The Art of Cornwall


The Art of Cornwall

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Ancient and mysterious.

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Romantic and remote.

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Cornwall stands at the very edge of our world.

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Yet it exerts a magnetic pull on our imaginations.

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Coincidence, curiosity

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and crisis drew a string of great artists to this remote region.

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In responding to each other and to the dramatic landscape, they went on

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to produce some of the most exhilarating art of the 20th century.

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The history of British painting and sculpture would be redefined

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in this distant and forbidding place.

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For it was in Cornwall that against all the odds, a small fishing village

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was briefly transformed into an international centre of modern art.

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And that fishing village was St Ives.

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A series of extraordinary characters was brought together into this unlikely community.

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Alfred Wallace, the luckless ancient mariner, wholly untutored in art.

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And his disciple, the brilliant but doomed Christopher Wood.

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Ben Nicholson, the formidable Svengali of the British avant-garde.

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And his lover, Barbara Hepworth, who was the world's first great female sculptor.

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And two Cornish sons, who would revolutionise the way we see both landscape and colour.

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This film explores the work, lives and relationships of

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the masters who most helped turn St Ives into a colony of modern art.

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It's like a whole continent of colour.

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It seems hard to believe, but for a few dazzling years, this place was as famous as Paris, as exciting

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as New York, and infinitely more progressive than London.

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So how did this actually happen, and why did it so tragically end?

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This is an epic tale, filled with individual triumphs and disasters.

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But together, it amounts to nothing less

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than an alternative history of British art.

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This is The Art Of Cornwall.

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Cornwall is not a county, it is a country.

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For most of its history, it was a desolate outpost at the edge of

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England, a mysterious Celtic kingdom of tombs, tin mines and fishermen.

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It boasted its own language, its own legal system, and until only

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recently was considerably harder to get to than much of mainland Europe.

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But it was the peculiar quality of the light in St Ives that first caught the world's attention.

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It's been called the brightest place in Britain, and the reason for that

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is simple - because the town is completely surrounded by sea, and that sea acts as a giant reflector,

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bouncing the light back into the town.

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And if that wasn't enough, there are miles of golden sand that only serve to intensify the effect.

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It was the arrival of the railways in the 1850s that ended

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Cornwall's age-old isolation, and first brought artists to its shores.

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St Ives was an established artists' colony,

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it really built up around the railway, which gave accessibility

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to the capital, to the Royal Academy,

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allowing it to become a colony in the late

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19th century - and the fashion for harbours and fishermen as subjects.

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The railways brought growing numbers of gentleman artists, all attracted

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by the new talk, of a picturesque English Riviera, a paradise bathed in warm, Mediterranean light.

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Over the following decades, these painters formed artists' colonies

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along the Cornish coast and produced thousands of highly marketable paintings.

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They depicted scenes of hardworking men and God-fearing women, together

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enduring, with stoic fortitude, the trials of Cornish land and sea.

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They appeared to offer a definitive and authentic image of Cornwall.

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But this wasn't the real Cornwall, it was a fantasy, a make-believe world,

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mawkish and patronising, a masterful piece of Victorian myth-making.

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These painters achieved huge popularity in Victorian Britain, but the 20th century

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would see a new group of radical artists come to Cornwall,

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and they would change everything.

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I'm an art historian at the University of Cambridge.

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I first came here as a student harbouring an unhealthy teenage obsession with modern art.

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And Cornwall seemed as far away from that as it was possible to get.

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To me, its only association was of depressing family holidays in the rain.

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But that all changed one afternoon when I discovered a little museum

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just around the corner from my college.

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Kettle's Yard is a quirky collection of pebbles, driftwood and pottery,

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but scattered casually amongst those odds and ends are some masterpieces of modern art.

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But when I first came here that afternoon, it wasn't these

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modern masterpieces that captured my imagination - I was transfixed by something altogether less exotic.

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I discovered the work of three unmistakably British artists,

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who all shared a profound connection to Cornwall.

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Modest, cardboard paintings of Cornish boats by Alfred Wallis.

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Graceful and tasteful abstractions by Ben Nicholson.

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And the quirky paintings of harbours by Christopher Wood.

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The chance meeting of these three very different artists would transform the fortunes of St Ives,

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and it was the ferocious ambition of the youngest of them that sets this story in motion.

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Christopher, or Kit, Wood is one of the most glamorous and dissolute figures in British art.

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And his short, explosive life, is the stuff that myths are made of.

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At the age of just 19, this middle-class boy from Liverpool

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made a staggering announcement to his family.

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He was going to become the greatest painter the world had ever seen.

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Kit had set himself a virtually impossible task.

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He knew that if he was to have any chance of success, there was only one place in the world he could be.

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Kit arrived in Paris in March 1921

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with a suitcase in his hand and £14 in his pocket.

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Beautiful and bisexual, he yearned for both artistic and social liberation.

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His choice of time and place was perfect.

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At that time, Paris was the epitome of everything modern -

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it was open-minded, risque,

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provocative, the complete opposite of buttoned-up, insular London.

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And what's more, it had been the undisputed capital of the art world for generations.

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It was in Paris that Matisse, Picasso and Brecht had

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torn up and completely re-written the old artistic rules.

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And it was in Paris that new, radical isms were pouring out

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of cafes and bistros with every day that passed.

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These revolutionary art forms were mechanistic, urban and angular,

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and at first it seems difficult

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to see how they could have any connection to Cornwall.

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But bear with me, because if Paris offered anything, what it offered

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was freedom, freedom from all the stifling academic rules and

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conventions, freedom from official techniques and correct styles,

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freedom in many ways from the past.

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Paris proved that art could be done in a different way.

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It wasn't just artistic freedom that Paris offered.

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Kit was also sucked in to the dazzling social maelstrom

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of the Parisian beau monde -

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he even acquired a rich and well-connected playboy lover.

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He would introduce Kit to some important people,

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but it also introduced him to some very bad habits.

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Kit's favourite bad habit was opium.

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It became an addiction that would soon overshadow his life and his work.

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Kit's letters home are a poignant record of his state of mind in Paris.

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They reveal the first signs of a mental turmoil caused by the conflict between

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his days at the easel and his nights with an opium pipe.

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He writes here, "My brain is working too hard and I don't know where the end will come.

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"I've worked very hard and produced nothing whatever to satisfy me."

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Kit's misgivings were not shared by his peers.

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Jean Cocteau called him the most talented painter he had ever met,

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and a recommendation from Picasso secured him a dream job.

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In February 1927, the Russian ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev asked Kit to design the scenery

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for his new show, Romeo and Juliet, which premiered here at the Theatre Du Chatalet.

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The collaboration, however, ended in disaster.

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Diaghilev was not impressed by Kit's designs, and Kit was in no mood for compromise.

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After a blazing row, he was sacked.

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It was a pivotal moment for Kit, and in its own way, it was

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a pivotal moment for St Ives and Cornwall, too.

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He'd learnt everything he could learn from Paris - now what

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he had to do was take these ideas and find fresh inspiration, and that inspiration would be Cornwall.

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Cornwall was in Kit's blood.

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His mother was Cornish and he instantly developed a deep sense of belonging to the place.

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The region's rugged landscape stirred his overactive imagination.

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

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Kit had also found a friend and ally in Ben Nicholson, a man who had

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spent much of the 1920s bringing the spirit of Paris to Britain.

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In the summer of 1928,

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Kit joined Nicholson on a weekend trip to Cornwall.

