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'They say there's a rule about invitations - | 0:00:03 | 0:00:05 | |
'the stiffer the card, the bigger the deal. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:09 | |
'This one's from Art On The Underground, | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
'and it's pretty damn stiff. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:13 | |
'A press conference to announce details of a major | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
'international art commission for all 270 stations of the Underground. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:22 | |
'But they haven't told us the name of the artist. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
'This might seem an unusual way to celebrate | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
'the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
'but art, architecture, design and even the arts of persuasion | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
'and propaganda have played a bigger role in the story of the Tube | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
'than many people realise. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
'When Art On The Underground finally revealed that Turner Prize winner | 0:00:43 | 0:00:46 | |
'Mark Wallinger has produced a piece called Labyrinth for this occasion, | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
'it seemed absolutely fitting. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
'Art belongs here on the platform | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
'just as much as it does in the boardroom, | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
because of a tradition of patronage unique to the network.' | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
I suspect you may not recognise this man, but he was a visionary, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:11 | |
and together with the chap on the wall over there, | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
cos these two were said to work together | 0:01:14 | 0:01:16 | |
like the blades on a pair of scissors, | 0:01:16 | 0:01:18 | |
he ran a transport network that shaped the greatest city on Earth. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:22 | |
And he did so not just with feats of engineering, he did so with art. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
These two did it with the poster, they did it with design, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:30 | |
they did it with the signage of the stations, logos, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
even down to the typeface, the branding. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
And they did so with such detail and diligence that they could | 0:01:36 | 0:01:40 | |
honestly compare the Underground system to an earthly paradise. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:45 | |
'In 1863, the world's first underground railway | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
'opened in London. It was the only one ever to use steam engines. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:04 | |
'The Metropolitan Railway | 0:02:04 | 0:02:05 | |
'ran between Paddington and Farringdon Road. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
'This is Chancellor William Gladstone in a special VIP preview. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
'Almost 40,000 passengers flocked to use it on the first day, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:17 | |
'and 150 years later, | 0:02:17 | 0:02:19 | |
'enthusiasts paid up to £180 each to recapture the romance of steam. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
'But back in the Victorian era, | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
'when these shafts at Baker Street once vented the smoke and fumes | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
'to the streets above, many people saw it as an experience of Hell.' | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
Travelling on the Underground in the 19th century, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
the era of smoke and steam, could be satanic and infernal. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:46 | |
There was an American journalist who in 1887 described it like this, | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
"I had my first experience of Hades today, and if the real thing | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
"is to be like that, I shall never again do anything wrong. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
"The atmosphere was full of sulphur, coal dust and foul fumes from | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
"the oil lamp above, so that by the time we reached Moorgate, | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
"I was near dead of asphyxiation and heat." | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
'By the end of the century, a new form of power was taking over. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:15 | |
'This is the Metropolitan Line in 1910, | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
'in a film made to show off the new electric trains in action. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
'The landscape around London would be transformed | 0:03:23 | 0:03:26 | |
'by the coming of the railway. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
'This would become Metro-land. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:30 | |
'The Underground created the suburbs | 0:03:32 | 0:03:34 | |
'and became part of the rhythm of daily life. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
'Generations of Londoners have now grown up with the sights | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
'and sounds of the railway, Mark Wallinger among them.' | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
This is very particular to my childhood. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
I suppose I was brought up in Chigwell... | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
-So you grew up just over...? -Yeah, a couple hundred yards away from here, | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
so you could say I'm a child of the Tube. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
We used to come here to wait for the trains and wave at the driver... | 0:03:55 | 0:03:59 | |
-Did you? -Yeah and try and get a wave back. -Did you ever get a wave back? | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
Oh, yeah, quite often and that, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
I don't know, as a child that made some connection with this thing | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
that was heading off into London. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:10 | |
'Mark Wallinger has a history with the Tube. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
'There was the escalator at Angel...' | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was... | 0:04:17 | 0:04:22 | |
BACKWARDS GIBBERISH | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
'..and an experiment with the vanishing point, | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
'shot on the Circle Line. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
'Then in 2010, this installation.' | 0:04:29 | 0:04:31 | |
I made a piece called The Unconscious, which was | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
large photographs, but sourced from the Net, | 0:04:34 | 0:04:38 | |
of people who'd had their photographs taken asleep | 0:04:38 | 0:04:42 | |
by other passengers, friends or whatever and posted, and... | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
