The Art of Cornwall

0:00:03 > 0:00:06Ancient and mysterious.

0:00:06 > 0:00:09Romantic and remote.

0:00:09 > 0:00:12Cornwall stands at the very edge of our world.

0:00:12 > 0:00:17Yet it exerts a magnetic pull on our imaginations.

0:00:24 > 0:00:26Coincidence, curiosity

0:00:26 > 0:00:31and crisis drew a string of great artists to this remote region.

0:00:31 > 0:00:35In responding to each other and to the dramatic landscape, they went on

0:00:35 > 0:00:39to produce some of the most exhilarating art of the 20th century.

0:00:39 > 0:00:44The history of British painting and sculpture would be redefined

0:00:44 > 0:00:46in this distant and forbidding place.

0:00:54 > 0:00:59For it was in Cornwall that against all the odds, a small fishing village

0:00:59 > 0:01:03was briefly transformed into an international centre of modern art.

0:01:03 > 0:01:07And that fishing village was St Ives.

0:01:08 > 0:01:14A series of extraordinary characters was brought together into this unlikely community.

0:01:16 > 0:01:22Alfred Wallace, the luckless ancient mariner, wholly untutored in art.

0:01:22 > 0:01:27And his disciple, the brilliant but doomed Christopher Wood.

0:01:27 > 0:01:33Ben Nicholson, the formidable Svengali of the British avant-garde.

0:01:33 > 0:01:39And his lover, Barbara Hepworth, who was the world's first great female sculptor.

0:01:39 > 0:01:47And two Cornish sons, who would revolutionise the way we see both landscape and colour.

0:01:48 > 0:01:53This film explores the work, lives and relationships of

0:01:53 > 0:01:58the masters who most helped turn St Ives into a colony of modern art.

0:02:00 > 0:02:03It's like a whole continent of colour.

0:02:03 > 0:02:10It seems hard to believe, but for a few dazzling years, this place was as famous as Paris, as exciting

0:02:10 > 0:02:14as New York, and infinitely more progressive than London.

0:02:16 > 0:02:20So how did this actually happen, and why did it so tragically end?

0:02:22 > 0:02:25This is an epic tale, filled with individual triumphs and disasters.

0:02:25 > 0:02:28But together, it amounts to nothing less

0:02:28 > 0:02:32than an alternative history of British art.

0:02:32 > 0:02:34This is The Art Of Cornwall.

0:02:48 > 0:02:54Cornwall is not a county, it is a country.

0:02:54 > 0:02:58For most of its history, it was a desolate outpost at the edge of

0:02:58 > 0:03:03England, a mysterious Celtic kingdom of tombs, tin mines and fishermen.

0:03:03 > 0:03:08It boasted its own language, its own legal system, and until only

0:03:08 > 0:03:13recently was considerably harder to get to than much of mainland Europe.

0:03:13 > 0:03:19But it was the peculiar quality of the light in St Ives that first caught the world's attention.

0:03:19 > 0:03:23It's been called the brightest place in Britain, and the reason for that

0:03:23 > 0:03:30is simple - because the town is completely surrounded by sea, and that sea acts as a giant reflector,

0:03:30 > 0:03:32bouncing the light back into the town.

0:03:32 > 0:03:38And if that wasn't enough, there are miles of golden sand that only serve to intensify the effect.

0:03:43 > 0:03:47It was the arrival of the railways in the 1850s that ended

0:03:47 > 0:03:53Cornwall's age-old isolation, and first brought artists to its shores.

0:03:53 > 0:03:55St Ives was an established artists' colony,

0:03:55 > 0:03:59it really built up around the railway, which gave accessibility

0:03:59 > 0:04:01to the capital, to the Royal Academy,

0:04:01 > 0:04:03allowing it to become a colony in the late

0:04:03 > 0:04:0819th century - and the fashion for harbours and fishermen as subjects.

0:04:10 > 0:04:14The railways brought growing numbers of gentleman artists, all attracted

0:04:14 > 0:04:22by the new talk, of a picturesque English Riviera, a paradise bathed in warm, Mediterranean light.

0:04:22 > 0:04:26Over the following decades, these painters formed artists' colonies

0:04:26 > 0:04:34along the Cornish coast and produced thousands of highly marketable paintings.

0:04:34 > 0:04:39They depicted scenes of hardworking men and God-fearing women, together

0:04:39 > 0:04:45enduring, with stoic fortitude, the trials of Cornish land and sea.

0:04:46 > 0:04:51They appeared to offer a definitive and authentic image of Cornwall.

0:04:54 > 0:04:58But this wasn't the real Cornwall, it was a fantasy, a make-believe world,

0:04:58 > 0:05:05mawkish and patronising, a masterful piece of Victorian myth-making.

0:05:06 > 0:05:11These painters achieved huge popularity in Victorian Britain, but the 20th century

0:05:11 > 0:05:16would see a new group of radical artists come to Cornwall,

0:05:16 > 0:05:18and they would change everything.

0:05:33 > 0:05:36I'm an art historian at the University of Cambridge.

0:05:36 > 0:05:42I first came here as a student harbouring an unhealthy teenage obsession with modern art.

0:05:44 > 0:05:48And Cornwall seemed as far away from that as it was possible to get.

0:05:51 > 0:05:56To me, its only association was of depressing family holidays in the rain.

0:05:56 > 0:06:00But that all changed one afternoon when I discovered a little museum

0:06:00 > 0:06:03just around the corner from my college.

0:06:11 > 0:06:17Kettle's Yard is a quirky collection of pebbles, driftwood and pottery,

0:06:17 > 0:06:22but scattered casually amongst those odds and ends are some masterpieces of modern art.

0:06:26 > 0:06:28But when I first came here that afternoon, it wasn't these

0:06:28 > 0:06:36modern masterpieces that captured my imagination - I was transfixed by something altogether less exotic.

0:06:38 > 0:06:42I discovered the work of three unmistakably British artists,

0:06:42 > 0:06:46who all shared a profound connection to Cornwall.

0:06:46 > 0:06:51Modest, cardboard paintings of Cornish boats by Alfred Wallis.

0:06:51 > 0:06:56Graceful and tasteful abstractions by Ben Nicholson.

0:06:57 > 0:07:03And the quirky paintings of harbours by Christopher Wood.

0:07:03 > 0:07:11The chance meeting of these three very different artists would transform the fortunes of St Ives,

0:07:11 > 0:07:16and it was the ferocious ambition of the youngest of them that sets this story in motion.

0:07:18 > 0:07:26Christopher, or Kit, Wood is one of the most glamorous and dissolute figures in British art.

0:07:26 > 0:07:31And his short, explosive life, is the stuff that myths are made of.

0:07:33 > 0:07:36At the age of just 19, this middle-class boy from Liverpool

0:07:36 > 0:07:39made a staggering announcement to his family.

0:07:39 > 0:07:44He was going to become the greatest painter the world had ever seen.

0:07:44 > 0:07:48Kit had set himself a virtually impossible task.

0:07:48 > 0:07:55He knew that if he was to have any chance of success, there was only one place in the world he could be.

0:08:08 > 0:08:12Kit arrived in Paris in March 1921

0:08:12 > 0:08:17with a suitcase in his hand and £14 in his pocket.

0:08:19 > 0:08:25Beautiful and bisexual, he yearned for both artistic and social liberation.

0:08:27 > 0:08:30His choice of time and place was perfect.

0:08:34 > 0:08:39At that time, Paris was the epitome of everything modern -

0:08:39 > 0:08:41it was open-minded, risque,

0:08:41 > 0:08:45provocative, the complete opposite of buttoned-up, insular London.

0:08:45 > 0:08:50And what's more, it had been the undisputed capital of the art world for generations.

0:08:54 > 0:08:57It was in Paris that Matisse, Picasso and Brecht had

0:08:57 > 0:09:01torn up and completely re-written the old artistic rules.

0:09:01 > 0:09:05And it was in Paris that new, radical isms were pouring out

0:09:05 > 0:09:10of cafes and bistros with every day that passed.

0:09:17 > 0:09:20These revolutionary art forms were mechanistic, urban and angular,

0:09:20 > 0:09:22and at first it seems difficult

0:09:22 > 0:09:25to see how they could have any connection to Cornwall.

0:09:25 > 0:09:28But bear with me, because if Paris offered anything, what it offered

0:09:28 > 0:09:32was freedom, freedom from all the stifling academic rules and

0:09:32 > 0:09:36conventions, freedom from official techniques and correct styles,

0:09:36 > 0:09:38freedom in many ways from the past.

0:09:38 > 0:09:42Paris proved that art could be done in a different way.

0:09:45 > 0:09:48It wasn't just artistic freedom that Paris offered.

0:09:48 > 0:09:53Kit was also sucked in to the dazzling social maelstrom

0:09:53 > 0:09:55of the Parisian beau monde -

0:09:55 > 0:09:59he even acquired a rich and well-connected playboy lover.

0:09:59 > 0:10:02He would introduce Kit to some important people,

0:10:02 > 0:10:05but it also introduced him to some very bad habits.

0:10:08 > 0:10:12Kit's favourite bad habit was opium.

0:10:12 > 0:10:18It became an addiction that would soon overshadow his life and his work.

0:10:20 > 0:10:25Kit's letters home are a poignant record of his state of mind in Paris.

0:10:25 > 0:10:28They reveal the first signs of a mental turmoil caused by the conflict between

0:10:28 > 0:10:32his days at the easel and his nights with an opium pipe.

0:10:32 > 0:10:37He writes here, "My brain is working too hard and I don't know where the end will come.

0:10:37 > 0:10:41"I've worked very hard and produced nothing whatever to satisfy me."

0:10:43 > 0:10:46Kit's misgivings were not shared by his peers.

0:10:46 > 0:10:50Jean Cocteau called him the most talented painter he had ever met,

0:10:50 > 0:10:55and a recommendation from Picasso secured him a dream job.

0:10:58 > 0:11:04In February 1927, the Russian ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev asked Kit to design the scenery

0:11:04 > 0:11:09for his new show, Romeo and Juliet, which premiered here at the Theatre Du Chatalet.

0:11:12 > 0:11:16The collaboration, however, ended in disaster.

0:11:16 > 0:11:22Diaghilev was not impressed by Kit's designs, and Kit was in no mood for compromise.

0:11:22 > 0:11:26After a blazing row, he was sacked.

0:11:28 > 0:11:31It was a pivotal moment for Kit, and in its own way, it was

0:11:31 > 0:11:34a pivotal moment for St Ives and Cornwall, too.

0:11:34 > 0:11:36He'd learnt everything he could learn from Paris - now what

0:11:36 > 0:11:44he had to do was take these ideas and find fresh inspiration, and that inspiration would be Cornwall.