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He'd actually come down to Falmouth for a house party,

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but the following day, he convinced Nicholson to drive to the town of St Ives for a sketching trip.

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On Sunday 26th August, the two men arrived in St Ives.

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They made their way to Porthmeor Beach.

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This is Kit's painting of the scene.

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In the evening, they packed up their materials and set off for home.

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They were strolling happily back into town when something caught their eye.

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The front door of this little cottage was open, so they knocked and peeked inside.

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Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.

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There were pictures hanging on the walls, piled on the floors, stacked

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chaotically against the chairs,

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and in the middle of them all was a little old man, painting.

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His name was Alfred Wallis, a 73-year-old ex-fisherman.

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And in the pictures around him,

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Kit and Ben instantly recognised a powerful and uncorrupted vision.

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This art seemed as radical as anything they had seen in Paris.

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The encounter with Alfred Wallis as this

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genuine exemplar of authentic artistic expression, untrained,

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unsullied by academicism, is really crucial.

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He's symbolic at that time as a genuine,

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what's seen as a genuinely naive artist.

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While Ben returned to London to spread word of their discovery,

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Kit stayed on in St Ives for the autumn,

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renting a cottage across the road from Alfred's home.

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It seemed he had finally found the inspiration for which he'd been searching.

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Here's a guy who'd been in Paris, he'd been mixing with

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all the greatest artistic figures in the world - mixing with Picasso, Cocteau, Stravinsky,

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Diaghilev, and yet none of that really seemed to count for anything.

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What actually inspired him was this place, it was Cornwall, and it was little old Alfred Wallis.

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I think somehow

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Wood finds in Wallis, erm...

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The subject matter, the slightly awkward space and detailing of

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the paintings, the creaminess of the paint, he gets from Wallis.

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But I wonder if there's also not a certain kind of English landscape,

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an English spirit that Wallis kind of opens up for Wood.

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Kit visited Wallis every day,

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and the old man's influence was soon apparent.

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Scenes of metropolitan life were replaced by more vivid depictions of life by the sea.

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The dreams of the young man who'd set out to be the world's greatest painter were bearing fruit.

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But Kit Wood was losing his mind.

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His addiction to opium had intensified.

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He started hallucinating.

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He became paranoid.

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Opium was driving him to the edge.

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His inner torment was reflected

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in the sinister quality of his last works.

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On 21st August 1930,

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an exhausted Kit met his mother for lunch in Salisbury.

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Then, in a fit of panic,

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he threw himself under a train.

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He was killed, at the age of 29.

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Although he had only stayed there briefly,

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Kit had shown that Cornwall could be a natural home for modern art.

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He had introduced Ben Nicholson to St Ives, and together, they had

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discovered the unique talent of Alfred Wallis.

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During the 1930s, Wallis was transformed into something of

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a cult figure, with his remarkable depictions of his seafaring past.

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His paintings also recorded the demise of one of Cornwall's

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oldest and most important industries.

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This is Newlyn - it's pretty much all that's left of the Cornish fishing fleet.

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But in Wallace's day, it was the hub of a huge and thriving industry,

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and every harbour along this coast was packed with fishing boats.

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This painting depicts the whole of Mount Spelley.

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It shows things which we cannot see,

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because it is painted from Wallis's memory.

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Anyway, he's showing off, he's telling us

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how much he does know about these things.

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I know more than all those painters who've been trained!

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Well, how much information he can tell us.

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Wallis seemed to be painting almost from inside.

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Being untrained, he was free of the conventions that other artists were confined by.

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He was free from perspective and free from painting

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just from observation. He painted from memory, he painted the knowledge that he had of these places.

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And that makes it very special - his art...

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Art was taking a new direction almost

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because of that.

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Wallis had spent 25 years chasing shoals of herring, mackerel

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and pilchard across the Atlantic.

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But in 1890,

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he retired from the sea and moved to St Ives,

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where he opened a marine supply store.

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But in the mid-1920s, Alfred's wife died.

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It was loneliness that drew him to paint.

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Alfred Wallis didn't paint like any other artist in St Ives.

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He didn't have enough money to buy materials, so he painted onto whatever he could find -

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cardboard boxes, bits of driftwood,

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railway timetables, even jam jars, and set about producing his own,

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inimitable alternative to the work of what he called the real artists.

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But the real artists

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discerned rich layers of meaning in his deceptively simple pictures.

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Here's an example. This is a painting of some cottages in St Ives.

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You'll notice one of the cottages is much, much smaller than the others.

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This isn't just bad perspective, it was supposed to be that way.

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That cottage was lived in by Alfred's brother, and Alfred had just fallen out with him.

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So by making the cottage really small, Alfred was getting his own artistic revenge on his sibling.

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I just love it. All of Wallis's paintings - and there is

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a whole wall full of them here - are filled with similarly rich and wonderful meanings.

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And Kettle's Yard also have a letter that he wrote back in April 1935.

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He writes here, "What I do mostly is what used to be, out of my own

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"memory, what we may never see again, as things are altered altogether.

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"There is nothing whatever do not look like what it was since I can remember."

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What we realise from this letter is these paintings

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are attempts by him to capture the only certainty he's got left.

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He's painting the past.

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Yet it was Ben Nicholson who would now shape the art of the future.

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In the auction houses, salons and galleries of London, he set about shaking up

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the Britain's conservative art establishment forever.

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Lot 47 is by Ben Nicholson. 54. 56.

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I've got £56,000. On my left for 58.

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On my right at £58,000.

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Nicholson was a brilliant and energetic

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evangelist for the techniques and ideals of European modernism.

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He was determined to drag British art into the 20th century.

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And he wasn't going to do it alone.

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In 1931 he attended a bohemian house party in Norfolk.

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Another guest was a gifted young sculptor from Yorkshire, Barbara Hepworth.

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And although both were married, they began a passionate love affair.

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From the moment she met Ben Nicholson, Barbara

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abandoned her figurative style and converted to Ben's Modernist cause.

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Ben soon moved into Barbara's North London studio

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and the two artists found they worked harmoniously together.

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However, in their austere abstractions,

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they were still ploughing a lonely furrow in British art.

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But political crisis abroad would change all that.

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I realise this is not our conventional image of a refugee camp,

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but in the 1930s, that is what London,

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and in particular Hampstead, became. With every month that passed,

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more of Europe's persecuted avant garde

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made their way to this genteel and leafy suburb.

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And they briefly transformed it into the intellectual and artistic centre of the world.

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Sigmund Freud, the great Austrian psychoanalyst, ended up here.

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Ernst Gombrich, who wrote the only art book people ever actually read, lived here.

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A Hungarian architect, Erno Goldfinger, designed this house for himself in Willow Road.

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His neighbour, Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was not impressed,

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and this was the result.

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Dutch abstract painter, Piet Mondrian,

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settled here at Parkhill Road.

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And the revolutionary Russian sculptor, Naum Gabo, wound up here.

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But the hub of the community was this block of flats -

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the Isokon building.

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The Isokon was the first major modernist building in Britain,

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and its style and motifs were inspired by Ben's minimalist art.

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This must have been such a great place to live.

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No-one could have been more pleased to see these new arrivals than Ben,

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who had spent years tirelessly forging links with his artistic heroes abroad.

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And now Adolf Hitler had delivered them right to his doorstep.

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The Isokon's basement bar now became

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the unofficial headquarters of London's free-thinking refugees.

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And their presence helped Ben and Barbara, whose studio was just around the corner,

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to establish themselves as the dynamic duo of British modernism.