yeah, I think there's something rather lovely | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
about how one feels safe and secure within this kind of institution. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
I like transport and I like the idea of being transported as well. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:58 | |
We're living through a kind of tracking shot, if you like, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:00 | |
or you kind of lose yourself in different possibilities | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
of time and space, really, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
from our normal pedestrian way of seeing things. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
'The Tube lines went deeper at the end of the 19th century. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
'For the Victorians it was a novelty, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
'but what do modern writers make of the experience down the rabbit hole? | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
'It's a psychological journey too into the unconscious of the city.' | 0:05:25 | 0:05:30 | |
We are a bit reluctant to think about the fact that we're in a tunnel. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
The deep tubes are only 11 feet across. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
It's quite uncomfortable, that is not big, that's a narrow space | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
and the Underground bit of the Northern Line | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
is something like 17 miles long, | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
and you know, you don't necessarily want that in your head. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
So I think we're in a curious sort of balance | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
between the metaphorical thing and actually | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
the slightly, "I'd prefer not to think about it" reality. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
You have to almost distract yourself slightly. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
You have to become very focused but also slightly distracted, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
and you have to deal with people in a different way | 0:06:03 | 0:06:05 | |
because you're always with strangers, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:07 | |
and you're never going to speak to these strangers, | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
and you really are, if you think about it, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
you're a long way under the ground and you're surrounded by dirt | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
and the earth that could collapse in on you... | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
it doesn't seem as dangerous as flying | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
but in a funny sort of way it kind of is, if not more, | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
because you are literally locked in a metal tube with strangers. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:24 | |
When this carriage first came into use | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
on the City and South London Railway, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:30 | |
it quickly earned a nickname as "The Padded Cell," | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
and you get a sense why. It's very claustrophobic. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:37 | |
For the first time, people were travelling by Tube, | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
deep underground. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:42 | |
In fact, The Times described it as "Like being in a gigantic | 0:06:42 | 0:06:46 | |
"iron drainpipe thrust by main force through solid London clay, much as | 0:06:46 | 0:06:51 | |
"a cheesemonger might thrust a scoop into his cheddar or Gloucester." | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
'With absolutely no strategic planning, the tubes ploughed on. | 0:06:56 | 0:07:01 | |
'The Central London Railway, known as the Twopenny Tube, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
'was a popular success, thanks in part to its clever advertising | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
'designed to assuage anxieties.' | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
It's like a step-by-step guide | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
about how to avoid all anxiety of using the Tube. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
So it suggests that that was a great problem at the beginning, was it? | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
-The Tube had to change people's perceptions. -Absolutely. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
Some people were genuinely terrified of going underground because, | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
you know, you had to go in an electric lift and then travel | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
on an electric train and this is when people might not have had electricity | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
in their own homes and so all this new technology was quite | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
frightening, and also in the deep level tubes, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
the carriages weren't divided by class, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
so, you know, for a respectable, well-to-do lady, it might be | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
quite frightening, the idea of travelling underground unchaperoned. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:51 | |
It's a good point about the technology because actually, | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
in the middle, you've got this huge lift and it does say, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
"Safe and commodious lifts," that's what it's advertising, | 0:07:57 | 0:07:59 | |
as opposed to your dangerous and cramped lifts. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
But lifts were new technology, | 0:08:02 | 0:08:03 | |
had to persuade people to actually get in them. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
'The best known labyrinth comes from a Greek myth. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
'The hero, Theseus, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:15 | |
'had to venture into its dark tunnels to kill a monster, | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
'the Minotaur. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:19 | |
'He could only find his way back with the use of a thread. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:23 | |
'It's a long way from the Central Line. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
'The Labyrinth is actually a simple journey which looks complicated. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
'It's not to be confused with a maze, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
'in which it's easy to lose your way.' | 0:08:32 | 0:08:34 | |
The thing about The Labyrinth is, erm, | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
there's only one route in and one route out, | 0:08:39 | 0:08:44 | |
which makes the story of Theseus and the Minotaur kind of intriguing | 0:08:44 | 0:08:50 | |
because clearly it was very hard to find your way out of that one. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
'You can't get lost in a labyrinth. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
'It's one path that always leads to the centre. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:03 | |
