A Picture of the Painter Howard Hodgkin imagine...


A Picture of the Painter Howard Hodgkin

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All artists' studios are the same.

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All artists' studios are different.

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This one belongs to Sir Howard Hodgkin.

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The first time I came here, I thought the objects lining

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the room were canvases, their painted faces turned to the wall.

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That was my first mistake.

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Hodgkin paints only on wood and these are screens designed

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to conceal works in progress, which may take years to complete.

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I have an appointment with the painter,

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who, by all accounts, is not an easy interview.

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His friend Bruce Chatwin described him as longing for both fame and for oblivion.

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He doesn't like talking about his paintings because, he says, "Words are the English disease.

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"They come between the painting and the viewer."

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He once said that painting is like putting a message in a bottle

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and flinging it into the sea.

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He works in this great bowl of glaring white light, but no-one has seen him paint for over 20 years.

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Now, at the age of 73, he has a major retrospective,

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first in Dublin and from tomorrow at Tate Britain,

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and he's the subject of this book, which seems to mark him out

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as a favourite of poets, novelists and critics, many of whom have known him for years.

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And here he comes.

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Welcome!

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'He seems rather benign,

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'but the terms of the interview require some negotiation.'

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'Certain personal areas are off limits,

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'he's not keen to talk about his world class collection of Indian art.

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'And we absolutely cannot film him at work.

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'But there is something he will do.

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'He will leave the white room.

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'He will come to India.'

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This is Hodgkin's 28th visit to India.

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I wonder what keeps bringing him back here.

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'We're following his itinerary, coming to places he has chosen and invariably seen before.

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'This is Fatehpur Sikri, a ghost city,

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'built by the Mogul emperor Akbar, but abandoned after only 14 years.

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'One suspects he has an enormous enthusiasm for Mogul architecture,

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'but Howard's not going to talk about it.'

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He sits and he looks.

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He's doing something else and you know it has to do with how a painting comes about.

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He doesn't sketch, he doesn't take photographs.

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He doesn't do anything obvious to commit a scene to memory.

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And yet somehow you know he's taking it all in,

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and you wonder, which of all these sights and sounds will come back one day?

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Not like a scene from a movie,

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but as patches of colour painted on wood.

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I used to worry that I couldn't articulate exactly what

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even a picture like this that I own by him

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does to me internally when I look at it.

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But now I think that that's only a sort of social handicap

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rather than a sort of failing in regard to me and the painting.

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I don't see why I should necessarily be able to put it into words

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or whether it would be improved by my putting it into words.

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I was looking at it just before you came and one of the things I love

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is sort of leaching out from behind all this exuberance are these little areas of sort of greeny-grey brown.

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I just found my thoughts going along the line of

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this is a sort of blazing picture about joy

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and this is behind every joy, there is some melancholy.

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Might be complete bollocks, and actually, if I remember

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that next time I look at it, it won't help me understand it.

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Night drive to Agra, 125 miles south of Delhi.

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It's my first time in India, and feels exhilarating, overwhelming,

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almost dangerous.

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CAR HORNS BLARE

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It's an assault on the senses, India, isn't it,

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in an extraordinary way?

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I think one of the things about India is that everything is so extreme

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and also so naked.

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But the thing about being an artist is that you are always a stranger.

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Because one's always a stranger,

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it's nice to find a place where it's natural to be one.

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It's not natural to be a stranger in England.

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So many of the pictures refer to "abroad", as it used to be called.

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Seasons in their foreign plumage.

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Fruit, palm trees, a searingly coloured sky.

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It may be that this painter needs to travel.

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You need the separation from home and then you need the return home to consider what you have stored up.

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What is worth painting is what remains in and is transformed by memory.

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Late afternoon at Banganga Tank.

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Howard loves this place and is in a talkative mood.

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It's become very glamorous since I first came here.

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This what you call glamorous, is it?

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Oh, yes. Look at these beautiful clean birds.

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There's a little bit of junk there, but mostly it's very downmarket.

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Look at those colours in a row.

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Lilac, the pink, the orange and yellow in between - amazing!

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What is it about the British that we're so coy about colour?

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I don't really know, but I think that one of the reasons

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we're coy about the colour of sunsets

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is because sunsets are the colour of tumescence,

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and that's thought to be... or something!

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It's also not thought to be serious colour.

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That's right. There is that thing about your pictures.

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People think they're very beautiful

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and therefore they can't be serious.

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Oh yes, absolutely.

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That's why I try to persuade people to never call them beautiful,

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but I didn't get anywhere.

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Look at that. That is pretty amazing.

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It's very bright.

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It is. I like that.