0:11:56 > 0:11:59Cornwall was in Kit's blood.

0:11:59 > 0:12:05His mother was Cornish and he instantly developed a deep sense of belonging to the place.

0:12:05 > 0:12:10The region's rugged landscape stirred his overactive imagination.

0:12:12 > 0:12:18As soon as he arrived he wrote, "If I am here long enough, I'm going to paint good things."

0:12:18 > 0:12:24Kit had also found a friend and ally in Ben Nicholson, a man who had

0:12:24 > 0:12:30spent much of the 1920s bringing the spirit of Paris to Britain.

0:12:30 > 0:12:32In the summer of 1928,

0:12:32 > 0:12:37Kit joined Nicholson on a weekend trip to Cornwall.

0:12:37 > 0:12:41He'd actually come down to Falmouth for a house party,

0:12:41 > 0:12:47but the following day, he convinced Nicholson to drive to the town of St Ives for a sketching trip.

0:12:54 > 0:12:59On Sunday 26th August, the two men arrived in St Ives.

0:12:59 > 0:13:01They made their way to Porthmeor Beach.

0:13:01 > 0:13:05This is Kit's painting of the scene.

0:13:10 > 0:13:15In the evening, they packed up their materials and set off for home.

0:13:15 > 0:13:19They were strolling happily back into town when something caught their eye.

0:13:19 > 0:13:25The front door of this little cottage was open, so they knocked and peeked inside.

0:13:25 > 0:13:28Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.

0:13:28 > 0:13:33There were pictures hanging on the walls, piled on the floors, stacked

0:13:33 > 0:13:36chaotically against the chairs,

0:13:36 > 0:13:39and in the middle of them all was a little old man, painting.

0:13:41 > 0:13:47His name was Alfred Wallis, a 73-year-old ex-fisherman.

0:13:50 > 0:13:51And in the pictures around him,

0:13:51 > 0:13:57Kit and Ben instantly recognised a powerful and uncorrupted vision.

0:13:59 > 0:14:04This art seemed as radical as anything they had seen in Paris.

0:14:06 > 0:14:09The encounter with Alfred Wallis as this

0:14:09 > 0:14:16genuine exemplar of authentic artistic expression, untrained,

0:14:16 > 0:14:19unsullied by academicism, is really crucial.

0:14:19 > 0:14:22He's symbolic at that time as a genuine,

0:14:22 > 0:14:25what's seen as a genuinely naive artist.

0:14:31 > 0:14:35While Ben returned to London to spread word of their discovery,

0:14:35 > 0:14:38Kit stayed on in St Ives for the autumn,

0:14:38 > 0:14:42renting a cottage across the road from Alfred's home.

0:14:42 > 0:14:48It seemed he had finally found the inspiration for which he'd been searching.

0:14:48 > 0:14:50Here's a guy who'd been in Paris, he'd been mixing with

0:14:50 > 0:14:56all the greatest artistic figures in the world - mixing with Picasso, Cocteau, Stravinsky,

0:14:56 > 0:14:59Diaghilev, and yet none of that really seemed to count for anything.

0:14:59 > 0:15:04What actually inspired him was this place, it was Cornwall, and it was little old Alfred Wallis.

0:15:06 > 0:15:09I think somehow

0:15:09 > 0:15:11Wood finds in Wallis, erm...

0:15:11 > 0:15:16The subject matter, the slightly awkward space and detailing of

0:15:16 > 0:15:19the paintings, the creaminess of the paint, he gets from Wallis.

0:15:19 > 0:15:22But I wonder if there's also not a certain kind of English landscape,

0:15:22 > 0:15:27an English spirit that Wallis kind of opens up for Wood.

0:15:28 > 0:15:31Kit visited Wallis every day,

0:15:31 > 0:15:35and the old man's influence was soon apparent.

0:15:35 > 0:15:43Scenes of metropolitan life were replaced by more vivid depictions of life by the sea.

0:15:44 > 0:15:51The dreams of the young man who'd set out to be the world's greatest painter were bearing fruit.

0:15:51 > 0:15:54But Kit Wood was losing his mind.

0:15:55 > 0:16:00His addiction to opium had intensified.

0:16:00 > 0:16:03He started hallucinating.

0:16:03 > 0:16:06He became paranoid.

0:16:06 > 0:16:09Opium was driving him to the edge.

0:16:14 > 0:16:17His inner torment was reflected

0:16:17 > 0:16:21in the sinister quality of his last works.

0:16:25 > 0:16:27On 21st August 1930,

0:16:27 > 0:16:31an exhausted Kit met his mother for lunch in Salisbury.

0:16:31 > 0:16:33Then, in a fit of panic,

0:16:33 > 0:16:37he threw himself under a train.

0:16:37 > 0:16:41He was killed, at the age of 29.

0:16:46 > 0:16:48Although he had only stayed there briefly,

0:16:48 > 0:16:52Kit had shown that Cornwall could be a natural home for modern art.

0:16:55 > 0:16:58He had introduced Ben Nicholson to St Ives, and together, they had

0:16:58 > 0:17:02discovered the unique talent of Alfred Wallis.

0:17:02 > 0:17:07During the 1930s, Wallis was transformed into something of

0:17:07 > 0:17:12a cult figure, with his remarkable depictions of his seafaring past.

0:17:14 > 0:17:19His paintings also recorded the demise of one of Cornwall's

0:17:19 > 0:17:22oldest and most important industries.

0:17:34 > 0:17:39This is Newlyn - it's pretty much all that's left of the Cornish fishing fleet.

0:17:39 > 0:17:43But in Wallace's day, it was the hub of a huge and thriving industry,

0:17:43 > 0:17:47and every harbour along this coast was packed with fishing boats.

0:17:54 > 0:17:57This painting depicts the whole of Mount Spelley.

0:17:57 > 0:18:00It shows things which we cannot see,

0:18:00 > 0:18:02because it is painted from Wallis's memory.

0:18:02 > 0:18:05Anyway, he's showing off, he's telling us

0:18:05 > 0:18:06how much he does know about these things.

0:18:06 > 0:18:09I know more than all those painters who've been trained!

0:18:09 > 0:18:12Well, how much information he can tell us.

0:18:12 > 0:18:15Wallis seemed to be painting almost from inside.

0:18:15 > 0:18:21Being untrained, he was free of the conventions that other artists were confined by.

0:18:21 > 0:18:25He was free from perspective and free from painting

0:18:25 > 0:18:32just from observation. He painted from memory, he painted the knowledge that he had of these places.

0:18:32 > 0:18:35And that makes it very special - his art...

0:18:35 > 0:18:38Art was taking a new direction almost

0:18:38 > 0:18:39because of that.

0:18:44 > 0:18:48Wallis had spent 25 years chasing shoals of herring, mackerel

0:18:48 > 0:18:51and pilchard across the Atlantic.

0:18:51 > 0:18:54But in 1890,

0:18:54 > 0:18:57he retired from the sea and moved to St Ives,

0:18:57 > 0:19:00where he opened a marine supply store.

0:19:00 > 0:19:05But in the mid-1920s, Alfred's wife died.

0:19:05 > 0:19:09It was loneliness that drew him to paint.

0:19:09 > 0:19:13Alfred Wallis didn't paint like any other artist in St Ives.

0:19:13 > 0:19:18He didn't have enough money to buy materials, so he painted onto whatever he could find -

0:19:18 > 0:19:21cardboard boxes, bits of driftwood,

0:19:21 > 0:19:26railway timetables, even jam jars, and set about producing his own,

0:19:26 > 0:19:32inimitable alternative to the work of what he called the real artists.

0:19:34 > 0:19:36But the real artists

0:19:36 > 0:19:41discerned rich layers of meaning in his deceptively simple pictures.

0:19:45 > 0:19:49Here's an example. This is a painting of some cottages in St Ives.

0:19:49 > 0:19:53You'll notice one of the cottages is much, much smaller than the others.

0:19:53 > 0:19:57This isn't just bad perspective, it was supposed to be that way.

0:19:57 > 0:20:02That cottage was lived in by Alfred's brother, and Alfred had just fallen out with him.

0:20:02 > 0:20:09So by making the cottage really small, Alfred was getting his own artistic revenge on his sibling.

0:20:09 > 0:20:12I just love it. All of Wallis's paintings - and there is

0:20:12 > 0:20:18a whole wall full of them here - are filled with similarly rich and wonderful meanings.

0:20:21 > 0:20:26And Kettle's Yard also have a letter that he wrote back in April 1935.

0:20:26 > 0:20:31He writes here, "What I do mostly is what used to be, out of my own

0:20:31 > 0:20:35"memory, what we may never see again, as things are altered altogether.

0:20:35 > 0:20:39"There is nothing whatever do not look like what it was since I can remember."

0:20:39 > 0:20:41What we realise from this letter is these paintings

0:20:41 > 0:20:46are attempts by him to capture the only certainty he's got left.

0:20:46 > 0:20:48He's painting the past.

0:20:55 > 0:20:59Yet it was Ben Nicholson who would now shape the art of the future.

0:20:59 > 0:21:03In the auction houses, salons and galleries of London, he set about shaking up

0:21:03 > 0:21:07the Britain's conservative art establishment forever.

0:21:07 > 0:21:11Lot 47 is by Ben Nicholson. 54. 56.

0:21:11 > 0:21:14I've got £56,000. On my left for 58.

0:21:14 > 0:21:18On my right at £58,000.

0:21:18 > 0:21:20Nicholson was a brilliant and energetic

0:21:20 > 0:21:25evangelist for the techniques and ideals of European modernism.

0:21:25 > 0:21:29He was determined to drag British art into the 20th century.

0:21:29 > 0:21:32And he wasn't going to do it alone.

0:21:32 > 0:21:37In 1931 he attended a bohemian house party in Norfolk.

0:21:37 > 0:21:42Another guest was a gifted young sculptor from Yorkshire, Barbara Hepworth.

0:21:42 > 0:21:47And although both were married, they began a passionate love affair.

0:21:53 > 0:21:56From the moment she met Ben Nicholson, Barbara

0:21:56 > 0:22:01abandoned her figurative style and converted to Ben's Modernist cause.

0:22:04 > 0:22:08Ben soon moved into Barbara's North London studio

0:22:08 > 0:22:12and the two artists found they worked harmoniously together.

0:22:12 > 0:22:15However, in their austere abstractions,

0:22:15 > 0:22:18they were still ploughing a lonely furrow in British art.

0:22:19 > 0:22:24But political crisis abroad would change all that.