'Homer referred to it as "a single dancing path." | 0:09:03 | 0:09:06 | |
'But it might equally apply to your daily commute.' | 0:09:07 | 0:09:11 | |
'The tube lines were expensive to build and the only way to | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
'make them pay was to get more people to use them more often. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:26 | |
'This was the mission of Albert Stanley, later Lord Ashfield, | 0:09:26 | 0:09:30 | |
'and Frank Pick. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:31 | |
'The latter, a draper's son trained as a lawyer, | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
'fresh down to London from York, commissioned this poster. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
'He was appalled by the lack of clear information | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
'available to strangers trying to find their way around the city. | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
'For the next 30 years, he tried to bring clarity | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
'and identity to the network. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:49 | |
'All the elements which make the Underground a globally | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
'recognisable brand were put in place on Pick's watch. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
'The roundel had a clear purpose, | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
'to stand out in the alphabet soup of Edwardian platforms. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
'And he commissioned calligrapher Edward Johnston to produce | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
'a new typeface that was both classical and indisputably modern. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:12 | |
'The whole notion of "underground" was in a state of flux. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:21 | |
'The generating station at Lots Road, | 0:10:21 | 0:10:23 | |
'known as the "Chelsea Monster," | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
'which provided power to the network, was a symbol of the age. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
'Anthony Asquith's film Underground | 0:10:30 | 0:10:32 | |
'staged a dramatic murder there at its climax.' | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
'HG Wells wrote a story called Lord of the Dynamo. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
'In his science-fiction, | 0:10:42 | 0:10:44 | |
'he'd already imagined a number of sinister or alien underworlds.' | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
Wells is afraid of those kind of underworlds. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
He's afraid of what they represent, | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
but around 1900, Wells begins to change his mind. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:58 | |
He writes in a book called Anticipations | 0:10:58 | 0:11:01 | |
about an underground that is completely the opposite. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:04 | |
It's one for the future, it's almost like an underground city | 0:11:04 | 0:11:08 | |
in which people will enjoy travelling on the Underground. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
-It's a utopia. -It's a utopian underground, very much so. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
And in a sense, Frank Pick is the heir to that. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
He wants, in his notion of fitness for purpose, he wants | 0:11:18 | 0:11:22 | |
the Underground to be the essential foundation for London, for the city. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:27 | |
So he wants all that Victorian inferno to be wiped away, | 0:11:28 | 0:11:33 | |
to be washed away and replaced with a dynamic, fast-moving, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
uncluttered world with beautiful posters, uncluttered stations. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:43 | |
He wants order! Order from the chaos! | 0:11:43 | 0:11:45 | |
He wants order, regimentation. He wants control. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
'Part of that control was training the passengers in the finer points | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
'of Tube etiquette, and by the time of Asquith's film, | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
'Londoners had mostly got the hang of it. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
'Mostly.' | 0:12:04 | 0:12:05 | |
'Though he had no training in art himself, | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
'Frank Pick's most potent weapon in the battle for the hearts | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
'and minds of the travelling public was the poster. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
'Once he'd drawn people into the system, | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
'he wanted them to come back for more. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
'He did it by nudging, not nagging, | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
'gently pointing out the benefits of Underground travel, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
'persuading people to take journeys they might not otherwise have taken, | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
'to the sales, to the boat race, to the countryside, | 0:12:32 | 0:12:37 | |
'not just to put bums on seats but to make them aware | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
'of everything the city had to offer. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:42 | |
'Some are humourous, some are beautiful, some were bold, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:47 | |
'enigmatic and challengingly modern | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
'to a nation not known for its visual sophistication. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
'But that was OK - Pick was intent on building the most | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
'modern transport system in the world, and he built up | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
'its reputation by introducing the public to modern art. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
'When he organised an exhibition of posters, Pick boasted, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
"There is no catalogue. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:11 | |
"A good poster explains itself." | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
'The Tube system became the longest art gallery in the country.' | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
How would you describe his attitude towards art? | 0:13:18 | 0:13:21 | |
I like the quote where he says, | 0:13:21 | 0:13:22 | |
"Art has to come down off its pedestal and earn its living," | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
and I think it's always as that consummate transport operator | 0:13:26 | 0:13:32 | |
that he thinks about art. It has to serve his purpose. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
It's not just there to prettify things, it has to be | 0:13:36 | 0:13:40 | |
fit for that purpose, and the purpose is moving people about. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:44 | |
'Pick's enthusiasm for a modern style didn't end with posters. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
'He commissioned the architect Charles Holden, a fellow believer in | 0:13:52 | 0:13:56 | |
'fitness for purpose, to design the stations | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
'for the Morden extension to the Northern Line. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
'We take them for granted now, | 0:14:01 | 0:14:03 | |