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It's a bit more than the pictures can stand, I think.

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We saw this green in India, but did we quite see this green?

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Yes, absolutely.

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This is the perfect Indian vernacular green, not Raj green.

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Is it a British...? No, I think it's a vernacular green.

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Who knows where colours come from in India?

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The Irish Museum of Modern Art has been painted, blazoned,

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maybe appropriately in green, white and gold

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for the Howard Hodgkin exhibition.

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When I walked through the rooms and stopped with the paintings,

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with green prevailing,

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I couldn't help thinking of a poem by Philip Larkin called The Trees.

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"Trees are coming into leaf, Like something almost being said,

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"The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief.

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"Is it that they are born again and we grow old?

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"No, they die too.

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"Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain,

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"Yet still the unresting castles thresh,

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"In full-grown thickness every May.

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" "Last year is dead", they seem to say,

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"Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."

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As a matter of fact, that "begin afresh"

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is an answer that Howard Hodgkin could give to a question he's often asked.

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He's often asked, "What does this painting mean?"

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Which he avoids with various wiles and wisdoms,

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but he could say, truthfully and adequately,

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"This painting means that I had to begin afresh."

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The Dublin show, like the one opening at Tate Britain,

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is chronological, spanning nearly 50 years.

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It's a chance to see, to walk through, a lifetime of painting.

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"I've been looking at Howard's work for three decades now

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"and it's one of the delights of my life.

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"When his paintings, like a gang of international acquaintances,

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"reassemble for a different show

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"in a different city, in a different country,

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"when I stand in front of a picture again after a period of a few years,

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"I often find myself murmuring internally, 'Yes, of course,' or 'Good,'

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"or, 'That's right,' or sometimes, 'Now I am beginning to see.' "

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'The pictures are packed with cunning design

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'and thick, luscious colour.

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'Hodgkin's green is as excruciating as Tiepolo's blue.

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'Having renounced painting's other primary resource - drawing -

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'Hodgkin has fielded the most inventive, sensuously-affecting

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'colour repertory of any contemporary painter.'

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Here you have this artist who's grown up in England,

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a culture which is thought not to be interested in colour,

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and here he is. Really, he's of totally southern temperament

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in this grey atmosphere of London trying to burst out.

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You see it throughout his painting.

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I mean, this really strong emotion, really strong colour,

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which is completely uncharacteristic of what we think of as British painting.

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When he gets to India, it really explodes.

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The trouble is, once you start becoming aware of colours, you start seeing them everywhere...

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or think you do.

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When travelling with Howard, you soon learn not to take colour for granted.

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Howard, look.

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Yeah.

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Dublin green or not?

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Not quite.

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Not quite blue enough, almost.

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We know objectively that painters see colours better than we do,

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see them more exactly, more precisely, but it's very good to have it demonstrated.

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"Taranto, April 1989.

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"Howard spots a black hand-towel

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"in the window of an old-fashioned haberdashery. Four of us go in.

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"The assistant produces a black hand-towel.

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" 'No,' says Howard, 'It's not as black as the one in the window.'

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"The assistant pulls out another, which is similarly rejected,

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"and then another and then another.

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"Howard has now rejected seven or eight, for God's sake,

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"and is asking the fellow to get the original towel out of the window.

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"The assistant contorts himself to do so.

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"When he lays the item down on the counter,

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"I see instantly what I would not have seen in anyone else's presence -

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"the towel is indeed very, very slightly blacker than all the others.

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"The sale is concluded."

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Your awareness and love of colour,

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it's also connected with your sense of escape,

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going to India and getting away.

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Is there something liberating about colour for you personally?

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I don't think, particularly. I think if the picture needs some colour, I put it there.

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But I don't really think in terms of liberation.

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I find painting too difficult to feel liberated by it.

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Colour has no separate identity for me at all.

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As that great colourist David Hockney once said, "It doesn't matter what colour you use."

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For him, the word colourist is an offensive term.

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He's not a colourist. "I'm not a colourist!"

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So he's a painter and he happens to work with colour,

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but the paintings are not a way

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of making a wall pretty or a space pretty.

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So he has to work out carefully what it is he's doing,

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but it's so hard to describe because he's working very tactfully

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and sensitively off a nervous system to tell something.

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It's absolutely crucial to him, but it's not something simple.

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But being called a colourist is a nightmare.

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It's like for a novelist being called a storyteller.

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"Oh, he's a great storyteller."

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When you've spent your lifetime shaping things,

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forcing sentences into certain positions, making paragraphs sharp

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and, "Oh, he's a great storyteller."

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It's that sort of thing that really irritates people.