0:22:24 > 0:22:28I realise this is not our conventional image of a refugee camp,

0:22:28 > 0:22:31but in the 1930s, that is what London,

0:22:31 > 0:22:35and in particular Hampstead, became. With every month that passed,

0:22:35 > 0:22:37more of Europe's persecuted avant garde

0:22:37 > 0:22:41made their way to this genteel and leafy suburb.

0:22:41 > 0:22:46And they briefly transformed it into the intellectual and artistic centre of the world.

0:22:53 > 0:22:57Sigmund Freud, the great Austrian psychoanalyst, ended up here.

0:22:59 > 0:23:04Ernst Gombrich, who wrote the only art book people ever actually read, lived here.

0:23:04 > 0:23:09A Hungarian architect, Erno Goldfinger, designed this house for himself in Willow Road.

0:23:09 > 0:23:13His neighbour, Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was not impressed,

0:23:13 > 0:23:16and this was the result.

0:23:16 > 0:23:20Dutch abstract painter, Piet Mondrian,

0:23:20 > 0:23:22settled here at Parkhill Road.

0:23:22 > 0:23:29And the revolutionary Russian sculptor, Naum Gabo, wound up here.

0:23:31 > 0:23:34But the hub of the community was this block of flats -

0:23:34 > 0:23:37the Isokon building.

0:23:37 > 0:23:42The Isokon was the first major modernist building in Britain,

0:23:42 > 0:23:47and its style and motifs were inspired by Ben's minimalist art.

0:23:53 > 0:23:57This must have been such a great place to live.

0:23:57 > 0:24:01No-one could have been more pleased to see these new arrivals than Ben,

0:24:01 > 0:24:06who had spent years tirelessly forging links with his artistic heroes abroad.

0:24:06 > 0:24:10And now Adolf Hitler had delivered them right to his doorstep.

0:24:12 > 0:24:14The Isokon's basement bar now became

0:24:14 > 0:24:20the unofficial headquarters of London's free-thinking refugees.

0:24:20 > 0:24:24And their presence helped Ben and Barbara, whose studio was just around the corner,

0:24:24 > 0:24:29to establish themselves as the dynamic duo of British modernism.

0:24:39 > 0:24:44In 1936, their ambition paid off.

0:24:44 > 0:24:50They organised the first ever exhibition of abstract art in Britain.

0:24:50 > 0:24:52The show was a sensation.

0:24:52 > 0:24:56It featured new work by Ben and Barbara,

0:24:56 > 0:25:00but set in an international context.

0:25:00 > 0:25:04Alongside works by Piet Mondrian and Naum Gabo.

0:25:04 > 0:25:08The works around us represent a moment of British art,

0:25:08 > 0:25:12the high point in a way of that '30s movement to engage

0:25:12 > 0:25:15both with abstract values in art and in other things,

0:25:15 > 0:25:20with spirituality and higher ideals, and also with international artists.

0:25:20 > 0:25:26It's the focal point, if you like, of an international utopian movement of artists.

0:25:28 > 0:25:34Ben's contribution was a spare white relief.

0:25:34 > 0:25:39It was the most audacious and controversial work in the show.

0:25:39 > 0:25:42There have been so many interpretations of this work.

0:25:42 > 0:25:46It's been called a protest against the Nazis, a celebration of hygiene

0:25:46 > 0:25:50and even a manifesto of Christian Science.

0:25:50 > 0:25:52But I think it's all about Cornwall.

0:25:52 > 0:25:57Those whitewashed walls in St Ives shining in that pure Cornish light.

0:25:57 > 0:26:00There's even something of the Alfred Wallis about it,

0:26:00 > 0:26:05because Ben Nicholson made this out of a mahogany dining-table he found in Camden Market

0:26:05 > 0:26:07and brought home with him on the number 24 bus.

0:26:07 > 0:26:10Wallis would have been proud.

0:26:18 > 0:26:21By 1939, London had been transformed,

0:26:21 > 0:26:25and it was now challenging Paris at the top table of modern art.

0:26:25 > 0:26:29And this was in no small part due to Ben Nicholson's talent for networking.

0:26:29 > 0:26:35But now the very factors that brought this community together conspired to tear it apart.

0:26:40 > 0:26:46By the summer of 1939, war was imminent.

0:26:46 > 0:26:52Ben Nicholson wanted to stay in London and keep his beloved modernist colony alive.

0:26:52 > 0:26:56But Barbara and he were now married with triplets.

0:26:56 > 0:26:59And they knew that, for their family to be safe,

0:26:59 > 0:27:03they had to get as far away from the capital as possible.

0:27:03 > 0:27:09Barbara suggested Norfolk and, momentarily, the future of British modern art hung in the balance.

0:27:09 > 0:27:12But Ben knew exactly where he would take them.

0:27:12 > 0:27:15He would take them to Cornwall.

0:27:15 > 0:27:21On 25th August, 1939, Ben, Barbara and their three young children

0:27:21 > 0:27:25squeezed into their car and left their Hampstead home.

0:27:25 > 0:27:30As they turned this corner, they saw Mondrian standing in the street.

0:27:30 > 0:27:33They pleaded with him to jump in and escape with them to the countryside,

0:27:33 > 0:27:37but Mondrian hated the countryside, he couldn't even stand the colour green.

0:27:37 > 0:27:41So they waved him goodbye and left London forever.

0:27:43 > 0:27:47I can't imagine what a terrible journey it must have been.

0:27:47 > 0:27:50I think Ben and Barbara knew that, with every mile that passed,

0:27:50 > 0:27:56the life they'd so painstakingly built for themselves in London had disappeared behind them.

0:28:08 > 0:28:14They had arranged to stay in Carbis Bay, a dowdy suburb of St Ives.

0:28:14 > 0:28:18And they had arrived here at precisely the same time as a massive thunderstorm.

0:28:22 > 0:28:26It continued to rain for six days and six nights

0:28:26 > 0:28:30and Barbara wrote that Cornwall was sheer unmitigated hell.

0:28:30 > 0:28:32Ben at least could work.

0:28:32 > 0:28:35Within minutes of arriving, he had disappeared into a quiet room,

0:28:35 > 0:28:39locked the door behind him and started to draw.

0:28:39 > 0:28:45But she was left to look after the children, clean the house and prepare the meals.

0:28:45 > 0:28:50In a schedule like that, she didn't have much time for high-minded abstraction.

0:28:53 > 0:28:56It wasn't glamorous, I'll grant you,

0:28:56 > 0:29:00but despite all the miseries and the hardships and anxieties,

0:29:00 > 0:29:07the outbreak of war in 1939 had brought two of the world's most radical artists to Cornwall.

0:29:07 > 0:29:12And I really think that, if there was any turning point in the art of St Ives, this was it.

0:29:12 > 0:29:14With Nicholson and Hepworth's arrival,

0:29:14 > 0:29:18a new outpost of international modernism had been formed here

0:29:18 > 0:29:20and that outpost was about to get bigger.

0:29:23 > 0:29:27Two weeks later, another modernist stepped gingerly off the train from London.

0:29:27 > 0:29:29Naum Gabo.

0:29:31 > 0:29:35Gabo was a giant of the European avant garde.

0:29:35 > 0:29:40He had participated in the Russian Revolution in 1917

0:29:40 > 0:29:42and had also reinvented the history of sculpture

0:29:42 > 0:29:47with his painstaking and high-tech constructions.

0:29:47 > 0:29:51Gabo had lived and worked in every major European capital

0:29:51 > 0:29:54and had even taught at the Bauhaus.

0:29:54 > 0:29:58But he was doubly at risk from the Nazis, being both Jewish

0:29:58 > 0:30:02and, as a modernist, regarded as a degenerate artist.

0:30:03 > 0:30:09In 1936, he had fled to Britain and was warmly welcomed into Ben's Hampstead clique.

0:30:09 > 0:30:12By following him to Cornwall, he would be laying another

0:30:12 > 0:30:16foundation stone for this new, modernist colony.

0:30:17 > 0:30:22Gabo was an even more unlikely presence in Cornwall than Nicholson and Hepworth.

0:30:22 > 0:30:26And I still can't get my head around the thought of this exotic

0:30:26 > 0:30:32Russian genius, a man who'd led the revolutionary avant gardes in Moscow, Berlin and Paris,

0:30:32 > 0:30:37of him ending up in this rather nondescript house in Carbis Bay.

0:30:37 > 0:30:42It's like stumbling across Michelangelo doing his weekly shop in Tesco's.

0:30:42 > 0:30:45He cut an unlikely figure in wartime Cornwall,

0:30:45 > 0:30:49walking his white samoyed dog along the beach.

0:30:49 > 0:30:51He never lost his heavy Russian accent.

0:30:51 > 0:30:58And, when war finally broke out, he was obliged to register as an alien.

0:31:02 > 0:31:06Gabo was used to crisis. It seemed to follow him wherever he went.

0:31:06 > 0:31:13By 1939, he'd had the singular misfortune to have lived through four major wars and revolutions.

0:31:13 > 0:31:17But he must never have felt more of a fish out of water than here.

0:31:19 > 0:31:22War changes everything for everybody.

0:31:22 > 0:31:27I think that the Second World War is the absolutely crucial thing of trying to understand

0:31:27 > 0:31:30the art of St Ives and the phenomenon of the colony.

0:31:30 > 0:31:35Not only would Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo not have gone there but for the war,

0:31:35 > 0:31:37but I think, um...

0:31:37 > 0:31:42it's a place where they, um... changed their ideas,

0:31:42 > 0:31:47the utopianism of the 1930s becomes refocused on ideas of community.

0:31:47 > 0:31:51Gabo did what he could for the British war effort.

0:31:51 > 0:31:56He and Ben Nicholson formed undoubtedly Cornwall's most ineffectual air raid unit.

0:31:56 > 0:32:03The two men - one short and plump, the other tall and gangly - patrolled the streets of Carbis Bay.

0:32:03 > 0:32:10But they spent more time admiring the local pebbles than scrutinising the skies for German bombers.

0:32:13 > 0:32:16The war distressed Gabo profoundly.

0:32:16 > 0:32:20But he didn't lose faith in his art.

0:32:20 > 0:32:21On the contrary,

0:32:21 > 0:32:25he grew convinced that it was more important than ever.

0:32:27 > 0:32:31His sculptures had always been inspired by a brave new world of technology,

0:32:31 > 0:32:36and faith in a brave new world was never more needed than now.

0:32:41 > 0:32:43But Cornwall cast its spell on Gabo.

0:32:45 > 0:32:49His daily walks by the sea changed his work.

0:32:52 > 0:32:56The waves curling onto the sand, the wind spiralling in from the ocean.

0:32:58 > 0:33:03The sails and rigging of boats, the curves of shells and pebbles.