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In 1936, their ambition paid off.

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They organised the first ever exhibition of abstract art in Britain.

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The show was a sensation.

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It featured new work by Ben and Barbara,

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but set in an international context.

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Alongside works by Piet Mondrian and Naum Gabo.

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The works around us represent a moment of British art,

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the high point in a way of that '30s movement to engage

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both with abstract values in art and in other things,

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with spirituality and higher ideals, and also with international artists.

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It's the focal point, if you like, of an international utopian movement of artists.

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Ben's contribution was a spare white relief.

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It was the most audacious and controversial work in the show.

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There have been so many interpretations of this work.

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It's been called a protest against the Nazis, a celebration of hygiene

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and even a manifesto of Christian Science.

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But I think it's all about Cornwall.

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Those whitewashed walls in St Ives shining in that pure Cornish light.

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There's even something of the Alfred Wallis about it,

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because Ben Nicholson made this out of a mahogany dining-table he found in Camden Market

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and brought home with him on the number 24 bus.

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Wallis would have been proud.

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By 1939, London had been transformed,

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and it was now challenging Paris at the top table of modern art.

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And this was in no small part due to Ben Nicholson's talent for networking.

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But now the very factors that brought this community together conspired to tear it apart.

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By the summer of 1939, war was imminent.

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Ben Nicholson wanted to stay in London and keep his beloved modernist colony alive.

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But Barbara and he were now married with triplets.

0:26:520:26:56

And they knew that, for their family to be safe,

0:26:560:26:59

they had to get as far away from the capital as possible.

0:26:590:27:03

Barbara suggested Norfolk and, momentarily, the future of British modern art hung in the balance.

0:27:030:27:09

But Ben knew exactly where he would take them.

0:27:090:27:12

He would take them to Cornwall.

0:27:120:27:15

On 25th August, 1939, Ben, Barbara and their three young children

0:27:150:27:21

squeezed into their car and left their Hampstead home.

0:27:210:27:25

As they turned this corner, they saw Mondrian standing in the street.

0:27:250:27:30

They pleaded with him to jump in and escape with them to the countryside,

0:27:300:27:33

but Mondrian hated the countryside, he couldn't even stand the colour green.

0:27:330:27:37

So they waved him goodbye and left London forever.

0:27:370:27:41

I can't imagine what a terrible journey it must have been.

0:27:430:27:47

I think Ben and Barbara knew that, with every mile that passed,

0:27:470:27:50

the life they'd so painstakingly built for themselves in London had disappeared behind them.

0:27:500:27:56

They had arranged to stay in Carbis Bay, a dowdy suburb of St Ives.

0:28:080:28:14

And they had arrived here at precisely the same time as a massive thunderstorm.

0:28:140:28:18

It continued to rain for six days and six nights

0:28:220:28:26

and Barbara wrote that Cornwall was sheer unmitigated hell.

0:28:260:28:30

Ben at least could work.

0:28:300:28:32

Within minutes of arriving, he had disappeared into a quiet room,

0:28:320:28:35

locked the door behind him and started to draw.

0:28:350:28:39

But she was left to look after the children, clean the house and prepare the meals.

0:28:390:28:45

In a schedule like that, she didn't have much time for high-minded abstraction.

0:28:450:28:50

It wasn't glamorous, I'll grant you,

0:28:530:28:56

but despite all the miseries and the hardships and anxieties,

0:28:560:29:00

the outbreak of war in 1939 had brought two of the world's most radical artists to Cornwall.

0:29:000:29:07

And I really think that, if there was any turning point in the art of St Ives, this was it.

0:29:070:29:12

With Nicholson and Hepworth's arrival,

0:29:120:29:14

a new outpost of international modernism had been formed here

0:29:140:29:18

and that outpost was about to get bigger.

0:29:180:29:20

Two weeks later, another modernist stepped gingerly off the train from London.

0:29:230:29:27

Naum Gabo.

0:29:270:29:29

Gabo was a giant of the European avant garde.

0:29:310:29:35

He had participated in the Russian Revolution in 1917

0:29:350:29:40

and had also reinvented the history of sculpture

0:29:400:29:42

with his painstaking and high-tech constructions.

0:29:420:29:47

Gabo had lived and worked in every major European capital

0:29:470:29:51

and had even taught at the Bauhaus.

0:29:510:29:54

But he was doubly at risk from the Nazis, being both Jewish

0:29:540:29:58

and, as a modernist, regarded as a degenerate artist.

0:29:580:30:02

In 1936, he had fled to Britain and was warmly welcomed into Ben's Hampstead clique.

0:30:030:30:09

By following him to Cornwall, he would be laying another

0:30:090:30:12

foundation stone for this new, modernist colony.

0:30:120:30:16

Gabo was an even more unlikely presence in Cornwall than Nicholson and Hepworth.

0:30:170:30:22

And I still can't get my head around the thought of this exotic

0:30:220:30:26

Russian genius, a man who'd led the revolutionary avant gardes in Moscow, Berlin and Paris,

0:30:260:30:32

of him ending up in this rather nondescript house in Carbis Bay.

0:30:320:30:37

It's like stumbling across Michelangelo doing his weekly shop in Tesco's.

0:30:370:30:42

He cut an unlikely figure in wartime Cornwall,

0:30:420:30:45

walking his white samoyed dog along the beach.

0:30:450:30:49

He never lost his heavy Russian accent.

0:30:490:30:51

And, when war finally broke out, he was obliged to register as an alien.

0:30:510:30:58

Gabo was used to crisis. It seemed to follow him wherever he went.

0:31:020:31:06

By 1939, he'd had the singular misfortune to have lived through four major wars and revolutions.

0:31:060:31:13

But he must never have felt more of a fish out of water than here.

0:31:130:31:17

War changes everything for everybody.

0:31:190:31:22

I think that the Second World War is the absolutely crucial thing of trying to understand

0:31:220:31:27

the art of St Ives and the phenomenon of the colony.

0:31:270:31:30

Not only would Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo not have gone there but for the war,

0:31:300:31:35

but I think, um...

0:31:350:31:37

it's a place where they, um... changed their ideas,

0:31:370:31:42

the utopianism of the 1930s becomes refocused on ideas of community.

0:31:420:31:47

Gabo did what he could for the British war effort.

0:31:470:31:51

He and Ben Nicholson formed undoubtedly Cornwall's most ineffectual air raid unit.

0:31:510:31:56

The two men - one short and plump, the other tall and gangly - patrolled the streets of Carbis Bay.

0:31:560:32:03

But they spent more time admiring the local pebbles than scrutinising the skies for German bombers.

0:32:030:32:10

The war distressed Gabo profoundly.

0:32:130:32:16

But he didn't lose faith in his art.

0:32:160:32:20

On the contrary,

0:32:200:32:21

he grew convinced that it was more important than ever.

0:32:210:32:25

His sculptures had always been inspired by a brave new world of technology,

0:32:270:32:31

and faith in a brave new world was never more needed than now.

0:32:310:32:36

But Cornwall cast its spell on Gabo.

0:32:410:32:43

His daily walks by the sea changed his work.

0:32:450:32:49

The waves curling onto the sand, the wind spiralling in from the ocean.

0:32:520:32:56

The sails and rigging of boats, the curves of shells and pebbles.

0:32:580:33:03

All of these elements are present in his Cornish constructions.

0:33:030:33:07

This is one of Gabo's wartime masterpieces.