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Some people would say, "He's an abstract painter."

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A lot of people would say that who don't necessarily know a great deal about the history of art.

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You're very adamant that you're a representational painter.

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I'm a painter. You're a painter.

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You're being a bit gnomic about that because you have said

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that you paint things that you see and experience.

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Yes, I'm only being a bit gnomic to avoid repeating

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that very glib remark I once made that I'm a representational painter of emotions,

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which was a silly thing to say,

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but I'm not an abstract painter.

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His work hovers in this area.

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It always starts from a given moment or a given memory

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and a very specific experience.

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I think if you start to try and pin down, analyse and define in words,

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it can often make it more difficult to realise the experience in another form.

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I think also that he's very happy to give people clues but not explanations

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because he doesn't want the works to be read literally.

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And the first clue Howard offers us is the painting's title.

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This is called...

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It's called Rain.

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How important is the title, as a matter of interest?

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Extremely important because it's the subject of the picture.

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This is a painting called Sad Flowers.

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Sad Flowers.

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Yes, which has been much repainted.

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When you say much repainted, do you mean you worked on it a lot?

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I worked on it a lot and then I thought it wasn't sad enough so I made it even more sad.

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What is it called?

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That's one of Howard's wittier titles.

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It's such an exuberant and blazing picture.

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He calls it Keep it Quiet.

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Its presence is very demanding.

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It's opposite the front door

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and I sometimes deliberately don't switch the light on that's on it

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so that I sort of skulk past it.

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I think, "I'll get back to you tomorrow."

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This is a picture called Snapshot, Howard,

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and it took you nine years to paint.

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It did indeed. It shows how difficult it is to paint a snapshot.

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So, when you began, there was some image that you caught sight of.

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Is that why you called it Snapshot? I'll go that far, yes.

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It takes you a long time, paradoxically, to capture that moment and that glimpse.

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I don't think it's quite as paradoxical as all that because...

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..a glimpse is much harder to pin down.

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Because you're going back deep into your... You're trying to remember...

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You have to remember and paint from memory and believe in it as well.

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Belief is the real trouble.

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When we think of memory in art, you think of Wordsworth

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and emotion recollected in tranquillity.

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It always seems to me that Howard's paintings

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are emotion recollected with the full power and complication

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of the emotion that was felt in the first place.

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There's nothing calm and reflective about these paintings.

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They seem to me furiously emotional.

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'We rose early one morning to go to Lodi Gardens,

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'a favourite haunt of lovers and joggers.

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'We were there to visit the domed tombs

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'and I hoped Howard might open up

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'and explain why it was India that took such a grip on his imagination.'

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There's something about the everyday in India, just coming across these things.

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Yes. Look, you can see the woman taking her dog for a walk.

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Yes, we talked about glimpses.

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One of my favourite things.

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And the elephant-coloured palm trunks,

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I think that's absolutely amazing.

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Was this Mogul architecture what first captivated you?

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No, not really, it was just a very romantic idea of India.

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It was completely exotic.

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It couldn't be further away than living in Shepherds Bush, where I was then.

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And everybody spoke English.

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They don't any more.

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What, in Shepherds Bush?

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No, here.

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When did you first see this?

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I'm sure I saw it on my first visit to India.

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In '64.

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I thought it was an interesting way of exploring how the paintings begin

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by asking him to go through the past chronologically for me - What year? What happened next?

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This irritated him very deeply.

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But every so often, he would say something,

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he would say, "Remember in that street, there was another boy..." and he would start.

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I'd realise he was almost back somewhere

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in the part of himself that makes images.

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And what did you sense about his childhood?

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I felt that he certainly had a sense of being an outsider,

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which can happen to the most protected, loved children

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in the most bourgeois families, the sudden sense that you're not...

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that you weren't born or that you weren't fully made,

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and that you would have to make yourself up as you went along within a family

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no matter how wonderful the family was.

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Oh, I certainly felt that about him, you feel that about him I think the minute you see him -

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that he is somebody who has been lost.

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'Howard Hodgkin doesn't fit in to any group or school of British art.

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'In the early '60s, he painted a series of portraits

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'of fellow artists from the contemporary scene.

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'But as he told me, he was never one of the gang.'

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So, the beginning of the story is in white. In white, yes.

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Any reason for that? Yes. You begin pure and then get corrupted.

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That is not for publication.

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This picture tells you about the story,

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about the art world you inhabited and your interpretation of it.

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And that awful quotation that critic got.

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"I painted pictures of people because I was scared of them."

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That was actually quoted in relation to that painting.

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He's got a point, hasn't he?

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It's quite a scary picture.