0:33:03 > 0:33:07All of these elements are present in his Cornish constructions.

0:33:13 > 0:33:18This is one of Gabo's wartime masterpieces.

0:33:18 > 0:33:24It's so delicate, I feel that, if I even speak too loudly, it will fall apart.

0:33:24 > 0:33:29If anything demonstrates the unique power of Cornwall, this is it.

0:33:31 > 0:33:34Gabo once left one of these in a taxi.

0:33:34 > 0:33:37When he called them up, they asked him what he'd lost.

0:33:37 > 0:33:41He replied, "A construction in space."

0:33:41 > 0:33:44And that's exactly what these are.

0:33:45 > 0:33:51The cutting edge materials Gabo liked to work with were hard to come by in wartime Cornwall.

0:33:51 > 0:33:55But he managed to get the British chemicals giant ICI

0:33:55 > 0:33:59to send experimental new plastics down to him in St Ives.

0:34:01 > 0:34:06Gabo clearly found Cornwall a difficult place to work.

0:34:06 > 0:34:08But this didn't stop him falling in love with it.

0:34:11 > 0:34:15When he couldn't get hold of his plastics, he collected

0:34:15 > 0:34:20pebbles from the beach and filed them into elemental abstract forms.

0:34:26 > 0:34:31Each day, his walk took him past the door of Alfred Wallis' cottage.

0:34:33 > 0:34:37Alfred, now well into his 80s, was not well.

0:34:39 > 0:34:44He grew convinced that the devil was living upstairs in his bedroom.

0:34:44 > 0:34:47and was often heard screaming through the night.

0:34:50 > 0:34:53His Victorian upbringing had left him with an intense fear

0:34:53 > 0:34:57of ending his days in the forbidding workhouse at Madron.

0:34:57 > 0:35:00But that is now where he was sent.

0:35:05 > 0:35:08What strikes me about this place is, when Wallis came here,

0:35:08 > 0:35:11he was actually something of an artistic celebrity.

0:35:11 > 0:35:14His pictures were being bought and sold in London galleries.

0:35:14 > 0:35:17He was being written about in journals and magazines.

0:35:17 > 0:35:24Yet somehow, in the final analysis, that seemed to count for nothing, because he still ended up here.

0:35:26 > 0:35:30Just a few months later, Alfred Wallis was dead.

0:35:35 > 0:35:40Preparations had been made to bury him in a pauper's grave in Barnoon Cemetery.

0:35:43 > 0:35:49But once the news reached his friends in St Ives, a proper ceremony was organised.

0:35:51 > 0:35:55I'm sure Wallis would've been proud to have admirers

0:35:55 > 0:35:59like Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo at his funeral.

0:35:59 > 0:36:02Prouder still to have a tomb made specially for him

0:36:02 > 0:36:05by the master potter Bernard Leach.

0:36:07 > 0:36:11These stoneware tiles are really very beautiful indeed.

0:36:11 > 0:36:14Actually, it's very moving as well. You've got this tiny little figure

0:36:14 > 0:36:17of Wallis with the enormous lighthouse above him,

0:36:17 > 0:36:22and these great big waves crashing all around. And underneath,

0:36:22 > 0:36:25"Into Thy hands, O Lord".

0:36:30 > 0:36:33There's a very moving letter from Ben Nicholson

0:36:33 > 0:36:37to his friend Jim Ede on the day of Alfred Wallis's funeral,

0:36:37 > 0:36:40when he contrasts the funeral and Wallis,

0:36:40 > 0:36:44the sort of timeless old man, with a German aircraft

0:36:44 > 0:36:48which has just shot up the High Street in St Ives,

0:36:48 > 0:36:54and then concludes by saying, "The war has made one more aware of the community one lives in."

0:36:54 > 0:36:59And I think that's really important - the artists' involvement in the place they live in,

0:36:59 > 0:37:03in the small town, and as a community of artists, is really crucial.

0:37:07 > 0:37:10The war years were hard for Barbara Hepworth too.

0:37:10 > 0:37:14At first, she found it impossible to do any work.

0:37:14 > 0:37:17She had no materials and precious little time.

0:37:17 > 0:37:21She drew at night, but her days were spent looking after the family.

0:37:21 > 0:37:28She supplemented their rations with salad picked in the hedgerows and mushrooms collected in the fields.

0:37:28 > 0:37:32As the triplets grew, she made more time for her art.

0:37:32 > 0:37:36And when the work did begin, Cornwall was there too.

0:37:42 > 0:37:47Most people think of Barbara Hepworth's sculpture as abstract, but it's anything but.

0:37:47 > 0:37:49Take this work, for instance, Pelagos,

0:37:49 > 0:37:52one of her most famous works from her St Ives period.

0:37:52 > 0:37:57Barbara said that this wasn't abstract at all, it was actually a landscape of Cornwall.

0:38:00 > 0:38:03Those curving forms here, what those actually represent

0:38:03 > 0:38:07is the curve of the whole bay of St Ives.

0:38:12 > 0:38:15The white here in the middle is the white of the beach of Carbis Bay.

0:38:15 > 0:38:20The stringing is the lines of wind and waves coming from the Atlantic.

0:38:23 > 0:38:27So what she's actually done is taken this whole enormous bay of St Ives,

0:38:27 > 0:38:31made it smaller, tilted it up, and turned it into a sculpture.

0:38:34 > 0:38:38Barbara may have started with the view from her kitchen window,

0:38:38 > 0:38:43but as she got to know her new home better, she began to find inspiration everywhere.

0:38:46 > 0:38:53The moorland along the coast from St Ives is littered with the traces of an ancient and forgotten past.

0:38:58 > 0:39:04On any walk here, you'll come across countless prehistoric standing stones, and odd creations like this,

0:39:04 > 0:39:09Lanyon Quoit, whose original function is no longer known.

0:39:12 > 0:39:18Although Barbara didn't choose to come to Cornwall, this landscape soon started to claim her.

0:39:20 > 0:39:23She began to feel a profound connection to the place.

0:39:23 > 0:39:26She said she felt through her feet its geological shape.

0:39:26 > 0:39:29The rich minerals from which Cornwall was made

0:39:29 > 0:39:33were apparent on the very surface of things.

0:39:37 > 0:39:41Half a mile away is another group, Men-an-Tol.

0:39:43 > 0:39:46The meaning of these objects is a mystery.

0:39:46 > 0:39:49And it was the mystery that appealed to her.

0:39:49 > 0:39:51These stones are thousands of years old,

0:39:51 > 0:39:54but Hepworth appropriated their forms

0:39:54 > 0:39:57and reinvented them for the modern movement.

0:40:18 > 0:40:23The Cornish landscape was also infiltrating the imagination of her husband Ben.

0:40:26 > 0:40:30"I always thought the stories were overdone," he wrote to a friend,

0:40:30 > 0:40:36"The drama and the terrific, intense colour, but the real thing has been so much more."

0:40:40 > 0:40:45Bit by bit, Cornwall seduced the evangelical obstructionist.

0:40:45 > 0:40:49He started painting the landscape.

0:40:53 > 0:40:55He tried to resist.

0:40:55 > 0:40:59He exude his behaviour as "an economic necessity".

0:40:59 > 0:41:01He had a family to feed

0:41:01 > 0:41:05and no-one would buy abstract pictures during the war.

0:41:05 > 0:41:08He made it plain that these works were not to be regarded

0:41:08 > 0:41:11as significant in the way his abstracts were.

0:41:11 > 0:41:13But his protests were in vain -

0:41:13 > 0:41:17Cornwall had forced its way into his work.

0:41:19 > 0:41:23Ben's transition from those geometric white abstractions to

0:41:23 > 0:41:29his lush wartime landscapes reveals an extraordinary artistic journey.

0:41:35 > 0:41:40In 1945, the Second World War finally ended.

0:41:40 > 0:41:45Ben celebrated the event in his own whimsical fashion.

0:41:48 > 0:41:51This painting had been languishing unfinished in Nicholson's studio

0:41:51 > 0:41:56for two years when the Nazis surrendered in May 1945.

0:41:56 > 0:41:58On hearing the news, Ben added

0:41:58 > 0:42:01his own distinctive version of a Union flag to the corner here.

0:42:01 > 0:42:05It's since become a seminal image, but it's difficult to believe

0:42:05 > 0:42:08the same man who, 10 years earlier, was painting austere white reliefs

0:42:08 > 0:42:12was now painting a charming collection of crockery.

0:42:12 > 0:42:15It's a testament to how Cornwall had humanised Ben.

0:42:15 > 0:42:18I think that great internationalist would hate me for saying this,

0:42:18 > 0:42:21but also how it brought out the Britishness in him.

0:42:22 > 0:42:29Barbara assumed the end of the war would mean a return to normal family life in London.

0:42:29 > 0:42:33Ben spent a trial period in the capital

0:42:33 > 0:42:37and, in 1946, Naum Gabo took the first ship out to New York.

0:42:41 > 0:42:46St Ives' days as a centre of modern art appeared to be numbered,

0:42:46 > 0:42:51but Ben came back to St Ives, saying he needed to see the sky.

0:42:51 > 0:42:56Against all the odds, Ben and Barbara decided to stay.

0:42:56 > 0:43:00The continued presence of these two celebrities soon attracted

0:43:00 > 0:43:04hundreds of painters and sculptors, all yearning for creative freedom.

0:43:04 > 0:43:08A wave of young artists now poured into St Ives

0:43:08 > 0:43:12and, within just months, the town's empty pubs, cottages and studios

0:43:12 > 0:43:16were overrun with a new generation of creatives, who had come

0:43:16 > 0:43:21to the edge of England to rebuild their war-torn lives and rebuild them with art.

0:43:24 > 0:43:26The end of the war, there's a desire,

0:43:26 > 0:43:30there's a need amongst artists, as there had been after the First World War,

0:43:30 > 0:43:35to return to nature, to return to a simpler way of life.

0:43:36 > 0:43:39Cornwall has a tradition of being a place of escape.

0:43:39 > 0:43:43It's a place associated with childhood, with romance,

0:43:43 > 0:43:45with the dark spiritualism of the moors.

0:43:45 > 0:43:51But always something, um, anti-metropolitan, anti-modern,

0:43:51 > 0:43:54simple and basic and timeless.

0:43:54 > 0:43:57I think, for different reasons, the artists tap in to aspects of that.

0:43:57 > 0:44:02A new, bohemian mood now swept through the town.

0:44:02 > 0:44:07This community would draw in artists from all walks of life.

0:44:07 > 0:44:09Perhaps the most remarkable of them

0:44:09 > 0:44:11was a working-class lad from the Midlands

0:44:11 > 0:44:15who had only just been released from a prisoner-of-war camp.