0:33:130:33:18

It's so delicate, I feel that, if I even speak too loudly, it will fall apart.

0:33:180:33:24

If anything demonstrates the unique power of Cornwall, this is it.

0:33:240:33:29

Gabo once left one of these in a taxi.

0:33:310:33:34

When he called them up, they asked him what he'd lost.

0:33:340:33:37

He replied, "A construction in space."

0:33:370:33:41

And that's exactly what these are.

0:33:410:33:44

The cutting edge materials Gabo liked to work with were hard to come by in wartime Cornwall.

0:33:450:33:51

But he managed to get the British chemicals giant ICI

0:33:510:33:55

to send experimental new plastics down to him in St Ives.

0:33:550:33:59

Gabo clearly found Cornwall a difficult place to work.

0:34:010:34:06

But this didn't stop him falling in love with it.

0:34:060:34:08

When he couldn't get hold of his plastics, he collected

0:34:110:34:15

pebbles from the beach and filed them into elemental abstract forms.

0:34:150:34:20

Each day, his walk took him past the door of Alfred Wallis' cottage.

0:34:260:34:31

Alfred, now well into his 80s, was not well.

0:34:330:34:37

He grew convinced that the devil was living upstairs in his bedroom.

0:34:390:34:44

and was often heard screaming through the night.

0:34:440:34:47

His Victorian upbringing had left him with an intense fear

0:34:500:34:53

of ending his days in the forbidding workhouse at Madron.

0:34:530:34:57

But that is now where he was sent.

0:34:570:35:00

What strikes me about this place is, when Wallis came here,

0:35:050:35:08

he was actually something of an artistic celebrity.

0:35:080:35:11

His pictures were being bought and sold in London galleries.

0:35:110:35:14

He was being written about in journals and magazines.

0:35:140:35:17

Yet somehow, in the final analysis, that seemed to count for nothing, because he still ended up here.

0:35:170:35:24

Just a few months later, Alfred Wallis was dead.

0:35:260:35:30

Preparations had been made to bury him in a pauper's grave in Barnoon Cemetery.

0:35:350:35:40

But once the news reached his friends in St Ives, a proper ceremony was organised.

0:35:430:35:49

I'm sure Wallis would've been proud to have admirers

0:35:510:35:55

like Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo at his funeral.

0:35:550:35:59

Prouder still to have a tomb made specially for him

0:35:590:36:02

by the master potter Bernard Leach.

0:36:020:36:05

These stoneware tiles are really very beautiful indeed.

0:36:070:36:11

Actually, it's very moving as well. You've got this tiny little figure

0:36:110:36:14

of Wallis with the enormous lighthouse above him,

0:36:140:36:17

and these great big waves crashing all around. And underneath,

0:36:170:36:22

"Into Thy hands, O Lord".

0:36:220:36:25

There's a very moving letter from Ben Nicholson

0:36:300:36:33

to his friend Jim Ede on the day of Alfred Wallis's funeral,

0:36:330:36:37

when he contrasts the funeral and Wallis,

0:36:370:36:40

the sort of timeless old man, with a German aircraft

0:36:400:36:44

which has just shot up the High Street in St Ives,

0:36:440:36:48

and then concludes by saying, "The war has made one more aware of the community one lives in."

0:36:480:36:54

And I think that's really important - the artists' involvement in the place they live in,

0:36:540:36:59

in the small town, and as a community of artists, is really crucial.

0:36:590:37:03

The war years were hard for Barbara Hepworth too.

0:37:070:37:10

At first, she found it impossible to do any work.

0:37:100:37:14

She had no materials and precious little time.

0:37:140:37:17

She drew at night, but her days were spent looking after the family.

0:37:170:37:21

She supplemented their rations with salad picked in the hedgerows and mushrooms collected in the fields.

0:37:210:37:28

As the triplets grew, she made more time for her art.

0:37:280:37:32

And when the work did begin, Cornwall was there too.

0:37:320:37:36

Most people think of Barbara Hepworth's sculpture as abstract, but it's anything but.

0:37:420:37:47

Take this work, for instance, Pelagos,

0:37:470:37:49

one of her most famous works from her St Ives period.

0:37:490:37:52

Barbara said that this wasn't abstract at all, it was actually a landscape of Cornwall.

0:37:520:37:57

Those curving forms here, what those actually represent

0:38:000:38:03

is the curve of the whole bay of St Ives.

0:38:030:38:07

The white here in the middle is the white of the beach of Carbis Bay.

0:38:120:38:15

The stringing is the lines of wind and waves coming from the Atlantic.

0:38:150:38:20

So what she's actually done is taken this whole enormous bay of St Ives,

0:38:230:38:27

made it smaller, tilted it up, and turned it into a sculpture.

0:38:270:38:31

Barbara may have started with the view from her kitchen window,

0:38:340:38:38

but as she got to know her new home better, she began to find inspiration everywhere.

0:38:380:38:43

The moorland along the coast from St Ives is littered with the traces of an ancient and forgotten past.

0:38:460:38:53

On any walk here, you'll come across countless prehistoric standing stones, and odd creations like this,

0:38:580:39:04

Lanyon Quoit, whose original function is no longer known.

0:39:040:39:09

Although Barbara didn't choose to come to Cornwall, this landscape soon started to claim her.

0:39:120:39:18

She began to feel a profound connection to the place.

0:39:200:39:23

She said she felt through her feet its geological shape.

0:39:230:39:26

The rich minerals from which Cornwall was made

0:39:260:39:29

were apparent on the very surface of things.

0:39:290:39:33

Half a mile away is another group, Men-an-Tol.

0:39:370:39:41

The meaning of these objects is a mystery.

0:39:430:39:46

And it was the mystery that appealed to her.

0:39:460:39:49

These stones are thousands of years old,

0:39:490:39:51

but Hepworth appropriated their forms

0:39:510:39:54

and reinvented them for the modern movement.

0:39:540:39:57

The Cornish landscape was also infiltrating the imagination of her husband Ben.

0:40:180:40:23

"I always thought the stories were overdone," he wrote to a friend,

0:40:260:40:30

"The drama and the terrific, intense colour, but the real thing has been so much more."

0:40:300:40:36

Bit by bit, Cornwall seduced the evangelical obstructionist.

0:40:400:40:45

He started painting the landscape.

0:40:450:40:49

He tried to resist.

0:40:530:40:55

He exude his behaviour as "an economic necessity".

0:40:550:40:59

He had a family to feed

0:40:590:41:01

and no-one would buy abstract pictures during the war.

0:41:010:41:05

He made it plain that these works were not to be regarded

0:41:050:41:08

as significant in the way his abstracts were.

0:41:080:41:11

But his protests were in vain -

0:41:110:41:13

Cornwall had forced its way into his work.

0:41:130:41:17

Ben's transition from those geometric white abstractions to

0:41:190:41:23

his lush wartime landscapes reveals an extraordinary artistic journey.

0:41:230:41:29

In 1945, the Second World War finally ended.

0:41:350:41:40

Ben celebrated the event in his own whimsical fashion.

0:41:400:41:45

This painting had been languishing unfinished in Nicholson's studio

0:41:480:41:51

for two years when the Nazis surrendered in May 1945.

0:41:510:41:56

On hearing the news, Ben added

0:41:560:41:58

his own distinctive version of a Union flag to the corner here.

0:41:580:42:01

It's since become a seminal image, but it's difficult to believe

0:42:010:42:05

the same man who, 10 years earlier, was painting austere white reliefs

0:42:050:42:08

was now painting a charming collection of crockery.