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I suppose so!

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They were very close friends of mine at the time,

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but perhaps I was also a little scared of Robin.

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Your subject for a lot of that time

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was actually this art world and the people who inhabited it

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and all going off in their different directions. You were sort of...

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It was probably the nearest I could get to being in it.

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But you were sort of marooned a bit.

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I say marooned, but you were still finding your own way.

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Yes, I was.

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Throughout the 1960s,

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Howard escaped the confines of the English art world

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through his passion for collecting Indian paintings and drawings.

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As Bruce Chatwin observed,

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part of this enthusiasm was the thrill of the chase.

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'Howard's hunting instincts were thoroughly aroused.

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'He bought, sold and traded.

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'He perfected the tactics of the bazaar

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'and for over 10 years, he channelled about half his creative energies into his collection.'

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This is purely an unfinished painting.

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But I like it very much because of that.

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'Living with objects is...

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'only just less difficult than living with other people.'

0:26:130:26:17

'Any retrospective exhibition of Howard's own paintings would, in my opinion,

0:26:170:26:22

'be incomplete without the Indian collection hanging beside them.

0:26:220:26:26

'Though having once made a purchase, he has an equally strong impulse

0:26:260:26:30

'to hide it, to lend it, or at least to get it out of his sight.'

0:26:300:26:34

And that's just what he has done.

0:26:360:26:39

When I wanted to see his collection, I had to go to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,

0:26:390:26:44

where, for the moment, it was not on display, but somewhere deep in storage.

0:26:440:26:50

The Ashmolean's had a long relationship with Howard Hodgkin

0:26:570:27:01

ever since he was a painting fellow here in the mid-'70s.

0:27:010:27:06

And we were delighted a few years ago when he said, "Would you like to take the collection on loan?"

0:27:060:27:12

So here it is.

0:27:120:27:15

He's been collecting ever since he was a schoolboy.

0:27:150:27:18

It's been a vital part of his life.

0:27:180:27:21

I think Howard has a huge affinity for elephants and for elephants in painting.

0:27:210:27:26

Probably about a fifth of his collection shows elephants.

0:27:260:27:30

They vary from simple drawings,

0:27:300:27:33

which, as it were, capture the whole life and soul of an elephant, particularly an Indian elephant,

0:27:330:27:39

to elaborate paintings like this one.

0:27:390:27:42

Hunters have been sent out by the royal court to trap a wild elephant.

0:27:460:27:52

The bull elephant has been lured away from his herd.

0:27:520:27:56

His herd are all frolicking happily in the lake beneath.

0:27:560:27:59

It's just a great tour de force of elephants playing, elephants charging,

0:27:590:28:05

elephants climbing rocks...

0:28:050:28:07

everything's going on.

0:28:070:28:09

Elephants tripping the light fantastic, almost.

0:28:090:28:12

Indian painters tended to copy the same subjects over and over again.

0:28:160:28:20

They produced good paintings, but they didn't produce great paintings,

0:28:200:28:24

which had that original spark of inspiration.

0:28:240:28:27

That's what you see in so many of the paintings in the Hodgkin collection -

0:28:270:28:31

they're the real thing, they have that original spark.

0:28:310:28:34

Howard also collects people.

0:28:480:28:51

His passion for Indian art led to friendships with scholars

0:28:510:28:55

like Simon Digby, who we met up with to be our guide at Humayan's tomb.

0:28:550:29:00

You think of paintings of the mid-17th...you get domes,

0:29:000:29:06

which probably looked quite like these...

0:29:060:29:09

domes of a century earlier.

0:29:090:29:13

I was looking at some pictures

0:29:130:29:16

in this wonderful installation in the V,

0:29:160:29:19

and there was Simon wearing sandals and carrying two shopping bags,

0:29:190:29:25

which in those days made him look slightly like a male bag lady.

0:29:250:29:32

I thought it was him - I knew him by sight...I thought.

0:29:340:29:39

He came up in his best dithering tones.

0:29:390:29:42

He said,

0:29:420:29:44

"Mr Hodgkin, isn't it?"

0:29:440:29:46

I said, "Yes."

0:29:460:29:48

We went on from there.

0:29:480:29:50

It was a time when so few people among the British

0:29:500:29:57

were interested in Indian art in any way,

0:29:570:30:01

so almost anyone of our generation who were interested

0:30:010:30:06

were bound to run across one another sooner or later.

0:30:060:30:09

But I was so impressed, being much shier than that, that you came up to a perfect stranger.

0:30:090:30:15

I thought that was admirable.

0:30:150:30:18

I've always been badly behaved!

0:30:180:30:20

Hardly.