'but they were greeted in the press as a new type of building | 0:14:03 | 0:14:06 | |
'which improves the face of London.' | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
'As usual, God, or Pick, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:13 | |
'is in the details. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:16 | |
'The famous logo has become three dimensional. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
'And the white Portland stone facades | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
'were designed to show off posters. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:24 | |
'On the 10th of December 1928, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
'a new Piccadilly Circus station was opened, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
'with an Art Deco ticket hall and concourse by Charles Holden. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:36 | |
'It became one of the wonders of London.' | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
'Soviet engineers were sent to consult with London Underground | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
'and when the Moscow Metro was built a few years later, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
'Frank Pick and his colleagues were awarded | 0:14:47 | 0:14:49 | |
'the honorary badge of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies.' | 0:14:49 | 0:14:55 | |
I'm getting a sense that he did seem to be driven by this desire to | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
bring modernism to the masses. Do you think that that's correct? | 0:15:01 | 0:15:06 | |
I think he had a view that the work that | 0:15:06 | 0:15:10 | |
the Underground Electric Railway of London and London Transport later did | 0:15:10 | 0:15:14 | |
was a significant part of civilising the city. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
That comes out of that Arts and Crafts notion that | 0:15:18 | 0:15:23 | |
if things are well-designed, people will feel happier and more engaged with them. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
'Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Frank Pick era is | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
'the headquarters, built in 1928. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
'Designed by Holden on a cruciform plan, | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
'the Observer described it as "a cathedral of modernity". | 0:15:39 | 0:15:43 | |
'It had impeccable modern art credentials | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
'with statues by Eric Gill, Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein on the exterior. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:50 | |
'It's sited above St James's Park station, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
'where the first of Mark Wallinger's labyrinths was unveiled, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
'so it feels plugged into the underground network it controls.' | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
Now, if I'm going to find the minotaur anywhere | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
at the heart of the labyrinth, it's got to be here - | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
the headquarters of London Underground, 55 Broadway. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:15 | |
Because this is a remarkable building, | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
which Frank Pick commissioned, Charles Holden built. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
From the outside it's very imposing, it's full of Portland stone, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
78,000 cubic feet of this grand material | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
but on the inside as well, there are so many wonderful details. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
Walnut woodwork, bronze fittings, this gizmo. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:35 | |
This is amazing, look at this - | 0:16:35 | 0:16:36 | |
this is train intervals in an era before CCTV, | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
this was a device with a small needle that marked | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
every time various trains on the different lines passed a particular point. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
This is like the whirrings of the minotaur's brain, if you like. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
'It's another rational detail, courtesy of Frank Pick. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
'It does a practical job and it's beautiful, | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
'absolutely fit for purpose. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
'Among the boxes of papers at the London Transport Museum | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
'they have Pick's personal scrapbooks. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
'They're unexpectedly revealing - eclectic, to say the least. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
'And certainly not above the celebrity culture of the day.' | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
When you flick through, what do you feel this tells us about the man? | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
Quite a lot of it is wryly humourous, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
or it's an interesting juxtaposition. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:28 | |
At the National Maritime Museum, this must be the Queen Mother, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
staring vacantly into the distance. The Queen looks slightly bored. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:36 | |
"Evidently a trying occasion," he's written underneath. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
So he always writes in green, does he? | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
Yes, green ink is one of his characteristics. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
Like the head of MI6? | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
He once wrote on one of Charles Holden's drawings, | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
"approved under duress", in green ink. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
There's some humour there in the green ink which is worth hanging on to. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:59 | |
'The programme of station-building that really made Pick and Holden's reputation | 0:18:06 | 0:18:10 | |
'was the extension to the Piccadilly Line in 1932-3. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
'It still has its enthusiastic advocates today.' | 0:18:14 | 0:18:19 | |
I've written about the Piccadilly Line, which is the line of luxury, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
the lovely line, which goes to all | 0:18:22 | 0:18:24 | |
the loveliest places in London in its central stretch. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:29 | |
In its outer reaches, it goes to some quite unlovely places, | 0:18:30 | 0:18:34 | |
but what it does there is bring a mission of civilisation | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
because it brings lovely 1930s modernist stations. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
Why do you think Charles Holden's stations were so successful? | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
First, they glorified the suburbs they were in. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
-So, if you've been to Arnos Grove - have you been? -I haven't. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
-I've seen pictures! -Well, I've been to Arnos Grove. I've done Arnos Grove, | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