0:42:080:42:12

It's a testament to how Cornwall had humanised Ben.

0:42:120:42:15

I think that great internationalist would hate me for saying this,

0:42:150:42:18

but also how it brought out the Britishness in him.

0:42:180:42:21

Barbara assumed the end of the war would mean a return to normal family life in London.

0:42:220:42:29

Ben spent a trial period in the capital

0:42:290:42:33

and, in 1946, Naum Gabo took the first ship out to New York.

0:42:330:42:37

St Ives' days as a centre of modern art appeared to be numbered,

0:42:410:42:46

but Ben came back to St Ives, saying he needed to see the sky.

0:42:460:42:51

Against all the odds, Ben and Barbara decided to stay.

0:42:510:42:56

The continued presence of these two celebrities soon attracted

0:42:560:43:00

hundreds of painters and sculptors, all yearning for creative freedom.

0:43:000:43:04

A wave of young artists now poured into St Ives

0:43:040:43:08

and, within just months, the town's empty pubs, cottages and studios

0:43:080:43:12

were overrun with a new generation of creatives, who had come

0:43:120:43:16

to the edge of England to rebuild their war-torn lives and rebuild them with art.

0:43:160:43:21

The end of the war, there's a desire,

0:43:240:43:26

there's a need amongst artists, as there had been after the First World War,

0:43:260:43:30

to return to nature, to return to a simpler way of life.

0:43:300:43:35

Cornwall has a tradition of being a place of escape.

0:43:360:43:39

It's a place associated with childhood, with romance,

0:43:390:43:43

with the dark spiritualism of the moors.

0:43:430:43:45

But always something, um, anti-metropolitan, anti-modern,

0:43:450:43:51

simple and basic and timeless.

0:43:510:43:54

I think, for different reasons, the artists tap in to aspects of that.

0:43:540:43:57

A new, bohemian mood now swept through the town.

0:43:570:44:02

This community would draw in artists from all walks of life.

0:44:020:44:07

Perhaps the most remarkable of them

0:44:070:44:09

was a working-class lad from the Midlands

0:44:090:44:11

who had only just been released from a prisoner-of-war camp.

0:44:110:44:15

Terry Frost later recalled the heady excitement of his journey west in 1946.

0:44:150:44:21

Well, I first came down here on the recommendation of an old friend of mine, Adrian Heath.

0:44:230:44:28

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

0:44:280:44:34

"because that's what I've always done - work in the sense of going to the factory.

0:44:340:44:39

"And painting was a daft, sissy thing to be doing."

0:44:390:44:42

So I said, "I've got to get a long way away.

0:44:420:44:44

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

0:44:440:44:49

And I looked at a map - of course I'd never been far in my life,

0:44:490:44:52

except in the army - and I realised, it was, 290 miles away, just the spot.

0:44:520:44:56

So I came down.

0:44:560:44:59

The liberation for Frost is extraordinary.

0:44:590:45:01

Here's a man who's grown up expecting to work in factories

0:45:010:45:04

or in engineering of some sort in the Midlands, who's then spent much of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp,

0:45:040:45:10

where he encounters this "art" for the first time.

0:45:100:45:15

And so the decision, I think, the realisation that the world is different,

0:45:150:45:19

that he's not going to get back to what was expected of him in 1939, is really crucial.

0:45:190:45:24

And that sort of anti-establishmentarianism becomes very important for him.

0:45:240:45:30

It was an ambitious move - Terry had a wife and six children to provide for.

0:45:330:45:37

And when he wasn't painting, he worked as a waiter and a barman.

0:45:370:45:43

The family squeezed into this tiny cottage by the quay,

0:45:430:45:47

and though conditions were cramped, they resulted in a seminal painting.

0:45:470:45:52

Walk Along The Quay is one of your father's most famous art works,

0:46:030:46:06

and one of the most famous paintings to come out of St Ives -

0:46:060:46:09

what actually led to it happening?

0:46:090:46:11

Well, it's an interesting story,

0:46:110:46:12

because we used to live at 12 Quay Street,

0:46:120:46:15

just round the corner, up there.

0:46:150:46:16

And it's a practical reason, that my father had to come out every day,

0:46:160:46:21

because there were eight of us, six children, and we used to all cry.

0:46:210:46:25

He'd go on a walk along the quay,

0:46:260:46:30

with, you know, one of us in the pram and holding one by hand

0:46:300:46:33

So he'd be down this quay every day,

0:46:330:46:36

and he'd be looking at these boats, with the wonderful masts and sails, bobbing about.

0:46:360:46:41

Usually, if the tide's in, then they're moving around,

0:46:410:46:44

so you've got the mast going up and down, and side to side, all the angles.

0:46:440:46:49

What my dad wanted to do, he suddenly realised that he wanted to capture the whole walk in the painting.

0:46:490:46:55

I went back home, and I happened to have a stretcher,

0:46:550:46:59

a long one, that I'd made up.

0:46:590:47:03

And it was just simple, I thought, "Well, that's it.

0:47:030:47:06

"I've got to walk up that canvas, because that's the same shape as the harbour, or as the quay."

0:47:060:47:12

So I walked up that canvas, and I just put all those shapes in, and colours, that I'd seen.

0:47:130:47:19

And that's the Walk Along The Quay which is owned by Adrian Heath.

0:47:190:47:23

And that was a sort of time painting, really.

0:47:230:47:25

-It was a bit before its time, because I really got through to something

-I

-didn't understand.

0:47:250:47:30

And there's a story about when Ben Nicholson first saw that painting,

0:47:310:47:35

that he stood in front of it for two hours, in silence.

0:47:350:47:37

Yes, that's quite right - he said, "You're on to something here,

0:47:370:47:40

which is quite true, because he said, "This will probably last you the rest of your life."

0:47:400:47:44

And in a crazy way, it did, yes. It went full circle,

0:47:440:47:47

-he almost came back to that sort of painting, those shapes.

-Yes.

0:47:470:47:52

Terry may have been on to something, but he still wasn't earning a living as a painter.

0:47:530:47:58

In 1951, Ben intervened and got him a part-time job as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth.

0:48:010:48:06

She was not, by all accounts, an easy employer.

0:48:060:48:11

Barbara didn't want people to know she even had assistants.

0:48:130:48:16

Whenever visitors arrived, she'd ring a little bell,

0:48:160:48:19

and on hearing it, her staff obediently dropped their tools

0:48:190:48:22

and hid in this shed until the coast was clear.

0:48:220:48:24

On one occasion, the wait proved too much for Terry, and he began to feel nature calling.

0:48:240:48:31

He held it in as long as he could, but eventually decided to relieve himself into a geranium pot.

0:48:310:48:36

Everything seemed to have gone to plan - that was until Terry noticed a stream of urine running

0:48:360:48:43

from out the pot, under the door, down the garden path and right to the feet of Barbara and her guests.

0:48:430:48:48

Terry was banned from having biscuits for the rest of the week.

0:48:480:48:51

The first years of peace saw a surge in demand for culture

0:48:570:49:00

from a public who had been starved of it during the war.

0:49:000:49:04

Both Ben and Barbara found a ready market for their work,

0:49:040:49:07

and their new success meant they needed separate studios.

0:49:070:49:11

In 1949, Barbara Hepworth took over this studio.

0:49:180:49:21

It was to become her home for the rest of her life.