0:30:210:30:23

I note the Star of David in the roundels.

0:30:230:30:26

That motif becomes popular...

0:30:260:30:29

again in the mid-16th century. It's found also on...

0:30:290:30:33

He would talk for half the night when I first knew him.

0:30:330:30:37

And in his drinking days, it was not half.

0:30:370:30:40

'He's immensely knowledgeable about various things, particularly about Indian decorative art.'

0:30:430:30:49

When you go, and I just watched you there,

0:31:020:31:07

a lot of the time you would just sit and...absorb things.

0:31:070:31:12

Is that the way you are when you're away?

0:31:120:31:17

It's the way I am everywhere now, I think, very much.

0:31:170:31:21

I try and work all the time.

0:31:260:31:28

So that's what you're doing when you're sitting, you're working?

0:31:310:31:34

Yeah.

0:31:340:31:36

"When travelling with Howard, he and I have a running joke.

0:31:440:31:47

"Occasionally, sitting in a bar, relaxing in a restaurant, staring at a sunset,

0:31:470:31:52

"gazing at a piazza, he will say, with a delivery poised between

0:31:520:31:56

"self-satire and true contentment, 'I feel a picture coming on.'

0:31:560:32:01

"I ritually reply, 'I feel a novel coming on.'

0:32:010:32:04

"He means it more than I do - well, I never mean it.

0:32:040:32:08

"I often wonder what is happening inside his head at these moments.

0:32:080:32:12

"Howard looks intently all the time, but when he says he feels a picture

0:32:120:32:17

"coming on, he seems to be looking differently.

0:32:170:32:20

"The moment is digestive, ruminant,

0:32:200:32:24

"and I know he will remember everything.

0:32:240:32:26

"That's to say, everything he needs and will need."

0:32:260:32:30

It's like a stage set.

0:32:560:32:59

She's like...

0:32:590:33:01

She's act one. Yes, exactly. Something's going to happen.

0:33:010:33:06

See how the shape of the...

0:33:060:33:10

bottom of columns echoes the shape of her broom.

0:33:100:33:13

A word would be enough to start a painting.

0:33:170:33:21

A word,

0:33:210:33:23

an event, a place... Yes, a place.

0:33:230:33:25

A thing that happened. Yes.

0:33:250:33:29

A memory in the distant past. Yes.

0:33:290:33:32

And it isn't just a question of capturing the moment.

0:33:320:33:39

It's almost the opposite of that.

0:33:390:33:41

It's trying to find in the experience, whatever it was, the way it was remembered.

0:33:410:33:48

To try and make that something that would matter.

0:33:480:33:52

But if you're feeling miserable, it's a perfect place to come, it only lasts five seconds.

0:34:000:34:06

I did once come here. What, when you were feeling miserable?

0:34:070:34:11

Utterly miserable.

0:34:110:34:12

'India became an emotional lifeline.

0:34:190:34:21

'Each winter, he travelled all over the subcontinent,

0:34:210:34:25

'sopping up impressions -

0:34:250:34:26

'the view from a railway carriage, the colour of cow dust in the evening,

0:34:260:34:30

'or the sight of an orange sari against a concrete balustrade -

0:34:300:34:34

'and storing them for pictures he would paint at home.

0:34:340:34:38

'And then the story might, artistically, have ended, were it not for a chance encounter.

0:34:380:34:43

'The details of the encounter I leave to the imagination.

0:34:430:34:47

'The results were that Howard's painting took a sharp and unexpected swerve.'

0:34:470:34:53

Somehow that Chatwin...because the melodrama of that description...

0:34:540:34:59

Yeah, the melodrama of course has affected...

0:34:590:35:03

Everyone after that said, "Ah, he came out, and his work went...!"

0:35:030:35:09

Nothing so simple

0:35:100:35:12

or direct.

0:35:120:35:15

I don't think it's anything like as simple as suggesting that,

0:35:150:35:20

in the mid-'70s, he came out, and suddenly his painting...

0:35:200:35:25

became of a different order.

0:35:250:35:28

I think the subjects may have changed somewhat.

0:35:280:35:31

And he was probably prepared

0:35:310:35:34

to paint...

0:35:340:35:36

subjects in which he had been, not just an observer,

0:35:360:35:40

but subjects that were more directly about his own experience

0:35:400:35:45

and own relationships.

0:35:450:35:46

That probably did change.

0:35:460:35:49

'We'd come here to the Red Fort at Agra to see Howard's favourite object in all of India

0:36:010:36:07

'and at the same time to get a view of everybody else's favourite, the Taj Mahal,

0:36:070:36:12

'which, rather pointedly, was not on Howard's itinerary.