0:44:15 > 0:44:21Terry Frost later recalled the heady excitement of his journey west in 1946.

0:44:23 > 0:44:28Well, I first came down here on the recommendation of an old friend of mine, Adrian Heath.

0:44:28 > 0:44:34And I said, "Well, you know, I can't get on very well at home, painting, because they expect me to work,

0:44:34 > 0:44:39"because that's what I've always done - work in the sense of going to the factory.

0:44:39 > 0:44:42"And painting was a daft, sissy thing to be doing."

0:44:42 > 0:44:44So I said, "I've got to get a long way away.

0:44:44 > 0:44:49So he said, "St Ives is a good place," he said, "They've got a lot of artists down there, or Newlyn."

0:44:49 > 0:44:52And I looked at a map - of course I'd never been far in my life,

0:44:52 > 0:44:56except in the army - and I realised, it was, 290 miles away, just the spot.

0:44:56 > 0:44:59So I came down.

0:44:59 > 0:45:01The liberation for Frost is extraordinary.

0:45:01 > 0:45:04Here's a man who's grown up expecting to work in factories

0:45:04 > 0:45:10or in engineering of some sort in the Midlands, who's then spent much of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp,

0:45:10 > 0:45:15where he encounters this "art" for the first time.

0:45:15 > 0:45:19And so the decision, I think, the realisation that the world is different,

0:45:19 > 0:45:24that he's not going to get back to what was expected of him in 1939, is really crucial.

0:45:24 > 0:45:30And that sort of anti-establishmentarianism becomes very important for him.

0:45:33 > 0:45:37It was an ambitious move - Terry had a wife and six children to provide for.

0:45:37 > 0:45:43And when he wasn't painting, he worked as a waiter and a barman.

0:45:43 > 0:45:47The family squeezed into this tiny cottage by the quay,

0:45:47 > 0:45:52and though conditions were cramped, they resulted in a seminal painting.

0:46:03 > 0:46:06Walk Along The Quay is one of your father's most famous art works,

0:46:06 > 0:46:09and one of the most famous paintings to come out of St Ives -

0:46:09 > 0:46:11what actually led to it happening?

0:46:11 > 0:46:12Well, it's an interesting story,

0:46:12 > 0:46:15because we used to live at 12 Quay Street,

0:46:15 > 0:46:16just round the corner, up there.

0:46:16 > 0:46:21And it's a practical reason, that my father had to come out every day,

0:46:21 > 0:46:25because there were eight of us, six children, and we used to all cry.

0:46:26 > 0:46:30He'd go on a walk along the quay,

0:46:30 > 0:46:33with, you know, one of us in the pram and holding one by hand

0:46:33 > 0:46:36So he'd be down this quay every day,

0:46:36 > 0:46:41and he'd be looking at these boats, with the wonderful masts and sails, bobbing about.

0:46:41 > 0:46:44Usually, if the tide's in, then they're moving around,

0:46:44 > 0:46:49so you've got the mast going up and down, and side to side, all the angles.

0:46:49 > 0:46:55What my dad wanted to do, he suddenly realised that he wanted to capture the whole walk in the painting.

0:46:55 > 0:46:59I went back home, and I happened to have a stretcher,

0:46:59 > 0:47:03a long one, that I'd made up.

0:47:03 > 0:47:06And it was just simple, I thought, "Well, that's it.

0:47:06 > 0:47:12"I've got to walk up that canvas, because that's the same shape as the harbour, or as the quay."

0:47:13 > 0:47:19So I walked up that canvas, and I just put all those shapes in, and colours, that I'd seen.

0:47:19 > 0:47:23And that's the Walk Along The Quay which is owned by Adrian Heath.

0:47:23 > 0:47:25And that was a sort of time painting, really.

0:47:25 > 0:47:30- It was a bit before its time, because I really got through to something- I- didn't understand.

0:47:31 > 0:47:35And there's a story about when Ben Nicholson first saw that painting,

0:47:35 > 0:47:37that he stood in front of it for two hours, in silence.

0:47:37 > 0:47:40Yes, that's quite right - he said, "You're on to something here,

0:47:40 > 0:47:44which is quite true, because he said, "This will probably last you the rest of your life."

0:47:44 > 0:47:47And in a crazy way, it did, yes. It went full circle,

0:47:47 > 0:47:52- he almost came back to that sort of painting, those shapes.- Yes.

0:47:53 > 0:47:58Terry may have been on to something, but he still wasn't earning a living as a painter.

0:48:01 > 0:48:06In 1951, Ben intervened and got him a part-time job as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth.

0:48:06 > 0:48:11She was not, by all accounts, an easy employer.

0:48:13 > 0:48:16Barbara didn't want people to know she even had assistants.

0:48:16 > 0:48:19Whenever visitors arrived, she'd ring a little bell,

0:48:19 > 0:48:22and on hearing it, her staff obediently dropped their tools

0:48:22 > 0:48:24and hid in this shed until the coast was clear.

0:48:24 > 0:48:31On one occasion, the wait proved too much for Terry, and he began to feel nature calling.

0:48:31 > 0:48:36He held it in as long as he could, but eventually decided to relieve himself into a geranium pot.

0:48:36 > 0:48:43Everything seemed to have gone to plan - that was until Terry noticed a stream of urine running

0:48:43 > 0:48:48from out the pot, under the door, down the garden path and right to the feet of Barbara and her guests.

0:48:48 > 0:48:51Terry was banned from having biscuits for the rest of the week.

0:48:57 > 0:49:00The first years of peace saw a surge in demand for culture

0:49:00 > 0:49:04from a public who had been starved of it during the war.

0:49:04 > 0:49:07Both Ben and Barbara found a ready market for their work,

0:49:07 > 0:49:11and their new success meant they needed separate studios.

0:49:18 > 0:49:21In 1949, Barbara Hepworth took over this studio.

0:49:23 > 0:49:26It was to become her home for the rest of her life.

0:49:28 > 0:49:32In the same year, Ben also found a new workspace -

0:49:32 > 0:49:36in one of the old fishermen's lofts by Porthmeor Beach.

0:49:46 > 0:49:51This is Ben Nicholson's studio, and he moved here in 1949.

0:49:51 > 0:49:56And the space instantly inspired him, and coming in here now I can completely see how,

0:49:56 > 0:49:59because, not only is it an enormous white space, that enabled him

0:49:59 > 0:50:02to produce all these big paintings, but the key thing for him

0:50:02 > 0:50:07was that it didn't have a view of the sea, like all of the other studios did in this complex.

0:50:07 > 0:50:10It just had this enormous great skylight above him,

0:50:10 > 0:50:13that created this very intense but consistent white light.

0:50:13 > 0:50:17He loved it here and he used to have a ritual where every morning he'd come in,

0:50:17 > 0:50:21he'd switch on his little radio and listen to jazz to drown out the sound of the sea.

0:50:21 > 0:50:26But initially it was Barbara who found international fame,

0:50:26 > 0:50:29representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1950,

0:50:29 > 0:50:34and hogging the limelight a year later at the Festival of Britain.

0:50:38 > 0:50:41The Festival of Britain was a blueprint for the world of tomorrow

0:50:41 > 0:50:45and the nation's artists were all asked to contribute.

0:50:45 > 0:50:50None, however, had quite the impact of Barbara's monumental work Contrapuntal Forms.

0:50:52 > 0:50:56At three metres in height, it was the most ambitious thing she had ever made,

0:50:56 > 0:51:00and for the Festival's duration, it became THE place

0:51:00 > 0:51:05for photo-opportunities, rendezvous and ice-cream breaks.

0:51:05 > 0:51:10It seemed that Britain was finally ready for modernism, and it looked to Cornwall to supply it.

0:51:13 > 0:51:16Barbara was surfing this national mood of optimism,

0:51:16 > 0:51:22and everyone was pleased - well, almost everyone.

0:51:22 > 0:51:25Ben Nicholson was notoriously competitive,

0:51:25 > 0:51:27and he liked nothing better in life

0:51:27 > 0:51:29than beating his friends at table tennis.

0:51:29 > 0:51:35And he was infamous for changing the rules midway through matches if things weren't going his way.

0:51:35 > 0:51:40So you can imagine how he felt about his wife becoming suddenly more successful than him.

0:51:42 > 0:51:43He was insanely jealous.

0:51:46 > 0:51:52Spurred on by this, the mid-1950s became a prolific period for Ben, too.

0:51:52 > 0:51:54He exhibited around the world.

0:51:54 > 0:52:00His work was snapped up by the best museums, and he won virtually every international prize going.

0:52:00 > 0:52:03Critics even dubbed him the British Picasso.

0:52:07 > 0:52:12If you wanted to understand Picasso's paintings, you might go to a bull fight.

0:52:12 > 0:52:18But if you wanted to understand Ben Nicholson's work, you would go to a golf course.

0:52:20 > 0:52:25Nicholson felt that to be a good artist, you first and foremost had to be able to draw.

0:52:25 > 0:52:28And all the skills you needed to draw well - confidence,

0:52:28 > 0:52:34grace and economy of movement - all of these were contained within the simple swing of a golf club.

0:52:48 > 0:52:54There was the elegant parabola described by the ball in flight, like a line on paper.

0:52:54 > 0:53:01You had to be constantly aware of the light, colour and rhythm of the world around you.

0:53:01 > 0:53:09And then, of course, there was texture - the interplay of rough and smooth, concave and convex,

0:53:09 > 0:53:13the curve of the fairway, the treacherous slope into the bunker.

0:53:16 > 0:53:19You'd have to have a good eye and good touch.

0:53:19 > 0:53:23There was so much about golf that appealed to Ben.

0:53:23 > 0:53:27He felt immediately at home playing a game with such a rigid and exacting set of rules,

0:53:27 > 0:53:31and it gave him a much-needed break from the family home.

0:53:31 > 0:53:37By now he wasn't just jealous of Barbara, he was bored of her, too.

0:53:40 > 0:53:44Complaining that she put stones before people,

0:53:44 > 0:53:48he started an affair with a young woman he'd met on the golf course.

0:53:50 > 0:53:54The break with Ben was the most traumatic event in Barbara's life.

0:53:54 > 0:53:58Despite his behaviour towards her, she still looked up to him,

0:53:58 > 0:54:01and sought his good opinion about her work.

0:54:01 > 0:54:05But now, having been deserted by the love of her life,

0:54:05 > 0:54:09her relationship with Cornwall grew stronger.