0:49:230:49:26

In the same year, Ben also found a new workspace -

0:49:280:49:32

in one of the old fishermen's lofts by Porthmeor Beach.

0:49:320:49:36

This is Ben Nicholson's studio, and he moved here in 1949.

0:49:460:49:51

And the space instantly inspired him, and coming in here now I can completely see how,

0:49:510:49:56

because, not only is it an enormous white space, that enabled him

0:49:560:49:59

to produce all these big paintings, but the key thing for him

0:49:590:50:02

was that it didn't have a view of the sea, like all of the other studios did in this complex.

0:50:020:50:07

It just had this enormous great skylight above him,

0:50:070:50:10

that created this very intense but consistent white light.

0:50:100:50:13

He loved it here and he used to have a ritual where every morning he'd come in,

0:50:130:50:17

he'd switch on his little radio and listen to jazz to drown out the sound of the sea.

0:50:170:50:21

But initially it was Barbara who found international fame,

0:50:210:50:26

representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1950,

0:50:260:50:29

and hogging the limelight a year later at the Festival of Britain.

0:50:290:50:34

The Festival of Britain was a blueprint for the world of tomorrow

0:50:380:50:41

and the nation's artists were all asked to contribute.

0:50:410:50:45

None, however, had quite the impact of Barbara's monumental work Contrapuntal Forms.

0:50:450:50:50

At three metres in height, it was the most ambitious thing she had ever made,

0:50:520:50:56

and for the Festival's duration, it became THE place

0:50:560:51:00

for photo-opportunities, rendezvous and ice-cream breaks.

0:51:000:51:05

It seemed that Britain was finally ready for modernism, and it looked to Cornwall to supply it.

0:51:050:51:10

Barbara was surfing this national mood of optimism,

0:51:130:51:16

and everyone was pleased - well, almost everyone.

0:51:160:51:22

Ben Nicholson was notoriously competitive,

0:51:220:51:25

and he liked nothing better in life

0:51:250:51:27

than beating his friends at table tennis.

0:51:270:51:29

And he was infamous for changing the rules midway through matches if things weren't going his way.

0:51:290:51:35

So you can imagine how he felt about his wife becoming suddenly more successful than him.

0:51:350:51:40

He was insanely jealous.

0:51:420:51:43

Spurred on by this, the mid-1950s became a prolific period for Ben, too.

0:51:460:51:52

He exhibited around the world.

0:51:520:51:54

His work was snapped up by the best museums, and he won virtually every international prize going.

0:51:540:52:00

Critics even dubbed him the British Picasso.

0:52:000:52:03

If you wanted to understand Picasso's paintings, you might go to a bull fight.

0:52:070:52:12

But if you wanted to understand Ben Nicholson's work, you would go to a golf course.

0:52:120:52:18

Nicholson felt that to be a good artist, you first and foremost had to be able to draw.

0:52:200:52:25

And all the skills you needed to draw well - confidence,

0:52:250:52:28

grace and economy of movement - all of these were contained within the simple swing of a golf club.

0:52:280:52:34

There was the elegant parabola described by the ball in flight, like a line on paper.

0:52:480:52:54

You had to be constantly aware of the light, colour and rhythm of the world around you.

0:52:540:53:01

And then, of course, there was texture - the interplay of rough and smooth, concave and convex,

0:53:010:53:09

the curve of the fairway, the treacherous slope into the bunker.

0:53:090:53:13

You'd have to have a good eye and good touch.

0:53:160:53:19

There was so much about golf that appealed to Ben.

0:53:190:53:23

He felt immediately at home playing a game with such a rigid and exacting set of rules,

0:53:230:53:27

and it gave him a much-needed break from the family home.

0:53:270:53:31

By now he wasn't just jealous of Barbara, he was bored of her, too.

0:53:310:53:37

Complaining that she put stones before people,

0:53:400:53:44

he started an affair with a young woman he'd met on the golf course.

0:53:440:53:48

The break with Ben was the most traumatic event in Barbara's life.

0:53:500:53:54

Despite his behaviour towards her, she still looked up to him,

0:53:540:53:58

and sought his good opinion about her work.

0:53:580:54:01

But now, having been deserted by the love of her life,

0:54:010:54:05

her relationship with Cornwall grew stronger.

0:54:050:54:09

It took a long time for me to find my own personal way of making sculpture,

0:54:130:54:18

a long time to discover the purest forms which would exactly evoke my own sensations,

0:54:180:54:26

and to visualise images which would express the timelessness of primitive forces, which I felt,

0:54:260:54:34

and the constant urges towards survival and growth.

0:54:340:54:38

This is Hepworth's workshop, and being here, surrounded by all these bits of metal and stone and tools,

0:54:460:54:52

and even unfinished sculptures, makes so clear how unique her achievement actually was.

0:54:520:54:58

Sculpture is such a masculine profession,

0:54:580:55:00

and yet by sheer creativity, skill and gritty determination,

0:55:000:55:05

she had become as successful as any male artist.

0:55:050:55:08

It may be that the sensation of being a woman presents another emphasis in art,

0:55:090:55:16

and particularly in terms of sculpture,

0:55:160:55:19

for there is a whole range of perception belonging to feminine experience.

0:55:190:55:25

So many ideas spring from an inside response to form.

0:55:270:55:32

The scale of Barbara's sculptures grew exponentially.

0:55:320:55:36

They almost overwhelmed the capacity of her studio and the narrow streets around it.

0:55:360:55:41

She created a series of colossal works, like Winged Figure,

0:55:410:55:45

destined for the new John Lewis store in Oxford Street.

0:55:450:55:49

I found her a marvellous person, she had an incredible brain.

0:55:490:55:52

I mean, she really, really, really knew what she was doing,

0:55:520:55:55

and she really, really was a very intelligent person.

0:55:550:55:59

And I got an enormous amount out of working for her.

0:55:590:56:04

Here was really a tremendous, you know, a genius.

0:56:040:56:09

And you really got an understanding,

0:56:090:56:14

which was great for me as a young man...

0:56:140:56:18

what it takes, what you really, really have to do to be an artist,

0:56:180:56:22

that it's a 24-hour job, and not too much should stand in the way.

0:56:220:56:28

You have to do what's in front of you.

0:56:280:56:31

Ben and Barbara's marriage was over.

0:56:390:56:42

But although they lived separate lives and worked in separate studios,

0:56:420:56:47

they still dominated the flourishing art community in St Ives like a king and queen.

0:56:470:56:53

But they ruled in very different ways.

0:56:530:56:56

Ben was always impeccably dressed, and marched through the narrow streets like he owned them.

0:56:570:57:04

To avoid being trapped in conversations with the locals, he bounced a ball as he went.

0:57:040:57:09

And if anyone actually approached him, he'd raise an imperious hand,

0:57:090:57:14

shout, "working!", and march briskly on.

0:57:140:57:17

Barbara, however, was the invisible monarch.

0:57:240:57:27

She hardly ever left her secluded palace, preferring to survey her dominion from on high.

0:57:270:57:32

And while Ben ruled through arrogance, Barbara ruled through fear.

0:57:320:57:36

Many locals called her the Witch of St Ives,

0:57:360:57:39

and rumours even circulated that the statues in her gardens were actually her ossified victims.

0:57:390:57:46

# ..Freedom, liberty and stuff like that... #

0:57:510:57:57

But Ben and Barbara's dominion would not go unchallenged.

0:57:590:58:04

As the 1950s unfolded, this new generation would fight them for supremacy.