0:36:120:36:16

'Nor was it actually visible.'

0:36:160:36:18

So, on a different day, when the sun wasn't here, we'd see the Taj Mahal from here? Yes, you would.

0:36:250:36:31

'But not today.'

0:36:310:36:33

We can probably buy a postcard or something of it.

0:36:330:36:38

'Thanks a bunch, Howard.'

0:36:380:36:39

I want to see my favourite object.

0:36:430:36:46

'And there it was, the emperor's throne.'

0:36:460:36:51

No, I'll sit down here and you sit up there.

0:36:510:36:54

All right, go on, then. That would be appropriate.

0:36:540:36:57

Of course(!)

0:36:570:36:58

No, no, you have to sit cross-legged in the middle.

0:36:580:37:02

'Howard had a plan, and I was beginning to think I was being set up.'

0:37:020:37:07

I'm only doing this for you, Howard.

0:37:070:37:09

In the middle. In the middle?

0:37:090:37:11

Like the Emperor Akbar.

0:37:110:37:14

Where he sat.

0:37:150:37:17

Yes.

0:37:170:37:19

I'm trying to remember what the proper posture...

0:37:270:37:31

When you want something, my part would be...

0:37:320:37:35

So what can I do for you?

0:37:350:37:37

I think you could persuade people to look at my pictures.

0:37:390:37:43

That's what I'm trying to do!

0:37:430:37:45

Well, you see, I believe you.

0:37:470:37:49

You love Mogul miniatures, you collect them.

0:37:550:37:59

Why...? I only like big ones,

0:37:590:38:02

I have to interpolate at that point.

0:38:020:38:05

You only like big miniatures? Yes.

0:38:050:38:08

You're a perverse fellow.

0:38:080:38:10

Yes, I know!

0:38:100:38:12

It gives them a certain quality when they're that big and everyone thinks they're that big.

0:38:120:38:17

But this picture is of a very large subject.

0:38:170:38:21

It's called, "Come Back, Dull Care".

0:38:230:38:27

"Come Back, Dull Care". Yes.

0:38:300:38:32

Most people would say,

0:38:320:38:34

"Be Gone, Dull Care". Exactly. I thought it would be very good to have it back.

0:38:340:38:39

It's a feel-good picture.

0:38:410:38:44

Doesn't it look like one?

0:38:440:38:46

Why do people say about your pictures that they're erotic?

0:38:480:38:52

It's a word you hear a lot about your pictures. Well, I think they hope they are.

0:38:520:38:56

And do YOU hope they are?

0:38:560:38:58

Yes, if I've made them erotic, then I do hope they are.

0:38:580:39:01

I saw this man sunbathing in Central Park wearing red Bermudas.

0:39:010:39:06

I can see that sort of New York...

0:39:090:39:12

Looking up, I can see.

0:39:120:39:14

Is it a pleasurable experience, painting?

0:39:140:39:16

No, it's agony.

0:39:160:39:19

But I don't like saying that out loud, cos it sounds like self-pity.

0:39:190:39:24

But it's not pleasurable...to me.

0:39:240:39:27

So why do you do it?

0:39:270:39:28

I don't know.

0:39:280:39:30

I suppose it's a compulsion of some kind.

0:39:300:39:34

And when I've finished a painting which I am pleased with, which does happen,

0:39:340:39:40

then I always think I've got to paint another one.

0:39:400:39:43

Do you surprise yourself when you make a picture? Have to. Have to?

0:39:440:39:48

I mean, when one talks about composition,

0:39:570:40:00

it that something,

0:40:000:40:02

which emerges more than it's...

0:40:020:40:06

conceived or ordained, the composition?

0:40:060:40:10

I'm not going to answer that - it's a trade secret.

0:40:100:40:13

He's very reluctant to talk about that whole process.

0:40:190:40:23

There's not a lot of point in probing.

0:40:230:40:25

You probably have, but he'll give away a bit, but he won't... And I understand that.

0:40:250:40:30

Have you ever seen him paint?

0:40:300:40:32

No.

0:40:320:40:34

I want to go inside, don't you?

0:40:370:40:40

Isn't that beautiful? Look at the light coming in. Beautiful.

0:40:410:40:46

Crawford Market, Mumbai, a flourishing relic of the Raj,

0:40:460:40:51

'designed by Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard's father.'

0:40:510:40:54

There's the fountain.

0:40:540:40:56

Right. I shouldn't be holding your arm on camera.

0:40:560:40:59

'There was something Howard was eager to show me.'

0:41:090:41:12

The fountain really is amazing.