0:54:13 > 0:54:18It took a long time for me to find my own personal way of making sculpture,

0:54:18 > 0:54:26a long time to discover the purest forms which would exactly evoke my own sensations,

0:54:26 > 0:54:34and to visualise images which would express the timelessness of primitive forces, which I felt,

0:54:34 > 0:54:38and the constant urges towards survival and growth.

0:54:46 > 0:54:52This is Hepworth's workshop, and being here, surrounded by all these bits of metal and stone and tools,

0:54:52 > 0:54:58and even unfinished sculptures, makes so clear how unique her achievement actually was.

0:54:58 > 0:55:00Sculpture is such a masculine profession,

0:55:00 > 0:55:05and yet by sheer creativity, skill and gritty determination,

0:55:05 > 0:55:08she had become as successful as any male artist.

0:55:09 > 0:55:16It may be that the sensation of being a woman presents another emphasis in art,

0:55:16 > 0:55:19and particularly in terms of sculpture,

0:55:19 > 0:55:25for there is a whole range of perception belonging to feminine experience.

0:55:27 > 0:55:32So many ideas spring from an inside response to form.

0:55:32 > 0:55:36The scale of Barbara's sculptures grew exponentially.

0:55:36 > 0:55:41They almost overwhelmed the capacity of her studio and the narrow streets around it.

0:55:41 > 0:55:45She created a series of colossal works, like Winged Figure,

0:55:45 > 0:55:49destined for the new John Lewis store in Oxford Street.

0:55:49 > 0:55:52I found her a marvellous person, she had an incredible brain.

0:55:52 > 0:55:55I mean, she really, really, really knew what she was doing,

0:55:55 > 0:55:59and she really, really was a very intelligent person.

0:55:59 > 0:56:04And I got an enormous amount out of working for her.

0:56:04 > 0:56:09Here was really a tremendous, you know, a genius.

0:56:09 > 0:56:14And you really got an understanding,

0:56:14 > 0:56:18which was great for me as a young man...

0:56:18 > 0:56:22what it takes, what you really, really have to do to be an artist,

0:56:22 > 0:56:28that it's a 24-hour job, and not too much should stand in the way.

0:56:28 > 0:56:31You have to do what's in front of you.

0:56:39 > 0:56:42Ben and Barbara's marriage was over.

0:56:42 > 0:56:47But although they lived separate lives and worked in separate studios,

0:56:47 > 0:56:53they still dominated the flourishing art community in St Ives like a king and queen.

0:56:53 > 0:56:56But they ruled in very different ways.

0:56:57 > 0:57:04Ben was always impeccably dressed, and marched through the narrow streets like he owned them.

0:57:04 > 0:57:09To avoid being trapped in conversations with the locals, he bounced a ball as he went.

0:57:09 > 0:57:14And if anyone actually approached him, he'd raise an imperious hand,

0:57:14 > 0:57:17shout, "working!", and march briskly on.

0:57:24 > 0:57:27Barbara, however, was the invisible monarch.

0:57:27 > 0:57:32She hardly ever left her secluded palace, preferring to survey her dominion from on high.

0:57:32 > 0:57:36And while Ben ruled through arrogance, Barbara ruled through fear.

0:57:36 > 0:57:39Many locals called her the Witch of St Ives,

0:57:39 > 0:57:46and rumours even circulated that the statues in her gardens were actually her ossified victims.

0:57:51 > 0:57:57# ..Freedom, liberty and stuff like that... #

0:57:59 > 0:58:04But Ben and Barbara's dominion would not go unchallenged.

0:58:04 > 0:58:11As the 1950s unfolded, this new generation would fight them for supremacy.

0:58:11 > 0:58:14The chief pretender to their throne was Peter Lanyon.

0:58:16 > 0:58:20Mercurial, passionate and rebellious, Lanyon saw himself

0:58:20 > 0:58:23as the true artistic leader of his own land.

0:58:25 > 0:58:28Lanyon was born and bred in St Ives.

0:58:28 > 0:58:32During the war he had served overseas as an RAF mechanic,

0:58:32 > 0:58:35but had returned with burning ambition,

0:58:35 > 0:58:38both for his art and his homeland.

0:58:38 > 0:58:41Lanyon, I think, is a really complex character,

0:58:41 > 0:58:44because, at the end of the war, it is undoubtedly crucial to his art,

0:58:44 > 0:58:49this recognition of the importance to him of his identity as a Cornishman,

0:58:49 > 0:58:52his association with this place, with the landscape around St Ives,

0:58:52 > 0:58:54which he knows intimately.

0:58:56 > 0:59:02Lanyon was prepared to turn the world upside down in his relentless search for the real Cornwall,

0:59:02 > 0:59:06the Cornwall only a native could understand.

0:59:07 > 0:59:11Lanyon decided there was only one way to make a proper landscape painting.

0:59:11 > 0:59:15It was simple, you had to get out of doors, let go of your inhibitions

0:59:15 > 0:59:19and experience the countryside in every possible way.

0:59:23 > 0:59:27You'd have to get right to the edge of a cliff, until you're sick with vertigo.

0:59:28 > 0:59:31You'd have to get as close to nature as possible.

0:59:33 > 0:59:35Sometimes you had to get wet!

0:59:35 > 0:59:37You'd have to go rock-climbing.

0:59:40 > 0:59:45You'd have to run up a hill and catch the view by surprise.

0:59:45 > 0:59:50Now this all might seem a bit childish, but it's central to Lanyon's artistic philosophy.

0:59:50 > 0:59:57Because Lanyon isn't trying to paint what Cornwall looks like, he's trying to paint what it feels like.

1:00:07 > 1:00:10With these complicated images now

1:00:10 > 1:00:14of underwater coast and landscape, sky and so on like that,

1:00:14 > 1:00:17I have so many things being introduced,

1:00:17 > 1:00:20that either I'm letting myself into a mad house, or I shall solve it.

1:00:20 > 1:00:24One never knows as a painter, cos you throw yourself off the cliff every time you start,

1:00:24 > 1:00:28and you've got to fly or swim or duck or something, and come out the other end.

1:00:31 > 1:00:36Lanyon's risk-taking rebelliousness didn't just result in great art.

1:00:36 > 1:00:43In the years after the war, it also motivated violent infighting among the artists of St Ives.

1:00:43 > 1:00:47In February 1949, St Ives' large artistic community

1:00:47 > 1:00:51held a packed and noisy meeting here at the Castle Inn.

1:00:51 > 1:00:56They founded a new exhibiting society, with bold and democratic aims.

1:00:56 > 1:00:58But Ben and Barbara were still running the show.

1:00:58 > 1:01:02They proposed dividing the membership into three categories -

1:01:02 > 1:01:06A - abstract, B - figurative and C - craftsmen.

1:01:06 > 1:01:11They were all starting up showing at Penwith Galleries,

1:01:11 > 1:01:15and there was this big thing of, are you in Category A,

1:01:15 > 1:01:16or are you in a Category B?

1:01:16 > 1:01:22There were falling-outs, and people did almost punch each other in those days over it, you know.

1:01:22 > 1:01:27And it was big stuff, because you were moving into the world of abstract painting.

1:01:27 > 1:01:30People would have fights about the kind of paintings they made.

1:01:30 > 1:01:32I'm not saying, "Bring them back", but the idea

1:01:32 > 1:01:36that you could actually thump somebody cos they made an abstract painting,

1:01:36 > 1:01:39and they might thump you because you made a figurative one, I think is...

1:01:39 > 1:01:42It's extraordinary, isn't it, for a little Cornish town?

1:01:42 > 1:01:44I think there was a lot of alcohol there, that kind of explains it!

1:01:46 > 1:01:49Peter Lanyon did fall out with the rest, like Dad and other people,

1:01:49 > 1:01:52over the fact that you had Category A and Category B,

1:01:52 > 1:01:57because I think Peter didn't want any categories, he just wanted it to be straight.

1:01:57 > 1:02:02He'd gone to war to fight fascism and here it was on his doorstep. He disliked their stranglehold.

1:02:02 > 1:02:05He used to work for Barbara for a bit, so he'd go into the studio.

1:02:05 > 1:02:09Or, erm, with Ben, you see, he knew Ben.

1:02:09 > 1:02:12So in a sense, they were the sacred cows,

1:02:12 > 1:02:16and this was very important, that he could,

1:02:16 > 1:02:22with his rebellious nature, actually be inspired by their awfulness

1:02:22 > 1:02:28to do scurrilous things, and that was very much a part of his art.

1:02:28 > 1:02:32He was restless, and always finding a new way of painting.

1:02:32 > 1:02:38In 1950, he has this important split from Nicholson and Hepworth,

1:02:38 > 1:02:43and he, in his mind and in his writing, he combines that with a change in direction in his art,

1:02:43 > 1:02:48and he talks about his art becoming more concerned with actual places.

1:02:48 > 1:02:50And he talks about place, not just about landscape.

1:03:06 > 1:03:14Place, for him, combines a certain location with its social history,

1:03:14 > 1:03:17with its population, with its past activities.

1:03:17 > 1:03:22So he goes to fishing villages, he goes to the farming country outside St Ives, and, crucially,

1:03:22 > 1:03:26he goes along the coast west of St Ives, which is a mining district,

1:03:26 > 1:03:32and he makes these paintings which, for him, explore the associations of that place,

1:03:32 > 1:03:35the political history of Cornwall.

1:03:35 > 1:03:43But, crucially, he makes paintings which can stand alongside the best paintings made anywhere in the world.

1:03:57 > 1:04:01One morning in 1951, Lanyon packed a bag

1:04:01 > 1:04:07and set off on a gruelling and emotional pilgrimage to the hidden heart of Cornwall.

1:04:07 > 1:04:09And I'm going to follow in his footsteps.

1:04:10 > 1:04:16Leaving St Ives heading west, his path crossed the remote moors of Zennor,

1:04:16 > 1:04:21the inhospitable region of ancient remains that had so inspired Barbara Hepworth before him.

1:04:28 > 1:04:35But while she was exploring an exotic country, Lanyon felt he was coming home.

1:04:35 > 1:04:40Because he had it in his bones, erm, he knew stuff.

1:04:40 > 1:04:46You don't know that there are people under the ground actually hacking out metal,

1:04:46 > 1:04:51and you don't know what it's like to be, erm, a fisherman.

1:04:53 > 1:04:59It's those kinds of experiences that made him paint.

1:04:59 > 1:05:07He felt that he was the host, having been born here and having been completely Cornish.

1:05:07 > 1:05:11He was more a St Ives local than Wallace was. Wallace was an outsider.

1:05:13 > 1:05:16For me, the painter is a kind of beachcomber.

1:05:16 > 1:05:22I live in a country which has been changed by man over many centuries of civilisation.