0:58:040:58:11

The chief pretender to their throne was Peter Lanyon.

0:58:110:58:14

Mercurial, passionate and rebellious, Lanyon saw himself

0:58:160:58:20

as the true artistic leader of his own land.

0:58:200:58:23

Lanyon was born and bred in St Ives.

0:58:250:58:28

During the war he had served overseas as an RAF mechanic,

0:58:280:58:32

but had returned with burning ambition,

0:58:320:58:35

both for his art and his homeland.

0:58:350:58:38

Lanyon, I think, is a really complex character,

0:58:380:58:41

because, at the end of the war, it is undoubtedly crucial to his art,

0:58:410:58:44

this recognition of the importance to him of his identity as a Cornishman,

0:58:440:58:49

his association with this place, with the landscape around St Ives,

0:58:490:58:52

which he knows intimately.

0:58:520:58:54

Lanyon was prepared to turn the world upside down in his relentless search for the real Cornwall,

0:58:560:59:02

the Cornwall only a native could understand.

0:59:020:59:06

Lanyon decided there was only one way to make a proper landscape painting.

0:59:070:59:11

It was simple, you had to get out of doors, let go of your inhibitions

0:59:110:59:15

and experience the countryside in every possible way.

0:59:150:59:19

You'd have to get right to the edge of a cliff, until you're sick with vertigo.

0:59:230:59:27

You'd have to get as close to nature as possible.

0:59:280:59:31

Sometimes you had to get wet!

0:59:330:59:35

You'd have to go rock-climbing.

0:59:350:59:37

You'd have to run up a hill and catch the view by surprise.

0:59:400:59:45

Now this all might seem a bit childish, but it's central to Lanyon's artistic philosophy.

0:59:450:59:50

Because Lanyon isn't trying to paint what Cornwall looks like, he's trying to paint what it feels like.

0:59:500:59:57

With these complicated images now

1:00:071:00:10

of underwater coast and landscape, sky and so on like that,

1:00:101:00:14

I have so many things being introduced,

1:00:141:00:17

that either I'm letting myself into a mad house, or I shall solve it.

1:00:171:00:20

One never knows as a painter, cos you throw yourself off the cliff every time you start,

1:00:201:00:24

and you've got to fly or swim or duck or something, and come out the other end.

1:00:241:00:28

Lanyon's risk-taking rebelliousness didn't just result in great art.

1:00:311:00:36

In the years after the war, it also motivated violent infighting among the artists of St Ives.

1:00:361:00:43

In February 1949, St Ives' large artistic community

1:00:431:00:47

held a packed and noisy meeting here at the Castle Inn.

1:00:471:00:51

They founded a new exhibiting society, with bold and democratic aims.

1:00:511:00:56

But Ben and Barbara were still running the show.

1:00:561:00:58

They proposed dividing the membership into three categories -

1:00:581:01:02

A - abstract, B - figurative and C - craftsmen.

1:01:021:01:06

They were all starting up showing at Penwith Galleries,

1:01:061:01:11

and there was this big thing of, are you in Category A,

1:01:111:01:15

or are you in a Category B?

1:01:151:01:16

There were falling-outs, and people did almost punch each other in those days over it, you know.

1:01:161:01:22

And it was big stuff, because you were moving into the world of abstract painting.

1:01:221:01:27

People would have fights about the kind of paintings they made.

1:01:271:01:30

I'm not saying, "Bring them back", but the idea

1:01:301:01:32

that you could actually thump somebody cos they made an abstract painting,

1:01:321:01:36

and they might thump you because you made a figurative one, I think is...

1:01:361:01:39

It's extraordinary, isn't it, for a little Cornish town?

1:01:391:01:42

I think there was a lot of alcohol there, that kind of explains it!

1:01:421:01:44

Peter Lanyon did fall out with the rest, like Dad and other people,

1:01:461:01:49

over the fact that you had Category A and Category B,

1:01:491:01:52

because I think Peter didn't want any categories, he just wanted it to be straight.

1:01:521:01:57

He'd gone to war to fight fascism and here it was on his doorstep. He disliked their stranglehold.

1:01:571:02:02

He used to work for Barbara for a bit, so he'd go into the studio.

1:02:021:02:05

Or, erm, with Ben, you see, he knew Ben.

1:02:051:02:09

So in a sense, they were the sacred cows,

1:02:091:02:12

and this was very important, that he could,

1:02:121:02:16

with his rebellious nature, actually be inspired by their awfulness

1:02:161:02:22

to do scurrilous things, and that was very much a part of his art.

1:02:221:02:28

He was restless, and always finding a new way of painting.

1:02:281:02:32

In 1950, he has this important split from Nicholson and Hepworth,

1:02:321:02:38

and he, in his mind and in his writing, he combines that with a change in direction in his art,

1:02:381:02:43

and he talks about his art becoming more concerned with actual places.

1:02:431:02:48

And he talks about place, not just about landscape.

1:02:481:02:50

Place, for him, combines a certain location with its social history,

1:03:061:03:14

with its population, with its past activities.

1:03:141:03:17

So he goes to fishing villages, he goes to the farming country outside St Ives, and, crucially,

1:03:171:03:22

he goes along the coast west of St Ives, which is a mining district,

1:03:221:03:26

and he makes these paintings which, for him, explore the associations of that place,

1:03:261:03:32

the political history of Cornwall.

1:03:321:03:35

But, crucially, he makes paintings which can stand alongside the best paintings made anywhere in the world.

1:03:351:03:43

One morning in 1951, Lanyon packed a bag

1:03:571:04:01

and set off on a gruelling and emotional pilgrimage to the hidden heart of Cornwall.

1:04:011:04:07

And I'm going to follow in his footsteps.

1:04:071:04:09

Leaving St Ives heading west, his path crossed the remote moors of Zennor,

1:04:101:04:16

the inhospitable region of ancient remains that had so inspired Barbara Hepworth before him.

1:04:161:04:21

But while she was exploring an exotic country, Lanyon felt he was coming home.

1:04:281:04:35

Because he had it in his bones, erm, he knew stuff.

1:04:351:04:40

You don't know that there are people under the ground actually hacking out metal,

1:04:401:04:46

and you don't know what it's like to be, erm, a fisherman.

1:04:461:04:51

It's those kinds of experiences that made him paint.

1:04:531:04:59

He felt that he was the host, having been born here and having been completely Cornish.

1:04:591:05:07

He was more a St Ives local than Wallace was. Wallace was an outsider.

1:05:071:05:11

For me, the painter is a kind of beachcomber.

1:05:131:05:16

I live in a country which has been changed by man over many centuries of civilisation.

1:05:161:05:22

It's impossible for me to make a painting which has no reference

1:05:221:05:26

to the very powerful environment in which I live.

1:05:261:05:29

I have to refer back continually to what is under my feet,

1:05:291:05:33

to what is over my back, and to what I see in front of me.

1:05:331:05:37

When Peter Lanyon was here, this was a working mine.

1:05:471:05:50

In those days there were 300 people working here,

1:05:501:05:54

and people who weren't working here were working underground, beneath us.

1:05:541:05:58

Probably Cornwall was one of the first post-industrial landscapes in Europe, really.

1:05:581:06:04

When I first came here, when the mines were still working,

1:06:041:06:07

they were leaching into the sea and there was a red tide every day.

1:06:071:06:10

-Around the coast, there was this red, pink, frothy tide.

-Really?

1:06:101:06:14

All around this part of the coast.