0:41:130:41:17

They've painted over all the original design in technicolour.

0:41:170:41:21

It's been absorbed by India.

0:41:210:41:25

So it was originally built by...

0:41:250:41:28

Designed by Lockwood Kipling.

0:41:280:41:30

What period? It looks like 1930s or '20s.

0:41:330:41:37

No, no, no, that's because of all the paint. It's much earlier, you mean. Yes.

0:41:370:41:41

Not of the same period as the building?

0:41:410:41:43

Yes! My God!

0:41:430:41:45

You see how they've...

0:41:450:41:47

Indianised it?

0:41:470:41:49

They certainly have. Wonderfully!

0:41:490:41:51

You see, it was originally a kind of mock Byzantine. See the little columns.

0:41:510:41:56

Very beautiful, because water would have come out of all these...

0:41:560:42:03

..heads.

0:42:050:42:06

It's been customised. And I like the one that...

0:42:070:42:10

the broken one that they've painted a face on.

0:42:100:42:14

It's in Venetian Byzantine style, partly.

0:42:160:42:20

Actually, what they call Indo-Saracenic. Indo-Saracenic?

0:42:200:42:26

That's a very highfalutin name.

0:42:280:42:30

Well, it's a very highfalutin style!

0:42:300:42:33

It's thanks to Ruskin in the end,

0:42:330:42:35

all this.

0:42:350:42:37

Is there quite a lot of Ruskin's influence in Bombay in the architecture?

0:42:370:42:42

I would think.

0:42:420:42:45

But, of course, the influence eventually came from the government art schools.

0:42:450:42:50

But the biggest architectural treat in our entire India trip was yet to come

0:43:010:43:06

and it was Howard's work on the grandest scale -

0:43:060:43:10

an astonishing giant mural

0:43:100:43:12

cut from white marble and black stone

0:43:120:43:15

for the British Council Library in Delhi.

0:43:150:43:19

His collaborator was the Indian architect, Charles Correa.

0:43:190:43:24

The British...

0:43:240:43:25

layer is just one of many, many layers that make India.

0:43:250:43:31

Any Indian is just a pin you push through these layers

0:43:310:43:34

and it hits them at different speeds and with different consequences.

0:43:340:43:38

So that's what that building is about.

0:43:380:43:40

You're trying to express that, and that's how we got that structure.

0:43:400:43:44

We needed something in front, which would convey all this,

0:43:440:43:47

and that's where Howard came up trumps, because he came up with this idea of the shade of a giant tree.

0:43:470:43:53

India is a place where all these things could happen, a really pluralistic world.

0:43:530:43:59

What was the thought in your mind when you came up with this?

0:44:010:44:05

I wanted to do something that's totally...

0:44:050:44:09

non-sectarian in every way

0:44:090:44:12

and...

0:44:120:44:14

I thought of people sitting under banyan trees reading, which is a very...

0:44:140:44:20

familiar subject in early Indian painting.

0:44:200:44:24

I thought it was appropriate for a library.

0:44:240:44:27

So this is all done with stone? Yes. Amazing.

0:44:290:44:34

White marble and black stone.

0:44:340:44:37

I was so amazed that... He has always dealt in colour.

0:44:390:44:42

When you come to India, you'd think you'd want to deal in colour and, of course, he does when he comes...

0:44:420:44:48

But he had the guts to say, "No, shadows are black. The hotter the sun, the blacker the shadow."

0:44:480:44:53

A lot of Mogul buildings are decorated in black and white marble

0:44:530:44:57

and natural stone like this is.

0:44:570:44:59

The person cutting it will...

0:45:020:45:05

say, "OK, like that."

0:45:050:45:07

Whereas, in fact, you need to do...

0:45:070:45:10

It was all cut out with scissors, originally,

0:45:130:45:16

from paper.

0:45:160:45:18

Is that how you did it in order to get it right? Yes.

0:45:180:45:21

It had to be so meticulous in every...

0:45:210:45:24

There's a very good example up there where you see just a little white dot.

0:45:240:45:28

It's just about over your head. There, the peak? The peak, yes.

0:45:300:45:36

I'd call it a mountain peak.

0:45:360:45:38

I think you're right. It's more a peak than a dot.

0:45:380:45:42

I'm sorry.

0:45:420:45:44

Some murals are a little extra on the building. This is the building, isn't it?

0:45:440:45:48

Yes, and that was something that we were both determined it should be.

0:45:480:45:52

The wonderful thing is that black and white holds all the colour at bay,

0:45:520:45:57

and there's so much colour pressing to get in.

0:45:570:46:00

Even the stone around. It's beautifully done.

