Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2018
May Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018

Producer: Emma-Louise Williams

A Loftus production for 鲍鱼tv Radio 4, first broadcast in June 2018.

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