it's immensely glorified by its beautiful station, or Southgate. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
In the centre of Southgate is a flying saucer. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
So it glorifies the place it's in, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
and it also says, "Come in here - this is your escape route" | 0:19:09 | 0:19:14 | |
and it's marvellous. You can go to the magic of uptown top ranking. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:20 | |
'But I think the greatest monument to this period is not in stone, | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
'but in two dimensions. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
'Consistently voted one of the design classics of the century - | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
'Harry Beck's map of the Underground. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
'It was a labour of love. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:44 | |
'Beck was an engineering draughtsman not actually employed by London Transport at the time. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
'Strictly, it's a diagram rather than a map. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
'If you're going underground, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
'you don't need to know the geography - connections are the thing. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
'It was an obsession for its creator | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
'and has inspired countless variations on its colour-coded theme. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:04 | |
'But it's now a fixture of the Underground | 0:20:06 | 0:20:08 | |
'and the underground of our imagination.' | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
If you've ever wondered which is the most popular Tube poster ever, | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
in all of the 150 years of London Underground's existence, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
then the answer is this. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
The Tate Gallery by tube. Get it? | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
I thought I'd have a go at recreating it | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
but it's much harder to do than it looks. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
It was created in 1987 by an artist called David Booth | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
and in the end he had to use toothpaste and moulded plastic to create the finished poster. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:39 | |
I think the fact that this is the most popular poster in the Tube's history says it all. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:44 | |
Art has always been an essential element in London Underground's identity. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
The people have spoken. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:51 | |
'One of the things I like about Wallinger's piece is that it seems | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
'to play off the crystal clarity of Harry Beck's map. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:02 | |
'It deliberately withholds its meaning. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
'First you have to find them. It's a shaggy dog story, | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
'a treasure hunt or a sinister corporate logo sprouting all over the Tube. | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
'It could almost be street art, yet it looks official. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
'That's because Wallinger's 270 labyrinths are being made | 0:21:15 | 0:21:20 | |
'using the same process as the other Underground signs, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
'in vitreous enamel on metal.' | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
'I wanted it to kind of fit in with the furniture, to an extent.' | 0:21:27 | 0:21:33 | |
I hope it is a little bit understated, perhaps, yeah. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
'Despite this apparent modesty, the labyrinths are built to last. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:45 | |
'They'll mark their individual stations for as long as the stations survive.' | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
When the Blitz began in the summer of 1940, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
the first instinct of London's traumatised population | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
was to head deep beneath the city streets | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
to find shelter in the Underground. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:09 | |
Which was against the will of the network's managers. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
Before long, though, simply because of the sheer numbers of people | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
who kept on flouting the rules and hunkering down here during air raids, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
the network's bosses were forced to change their position. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
But they managed to turn a potentially embarrassing U-turn | 0:22:22 | 0:22:26 | |
into a PR triumph and soon, sheltering on the Underground | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
which came to typify doughty Blitz spirit, was a point of corporate pride. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
They installed bunk beds on the platforms. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
More than 22,000 by the end of the war. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
And it wasn't just people who found shelter here. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
The Elgin Marbles were crated up and carted off | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
from the British Museum | 0:22:43 | 0:22:44 | |
and ended up here in Aldwych, safe from the bombs. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
'In the film Out Of Chaos, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:54 | |
'art was once again part of the benign propaganda of the Tube. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
'Sculptor Henry Moore, an official war artist, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:02 | |
'is seen to find inspiration among the shelterers.' | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
'On almost any night during a raid, | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
'this figure might have been seen wandering about. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
'Henry Moore the sculptor. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:14 | |
'Here perhaps was the one artist most capable of immortalising | 0:23:15 | 0:23:19 | |
'the stoic endurance and suffering of these people.' | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
'The Underground had done its bit. Taken its blows. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
'And by and large, kept on running. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
'But after the war, it was a different story. It paid the price. | 0:23:37 | 0:23:42 | |
'Nationalised in 1948, it was starved of funds. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:46 | |
'There was a lowering of status, a darkening of mood. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:50 | |
'As if in denial, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:55 | |
'in the 1950s, London Transport commissioned documentaries | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