0:46:000:46:02

Whether these...

0:46:020:46:04

forms are the limbs of a tree or...

0:46:040:46:09

a banyan or whatever, you have a sense of an organic form, that's the key thing.

0:46:090:46:14

There's tension that exists between this organic form

0:46:140:46:18

contained within a rather severe building...

0:46:180:46:24

austere building in a certain sense, except it has this wonderful pink sandstone.

0:46:240:46:30

It's a wonderful balance.

0:46:300:46:31

You have this sense of these forms pushing their way out.

0:46:310:46:35

In that sense, it's very equivalent to many of his paintings.

0:46:350:46:39

'Our last day in India and one last sight we really mustn't miss.'

0:46:520:46:58

Tumescent? Yes.

0:47:030:47:06

Isn't that fabulous?

0:47:080:47:10

Somebody was thinking of me when they arranged that.

0:47:140:47:18

Where is it going, this sunset, this Bombay sunset?

0:47:210:47:26

Into another painting. You going into another painting, do you think?

0:47:260:47:30

Yes.

0:47:300:47:32

I've painted one Bombay sunset already.

0:47:320:47:34

That was from an early...

0:47:480:47:51

trip to Bombay?

0:47:510:47:53

A long time ago. A long time ago. Yes.

0:47:530:47:56

A sunset is such a...

0:47:590:48:01

remarkable happening.

0:48:010:48:04

And it touches people so deeply

0:48:060:48:09

that...

0:48:090:48:10

somehow that makes one want to... makes ME want to paint it more and more.

0:48:100:48:15

And I've painted several

0:48:170:48:20

and I'm painting more at the moment.

0:48:200:48:22

Nothing more about my future plans.

0:48:250:48:27

I asked him, "Is there anybody working at the very top level in England now

0:48:270:48:32

"whose work really depends on yours?"

0:48:320:48:36

Is there a young painter who's taken everything from you and is now working with it? He said, "Nobody."

0:48:360:48:42

I said, "Have you had any influence?" "None."

0:48:420:48:46

And there was, in saying it, half sadness, but much more than half sadness.

0:48:460:48:51

Let's say a quarter sadness. Three-quarters absolute pride, the doggedness of that,

0:48:510:48:56

that I alone now,

0:48:560:48:59

in this room in London, I'm making images that really matter in this way to people.

0:48:590:49:05

Lovely feeling!

0:49:050:49:06

Mmm.

0:49:150:49:16

What's that called, Howard? "Performance Art."

0:49:210:49:25

Do you remember performance art?

0:49:250:49:27

I do, but this is performance art from when?

0:49:270:49:31

When you remember it from.

0:49:310:49:34

Really? From a long time ago. Mmm.

0:49:340:49:37

And that memory has remained with you, and so you made that picture?

0:49:370:49:43

How could I forget?

0:49:430:49:44

"Living Room,

0:49:490:49:51

"1999-2006."

0:49:510:49:54

And why did it wait...

0:49:580:50:00

seven years to be completed?

0:50:000:50:02

Perhaps fortunately it can't talk.

0:50:040:50:06

'It was our last day of filming

0:50:130:50:15

'and just when it seemed that Howard had, typically,

0:50:150:50:18

'contrived to have the last word, something extraordinary happened.

0:50:180:50:24

'He did exactly what he said he never would.

0:50:240:50:27

'He picked up a paintbrush and prepared to paint.'

0:50:270:50:31

I wonder what will become of that?

0:51:010:51:03

Some pictures...

0:51:030:51:05

may go behind that screen there,

0:51:050:51:10

and you may not to back to them for a long period?

0:51:100:51:15

No, but I do.

0:51:150:51:17

You do? Yeah.

0:51:170:51:19

I can't, off-hand, think of a picture that I've completely abandoned.

0:51:190:51:24

But probably when I die, there'll be several waiting...

0:51:260:51:30

for the coup de grace

0:51:300:51:34

and not getting it.

0:51:340:51:36

It's beginning to go.

0:51:430:51:45

It's going beautifully, though.

0:51:450:51:47

It couldn't be more elegant, the way it slides away.

0:51:470:51:51

All good things come to an end.

0:51:540:51:56

Yes!

0:51:560:51:58

And also start afresh.

0:52:010:52:03

'Is it that they are born again and we grow old?

0:52:070:52:11

'No, they die too.

0:52:110:52:13

'Their yearly trick of looking new is written down in rings of grain.

0:52:130:52:19

'Last year is dead, they seem to say.

0:52:190:52:22

'Begin afresh,

0:52:220:52:23

'afresh, afresh.'

0:52:230:52:26

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