1:05:22 > 1:05:26It's impossible for me to make a painting which has no reference

1:05:26 > 1:05:29to the very powerful environment in which I live.

1:05:29 > 1:05:33I have to refer back continually to what is under my feet,

1:05:33 > 1:05:37to what is over my back, and to what I see in front of me.

1:05:47 > 1:05:50When Peter Lanyon was here, this was a working mine.

1:05:50 > 1:05:54In those days there were 300 people working here,

1:05:54 > 1:05:58and people who weren't working here were working underground, beneath us.

1:05:58 > 1:06:04Probably Cornwall was one of the first post-industrial landscapes in Europe, really.

1:06:04 > 1:06:07When I first came here, when the mines were still working,

1:06:07 > 1:06:10they were leaching into the sea and there was a red tide every day.

1:06:10 > 1:06:14- Around the coast, there was this red, pink, frothy tide.- Really?

1:06:14 > 1:06:16All around this part of the coast.

1:06:16 > 1:06:19And what's gives Lanyon his punch, from my point of view,

1:06:19 > 1:06:23is that he's referring to something out there in the real world.

1:06:27 > 1:06:29The mine is extinct now.

1:06:29 > 1:06:35The land has been hacked about and plundered by miners searching for tin.

1:06:35 > 1:06:39The cliff is still tinted with iron oxide, which makes it a brilliant red.

1:06:45 > 1:06:52This is the Levant mine, the scene of one of Cornwall's worst mining disasters,

1:06:52 > 1:06:55and the inspiration for perhaps Lanyon's greatest painting.

1:06:59 > 1:07:05At 2:45 on the afternoon of 20th October, 1919, the old mineshaft lift,

1:07:05 > 1:07:10known rather ominously as the Man Engine, shattered into pieces

1:07:10 > 1:07:15and sent its passengers tumbling deep into the mine shaft.

1:07:20 > 1:07:2831 men died that day, leaving 19 women widowed and 47 children fatherless.

1:07:32 > 1:07:37Peter Lanyon was just a baby when the Man Engine broke, but he was haunted by the event

1:07:37 > 1:07:43throughout his life and the thought of dead bodies being shovelled up from the ground with spades.

1:07:43 > 1:07:45He may also have felt some guilt.

1:07:45 > 1:07:49His family had managed these mines for generations.

1:07:49 > 1:07:52But, whatever the reason, his visit here had convinced him

1:07:52 > 1:07:56he had to make some kind of memorial to the victims.

1:08:09 > 1:08:11This is Lanyon's memorial to the miners.

1:08:11 > 1:08:15It's called St Just after the town from which most of them came.

1:08:15 > 1:08:19I think it's one of the great paintings of the 20th century, and I'm going to tell you why.

1:08:19 > 1:08:23First, this big black stripe that runs through the painting from top to bottom.

1:08:23 > 1:08:28That's the fatal mineshaft in which those 31 men lost their lives.

1:08:28 > 1:08:32These wires and pulleys at the top are the wires and pulleys of the Man Engine.

1:08:32 > 1:08:37I think this might be an indication of it plummeting to the very base of the shaft.

1:08:37 > 1:08:40So at first sight it's a rather literal cross section

1:08:40 > 1:08:42of the mineshaft seen from the ground within.

1:08:42 > 1:08:44It's a kind of diagram of disaster.

1:08:44 > 1:08:48But Lanyon insisted there was a second level of meaning to this painting.

1:08:48 > 1:08:51He claimed it was also a crucifixion.

1:08:51 > 1:08:54When you look at it in that light, you can see

1:08:54 > 1:08:58this black line coming down with the two arms across,

1:08:58 > 1:09:01does resemble an old-fashioned religious crucifixion.

1:09:01 > 1:09:04There aren't just two levels of meaning to this painting.

1:09:04 > 1:09:10There's a third level. That third level can only be understood when the painting is tilted to the side.

1:09:11 > 1:09:14When you look at the painting from this angle, you realise it's not

1:09:14 > 1:09:17just a picture of the mineshaft seen from under the ground,

1:09:17 > 1:09:20but a picture of the whole region from above the ground,

1:09:20 > 1:09:23looking down from a bird's-eye view.

1:09:23 > 1:09:28This back line becomes a scar that has run all the way through the county.

1:09:28 > 1:09:30This becomes the far western corner.

1:09:30 > 1:09:32You can see the sea there of Cornwall.

1:09:32 > 1:09:37These are the fields and the walls and houses and the roads of this region of Cornwall.

1:09:37 > 1:09:43I realise it's not pretty, but then nor is being crushed to death in a mineshaft.

1:09:43 > 1:09:47But it's the searing ambition of this painting that really strikes me.

1:09:47 > 1:09:55In this monumental picture, Lanyon has combined religion and society and history and myth and landscape

1:09:55 > 1:09:59into one ferocious indictment of industrial exploitation.

1:09:59 > 1:10:03This is the Cornwall of work, of tragedy.

1:10:03 > 1:10:08This is the Cornwall that no-one but Lanyon had the bravery to paint.

1:10:14 > 1:10:18Peter Lanyon's reputation soared in the mid-1950s.

1:10:20 > 1:10:23But he wasn't the only star of this new generation.

1:10:25 > 1:10:31Another artist who shared the limelight was his schoolboy friend, Patrick Heron.

1:10:31 > 1:10:36In the late 1940s, early 1950s, Heron is known primarily as a critic.

1:10:36 > 1:10:41He's the art critic of the New Statesman, and very influential as such.

1:10:41 > 1:10:47Therefore he's a really important person in the communication of this phenomenon of St Ives.

1:10:47 > 1:10:53Fascinatingly, Heron writes an article in the New Statesman called The School Of London,

1:10:53 > 1:10:58where he recognises that, in the wake of the war,

1:10:58 > 1:11:03Paris's status as the capital of modern art is insecure.

1:11:03 > 1:11:06New York is not yet established.

1:11:06 > 1:11:11Heron proposes that maybe London can become the new centre for modernism.

1:11:11 > 1:11:17But when he talks about London, he means St Ives, and the artists he cites are all working in Cornwall.

1:11:17 > 1:11:20London is where there art is shown but Cornwall is the place where it's made.

1:11:22 > 1:11:27In 1956, Heron returned to Cornwall, to the very house in which

1:11:27 > 1:11:32he'd spent part of his childhood, Eagle's Nest.

1:11:32 > 1:11:38He wrote, "To find it one must from St Ives go still further, further west.

1:11:38 > 1:11:44"One must crawl up, down, around and along that incredible last lap

1:11:44 > 1:11:47"of coast where the lonely road slips,

1:11:47 > 1:11:49"folds and slides around rocks."

1:11:52 > 1:11:57Eagle's Nest is one of the most spectacular homes in Britain.

1:11:57 > 1:12:01But, perched on a rocky bluff set four-square to the Atlantic,

1:12:01 > 1:12:07overlooking a primeval coastal plain, it wasn't an easy place to live.

1:12:07 > 1:12:10Normally this house is just vibrating

1:12:10 > 1:12:13with pretty violent winds.

1:12:13 > 1:12:17Until I owned this house, I enjoyed gales, but I lie in bed there,

1:12:17 > 1:12:21just waiting for some frightful crash, which has of course occurred.

1:12:21 > 1:12:24Great slabs of the roof just came off.

1:12:24 > 1:12:27This life, dictated by the elements,

1:12:27 > 1:12:33inspired Heron to turn from writing about art to creating it himself.

1:12:33 > 1:12:37In 1956, he began to paint full-time.

1:12:37 > 1:12:41I don't think anybody can come to Cornwall without having this

1:12:41 > 1:12:45extraordinary visual hit, because it's such an extraordinary landscape.

1:12:45 > 1:12:49These fantastic windows with the extraordinary view behind,

1:12:49 > 1:12:52and the way the windows are divided up into little squares

1:12:52 > 1:12:54and the patches of colour through them.

1:12:54 > 1:12:56They remind me of your father's paintings.

1:12:56 > 1:12:58I wonder whether that,

1:12:58 > 1:13:01looking through the window at this landscape,

1:13:01 > 1:13:04helped generate those paintings in some way.

1:13:04 > 1:13:06I'm sure that it did.

1:13:06 > 1:13:11Of course a window in painting is used brilliantly.

1:13:11 > 1:13:13From Matisse, there are very obvious examples.

1:13:13 > 1:13:17It becomes a framing device. I think he must have used that.

1:13:17 > 1:13:23Just as the windows are a framing device, so he used doors as framing devices.

1:13:23 > 1:13:30They're not dissimilar from some of the proportions of some of his paintings.

1:13:30 > 1:13:36I think it's another thing to do with Patrick being deeply rooted in modernism, English modernism,

1:13:36 > 1:13:39which is when the spaces he wanted to both live in

1:13:39 > 1:13:42and for his art to be seen in had absolutely white walls,

1:13:42 > 1:13:45clear floors, simple modernist furniture.

1:13:45 > 1:13:49The effect of having it all white is that it makes the view through

1:13:49 > 1:13:54the windows come forward, as if the view is almost hanging on the wall, like a painting.

1:13:54 > 1:13:56It bounces the light around as well.

1:13:56 > 1:13:59The walls become reflectors.

1:13:59 > 1:14:04Patrick used to talk about how you could look at something and make it flat,

1:14:04 > 1:14:08um, and therefore make it into a painting.

1:14:08 > 1:14:12It involved a rather elaborate thing of closing one eye

1:14:12 > 1:14:16and imagining in your head that what you know to be a deep view,

1:14:16 > 1:14:23landscape, has become something completely flat and therefore could be on the surface of a canvas.

1:14:23 > 1:14:27You can do that with these windows, if you take the frame of the window

1:14:27 > 1:14:31and just abstract the shape that's outside and the colour that's outside.

1:14:31 > 1:14:33That's one of his ways of helping people understand.

1:14:33 > 1:14:37What then people found very difficult to understand was the nature of abstraction.

1:14:37 > 1:14:40All figurative art is abstract.

1:14:40 > 1:14:47All art is abstract. We're savouring these abstract elements of spatial reality, of colour reality,

1:14:47 > 1:14:52of formal reality, whatever great painting of whatever period in the world we're looking at.

1:15:00 > 1:15:03Everyone knows about Claude Monet's garden at Giverny,

1:15:03 > 1:15:07the one with the water lilies and the Japanese footbridge.

1:15:07 > 1:15:13But Patrick Heron's garden here at Eagle's Nest, while less famous, is just as exciting.

1:15:18 > 1:15:26The overpowering effect of colour in this garden was to find dramatic expression in Heron's paintings.

1:15:26 > 1:15:29He wrote passionately about his growing obsession.