'which were either recollections of the golden age of the '30s | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
'or reminders of the benevolent secret army | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
'working for us all behind the scenes.' | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
Morning, Charlie. Looking for someone, mate? | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
He ain't come this way. He must have turned off down a rabbit hole. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
-It's the gaffer again. -Morning. -Morning, inspector. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
'The relentlessly chipper Cockney commentary | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
'introduced us to the fluffers.' | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 | |
'He's always got a witty back answer - | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
'trouble is he never thinks of it till he's left these fluffers miles behind. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:32 | |
'That's what they're called - fluffers.' | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
'In the '70s and '80s, | 0:24:35 | 0:24:36 | |
'observational documentaries showed that just maintaining the status quo | 0:24:36 | 0:24:40 | |
'of the ageing system was a never-ending task.' | 0:24:40 | 0:24:44 | |
See the hair? | 0:24:44 | 0:24:45 | |
'By now, the family that is the network seems to have become | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
'slightly more eccentric and borderline dysfunctional.' | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
Who's in charge here? | 0:24:56 | 0:24:58 | |
They should put something downstairs to save me from walking all the bloody way up these steps! | 0:24:58 | 0:25:03 | |
'But it wasn't all bad. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
'1986 brought us a real treat. Poems on the Underground.' | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
I think it's a very good idea. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
It's better than a good many of the advertisements I see on the Underground. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:19 | |
"I have eaten the plums that were in the ice box | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
"which you were probably saving for breakfast. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:24 | |
"Forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold." | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:25:27 | 0:25:29 | |
'Everyone loves the Tube. Everyone hates the Tube. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
'You always remember your first time. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
'And people develop sometimes passionate allegiances to their lines.' | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
If you had to describe the Bakerloo line in a single word, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
what would that be? | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
Well, it's its colour, brown. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
And everything that refers to, in a way, | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
the brown-ness of it does suggest its slightly dowdy reputation. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:04 | |
Although I've always adored it, possibly because it was my first. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:08 | |
The Piccadilly Line experience is very good, | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
I know other experiences aren't quite so good, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
but then there are experiences which are hyper - | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
the glass and steel cathedrals of the Jubilee Line | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
are completely fantastic. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:22 | |
The thing I have noticed about the Underground | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
is that people's attention turns inwards to a remarkable extent. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
Londoners, city dwellers in general, are often showing off, | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
they're acting versions of themselves. On the Underground, it's as if they go into themselves. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:40 | |
Somehow, underground it takes an almost dreamlike quality. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
It can be grubby and packed and difficult sometimes, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
but I do love that idea that it's this phantom representation | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
of the city on the surface | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
and it's both as old as it is, 150 years old, | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
but also about the future, it's constantly moving us into the future. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
Even the dear old Bakerloo! | 0:27:01 | 0:27:02 | |
'Mark Wallinger's labyrinths lend a mythic dimension to our daily lives, | 0:27:07 | 0:27:12 | |
'but in a contemporary, tongue-in-cheek way. | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
'We're not really Theseus | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
'and the closest we come to the minotaur | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
'is an encounter with the boss. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:21 | |
'But we are all heroes in our own knotted stories. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
'The red cross is his mark, but it means "you are here". | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
One of the other things that's quite striking about the image | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
is that it actually resembles a cross-section of a human brain, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
with the various lobes in all these swirls. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
And I quite like that - I'm not sure it's deliberate, | 0:27:41 | 0:27:43 | |
but it seems to hint at the underlying meaning of the piece, | 0:27:43 | 0:27:47 | |
which is that this isn't a sign directing us very simply | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
to go this way to the Victoria Line, go to the way out, | 0:27:51 | 0:27:55 | |
instead it's a sign that's inviting us to go to a much murkier space, | 0:27:55 | 0:27:59 | |
our own imaginations inside our heads. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:03 | |
And who knows what we're going to find in the centre! | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
'Open-endedness is what makes it art | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
'and I love the fact it's on the Underground.' | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
'Wallinger's works are designed to be there in perpetuity. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
'Station to station. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
'270 dancing paths. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:30 | |
'From the roof of his studio, he can see the vertiginous pit | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
'that is the new CrossRail station at the centre of the city. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
'The next age of the Underground is taking shape.' | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
'If you want to find out more about Mark Wallinger's labyrinth, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:03 | |
'visit the Culture Show online.' | 0:29:03 | 0:29:04 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:29:12 | 0:29:14 |