1:15:31 > 1:15:36"You're in a world of viridian greens, of a multitude of greys,

1:15:36 > 1:15:41"soft cerulean blue, indigo, black, khaki and Venetian red.

1:15:41 > 1:15:44"A worn asymmetric rectangle, a lopsided disc,

1:15:44 > 1:15:49"an uneven triangle of smooth stone inlaid in the field path at your feet,

1:15:49 > 1:15:54"are echoed precisely, it seems, in the boulders of the hedge by the stile,

1:15:54 > 1:15:59"in the wall of the ancient church tower, in the configuration half-a-mile away

1:15:59 > 1:16:04"of pale giant rocks balanced in an intricate chaos of the dark bracken slopes above you."

1:16:09 > 1:16:16For Heron, colour was the means and end, the form and content, the image and the meaning of his work.

1:16:16 > 1:16:18It was everything.

1:16:22 > 1:16:26To understand what he really meant by this, I've come to see a very

1:16:26 > 1:16:30special painting that's hidden away in the Tate Gallery stores.

1:16:33 > 1:16:35Wow!

1:16:39 > 1:16:42It's absolutely huge, it's like a whole continent of colour.

1:16:48 > 1:16:52Come and have a look a little bit closer because it's at the edges

1:16:52 > 1:16:56where the picture really comes to life. It's where one colour touches another, that's where Heron

1:16:56 > 1:16:59detonates the image like a kind of explosive device.

1:16:59 > 1:17:04It's where he finds, along this line, what he called the colour of colour.

1:17:04 > 1:17:07His very favourite part was filling in the last patch of white.

1:17:07 > 1:17:11He said that when he did this the whole world would suddenly pulse.

1:17:11 > 1:17:16As you're standing here in front of this colossal coloured canvas, you completely understand it.

1:17:16 > 1:17:18The whole thing radiates light.

1:17:35 > 1:17:42While Patrick Heron was exploring an abstract world of colour, Peter Lanyon had stumbled across

1:17:42 > 1:17:48an exciting new way to see and experience the landscape.

1:17:48 > 1:17:55I have always watched birds in flight exploring the landscape, moving more freely than man.

1:17:55 > 1:17:59But in a glider, I had the same freedom.

1:18:18 > 1:18:23I'm now able to get away from the very familiar countryside,

1:18:23 > 1:18:27one of stone and grass and very treeless for instance,

1:18:27 > 1:18:32a rough, harsh countryside, into the air and to see it

1:18:32 > 1:18:36in conditions which I never expected I'd find. Conditions of solitude.

1:18:38 > 1:18:43In 1960, Lanyon obtained his solo flying licence.

1:18:43 > 1:18:48His experience of gliding inspired a remarkable series of paintings.

1:18:48 > 1:18:52But you can't properly understand them unless you take to the skies yourself.

1:18:56 > 1:19:00It's just a matter of not doing paintings which are visual paintings

1:19:00 > 1:19:04so much, it's paintings which are related to some physical experience.

1:19:12 > 1:19:17You know, when you're up here in this glider and you're looking down over Cornwall from high up,

1:19:17 > 1:19:21you realise that every other landscape painter in history missed a trick.

1:19:21 > 1:19:26This is the most incredible way to see the landscape, incredible!

1:19:30 > 1:19:34People say that Peter Lanyon's paintings are abstract.

1:19:34 > 1:19:38When you're up here, you can see Peter Lanyon's everywhere you look.

1:19:38 > 1:19:43From up here, Lanyon saw the sea, beaches, cliffs, moors, fields

1:19:43 > 1:19:50and villages of Cornwall combined into one glorious vista beneath him.

1:19:56 > 1:19:58I am detached, actually,

1:19:58 > 1:20:03from this very rough and harsh country below me,

1:20:03 > 1:20:05but not entirely detached.

1:20:05 > 1:20:11In fact this whole thing of flying is giving me a better understanding,

1:20:11 > 1:20:15I think, of the coast and the country underneath me

1:20:15 > 1:20:18than I'd have had by continuously walking over it.

1:20:18 > 1:20:21I think that...

1:20:21 > 1:20:25this may be important for the future of painting, I don't know.

1:20:25 > 1:20:30As far as I'm concerned, I think it's led me into something that's very important

1:20:30 > 1:20:35for just not landscape but for painting problems of time and of distance.

1:20:37 > 1:20:45As I hovered on those West Country thermals, I suddenly understood what Lanyon's art was all about.

1:20:45 > 1:20:50It wasn't about modernism or nationalism, or history or myth,

1:20:50 > 1:20:55it was actually about pure unadulterated joy.

1:20:55 > 1:20:58The joy of feeling the sun on your face and the wind in your hair.

1:20:58 > 1:21:02The joy of being in a world that you love.

1:21:04 > 1:21:07As an art historian, I spend most of my time in libraries and lecture rooms.

1:21:07 > 1:21:12I never thought in a million years I'd be going up in a glider and seeing Cornwall below me,

1:21:12 > 1:21:16and I have one person to thank for that, and that's Peter Lanyon.

1:21:18 > 1:21:25I believe that these aerial paintings are the culmination of 200 years of British landscape art,

1:21:25 > 1:21:32and with them, Lanyon was on his way to becoming the Turner of the 20th century.

1:21:43 > 1:21:50Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron were now the torch bearers of the St Ives movement.

1:21:50 > 1:21:54A movement that had gained national and international fame

1:21:54 > 1:21:57for combining the hard-edged abstraction of the 1930s

1:21:57 > 1:22:00with a love for the natural world.

1:22:06 > 1:22:12Ben Nicholson left St Ives for Switzerland in 1957,

1:22:12 > 1:22:16but the momentum was now unstoppable.

1:22:16 > 1:22:20Even the Americans were beginning to take notice.

1:22:20 > 1:22:26For a few brief years, Cornish artists were going shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.

1:22:26 > 1:22:31People were genuinely speaking of New York and St Ives in the same breath,

1:22:31 > 1:22:35and the Americans were glancing nervously across the Atlantic,

1:22:35 > 1:22:38not to see what was happening in London, Paris or Berlin,

1:22:38 > 1:22:40but to see what was happening here.

1:22:43 > 1:22:49In the years either side of 1960, many American artists and critics

1:22:49 > 1:22:54even made the long journey to St Ives to see what was going on.

1:22:54 > 1:22:59Mark Rothko, a giant of abstract expressionism was just one of them.

1:22:59 > 1:23:03A creative dialogue and, at times, a vitriolic rivalry

1:23:03 > 1:23:07have been opened up between these two artistic centres.

1:23:07 > 1:23:12But the transatlantic cultural currents weren't just one way.

1:23:12 > 1:23:17Between 1957 and 1965, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron together

1:23:17 > 1:23:21had eight one-man shows in America.

1:23:22 > 1:23:28And in 1964, St Ives triumphed again when Barbara Hepworth unveiled

1:23:28 > 1:23:34a monumental sculpture at the United Nations in New York City.

1:23:37 > 1:23:45No one then could possibly have predicted that the glory years of St Ives were over.

1:23:48 > 1:23:52The trigger for this unexpected decline came out of the blue.

1:23:56 > 1:24:00On Thursday 27th August 1964,

1:24:00 > 1:24:03Peter Lanyon was on a gliding course.

1:24:04 > 1:24:09For a few glorious moments he circled high above the fields,

1:24:09 > 1:24:15but as he came in to land, something went terribly wrong.

1:24:15 > 1:24:18Maybe it was a momentary lapse in concentration,

1:24:18 > 1:24:22perhaps a freak gust of wind.

1:24:22 > 1:24:27Whatever the reason, his glider plummeted to the ground

1:24:27 > 1:24:30and he was catapulted from his cockpit.

1:24:31 > 1:24:33Four days later,

1:24:33 > 1:24:34he was dead.

1:24:41 > 1:24:47Lanyon's death was the beginning of the end for the St Ives movement.

1:24:47 > 1:24:54The times had changed, its celebration of nature was suddenly out of date.

1:24:54 > 1:24:57Pop art was now the movement of the moment.

1:24:57 > 1:25:00There was one final tragedy to come.

1:25:04 > 1:25:08In May 1975, Barbara Hepworth died

1:25:08 > 1:25:13in a tragic fire at her studio in St Ives.

1:25:13 > 1:25:14It was over.

1:25:22 > 1:25:2940 years on, and Cornwall is still drawing artists and tourists.

1:25:29 > 1:25:34The arrival of Tate St Ives in 1994 has helped to encouraged

1:25:34 > 1:25:41contemporary art and reaffirm the reputations of these past masters.

1:25:41 > 1:25:45I think there must have been a pioneering spirit that people making paintings to break new ground,

1:25:45 > 1:25:48and they really thought they had found a new language

1:25:48 > 1:25:51and they were speaking in it, and the world was listening.

1:25:53 > 1:25:57I think that the work that was made here by those artists

1:25:57 > 1:26:01is the real thing, and so I think people should seek it out.

1:26:02 > 1:26:06The important thing about all great art is that it's timeless.

1:26:06 > 1:26:11You know, it achieves a value because of its relevance to its moment,

1:26:11 > 1:26:14but it also embodies timeless values

1:26:14 > 1:26:18and it can speak to different generations, but in different ways.

1:26:18 > 1:26:23I think the exciting thing about looking at the art of St Ives now

1:26:23 > 1:26:27is that we can look at that work in ways different to the ways

1:26:27 > 1:26:30it was looked at at the time and has been subsequently.

1:26:33 > 1:26:36From the perspective of a new century, the achievements

1:26:36 > 1:26:40of the St Ives colony look grossly undervalued.

1:26:42 > 1:26:49In our consumer world, their art remains unfashionable, but I marvel at their bravery,

1:26:49 > 1:26:55dedication, and the sheer range of quality of work that spanned more than half-a-century.

1:26:55 > 1:27:01It's their passion for nature, their defiant radicalism and, more than anything,

1:27:01 > 1:27:08their unyielding optimism that defines the art of Cornwall as a high watermark in 20th century art.

1:27:15 > 1:27:18Britain doesn't figure much in the history of modern art.

1:27:18 > 1:27:22When we think of modernism, we think of Paris and New York,

1:27:22 > 1:27:24but the artists who lived and worked here

1:27:24 > 1:27:26are an integral part of that story.

1:27:26 > 1:27:33They abstracted this Cornish landscape, they turned space and rhythm into sculpture.

1:27:33 > 1:27:36They turned its light and warmth into paint.

1:27:36 > 1:27:39But we've forgotten how important their work is,

1:27:39 > 1:27:42simply because it came from such an unlikely place.

1:27:42 > 1:27:48But I think it's about time we look again at the art and artists of Cornwall.

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