1:06:141:06:16

And what's gives Lanyon his punch, from my point of view,

1:06:161:06:19

is that he's referring to something out there in the real world.

1:06:191:06:23

The mine is extinct now.

1:06:271:06:29

The land has been hacked about and plundered by miners searching for tin.

1:06:291:06:35

The cliff is still tinted with iron oxide, which makes it a brilliant red.

1:06:351:06:39

This is the Levant mine, the scene of one of Cornwall's worst mining disasters,

1:06:451:06:52

and the inspiration for perhaps Lanyon's greatest painting.

1:06:521:06:55

At 2:45 on the afternoon of 20th October, 1919, the old mineshaft lift,

1:06:591:07:05

known rather ominously as the Man Engine, shattered into pieces

1:07:051:07:10

and sent its passengers tumbling deep into the mine shaft.

1:07:101:07:15

31 men died that day, leaving 19 women widowed and 47 children fatherless.

1:07:201:07:28

Peter Lanyon was just a baby when the Man Engine broke, but he was haunted by the event

1:07:321:07:37

throughout his life and the thought of dead bodies being shovelled up from the ground with spades.

1:07:371:07:43

He may also have felt some guilt.

1:07:431:07:45

His family had managed these mines for generations.

1:07:451:07:49

But, whatever the reason, his visit here had convinced him

1:07:491:07:52

he had to make some kind of memorial to the victims.

1:07:521:07:56

This is Lanyon's memorial to the miners.

1:08:091:08:11

It's called St Just after the town from which most of them came.

1:08:111:08:15

I think it's one of the great paintings of the 20th century, and I'm going to tell you why.

1:08:151:08:19

First, this big black stripe that runs through the painting from top to bottom.

1:08:191:08:23

That's the fatal mineshaft in which those 31 men lost their lives.

1:08:231:08:28

These wires and pulleys at the top are the wires and pulleys of the Man Engine.

1:08:281:08:32

I think this might be an indication of it plummeting to the very base of the shaft.

1:08:321:08:37

So at first sight it's a rather literal cross section

1:08:371:08:40

of the mineshaft seen from the ground within.

1:08:401:08:42

It's a kind of diagram of disaster.

1:08:421:08:44

But Lanyon insisted there was a second level of meaning to this painting.

1:08:441:08:48

He claimed it was also a crucifixion.

1:08:481:08:51

When you look at it in that light, you can see

1:08:511:08:54

this black line coming down with the two arms across,

1:08:541:08:58

does resemble an old-fashioned religious crucifixion.

1:08:581:09:01

There aren't just two levels of meaning to this painting.

1:09:011:09:04

There's a third level. That third level can only be understood when the painting is tilted to the side.

1:09:041:09:10

When you look at the painting from this angle, you realise it's not

1:09:111:09:14

just a picture of the mineshaft seen from under the ground,

1:09:141:09:17

but a picture of the whole region from above the ground,

1:09:171:09:20

looking down from a bird's-eye view.

1:09:201:09:23

This back line becomes a scar that has run all the way through the county.

1:09:231:09:28

This becomes the far western corner.

1:09:281:09:30

You can see the sea there of Cornwall.

1:09:301:09:32

These are the fields and the walls and houses and the roads of this region of Cornwall.

1:09:321:09:37

I realise it's not pretty, but then nor is being crushed to death in a mineshaft.

1:09:371:09:43

But it's the searing ambition of this painting that really strikes me.

1:09:431:09:47

In this monumental picture, Lanyon has combined religion and society and history and myth and landscape

1:09:471:09:55

into one ferocious indictment of industrial exploitation.

1:09:551:09:59

This is the Cornwall of work, of tragedy.

1:09:591:10:03

This is the Cornwall that no-one but Lanyon had the bravery to paint.

1:10:031:10:08

Peter Lanyon's reputation soared in the mid-1950s.

1:10:141:10:18

But he wasn't the only star of this new generation.

1:10:201:10:23

Another artist who shared the limelight was his schoolboy friend, Patrick Heron.

1:10:251:10:31

In the late 1940s, early 1950s, Heron is known primarily as a critic.

1:10:311:10:36

He's the art critic of the New Statesman, and very influential as such.

1:10:361:10:41

Therefore he's a really important person in the communication of this phenomenon of St Ives.

1:10:411:10:47

Fascinatingly, Heron writes an article in the New Statesman called The School Of London,

1:10:471:10:53

where he recognises that, in the wake of the war,

1:10:531:10:58

Paris's status as the capital of modern art is insecure.

1:10:581:11:03

New York is not yet established.

1:11:031:11:06

Heron proposes that maybe London can become the new centre for modernism.

1:11:061:11:11

But when he talks about London, he means St Ives, and the artists he cites are all working in Cornwall.

1:11:111:11:17

London is where there art is shown but Cornwall is the place where it's made.

1:11:171:11:20

In 1956, Heron returned to Cornwall, to the very house in which

1:11:221:11:27

he'd spent part of his childhood, Eagle's Nest.

1:11:271:11:32

He wrote, "To find it one must from St Ives go still further, further west.

1:11:321:11:38

"One must crawl up, down, around and along that incredible last lap

1:11:381:11:44

"of coast where the lonely road slips,

1:11:441:11:47

"folds and slides around rocks."

1:11:471:11:49

Eagle's Nest is one of the most spectacular homes in Britain.

1:11:521:11:57

But, perched on a rocky bluff set four-square to the Atlantic,

1:11:571:12:01

overlooking a primeval coastal plain, it wasn't an easy place to live.

1:12:011:12:07

Normally this house is just vibrating

1:12:071:12:10

with pretty violent winds.

1:12:101:12:13

Until I owned this house, I enjoyed gales, but I lie in bed there,

1:12:131:12:17

just waiting for some frightful crash, which has of course occurred.

1:12:171:12:21

Great slabs of the roof just came off.

1:12:211:12:24

This life, dictated by the elements,

1:12:241:12:27

inspired Heron to turn from writing about art to creating it himself.

1:12:271:12:33

In 1956, he began to paint full-time.

1:12:331:12:37

I don't think anybody can come to Cornwall without having this

1:12:371:12:41

extraordinary visual hit, because it's such an extraordinary landscape.

1:12:411:12:45

These fantastic windows with the extraordinary view behind,

1:12:451:12:49

and the way the windows are divided up into little squares

1:12:491:12:52

and the patches of colour through them.

1:12:521:12:54

They remind me of your father's paintings.

1:12:541:12:56

I wonder whether that,

1:12:561:12:58

looking through the window at this landscape,

1:12:581:13:01

helped generate those paintings in some way.

1:13:011:13:04

I'm sure that it did.

1:13:041:13:06

Of course a window in painting is used brilliantly.

1:13:061:13:11

From Matisse, there are very obvious examples.

1:13:111:13:13

It becomes a framing device. I think he must have used that.

1:13:131:13:17

Just as the windows are a framing device, so he used doors as framing devices.

1:13:171:13:23

They're not dissimilar from some of the proportions of some of his paintings.

1:13:231:13:30

I think it's another thing to do with Patrick being deeply rooted in modernism, English modernism,

1:13:301:13:36

which is when the spaces he wanted to both live in

1:13:361:13:39

and for his art to be seen in had absolutely white walls,

1:13:391:13:42

clear floors, simple modernist furniture.

1:13:421:13:45

The effect of having it all white is that it makes the view through

1:13:451:13:49

the windows come forward, as if the view is almost hanging on the wall, like a painting.

1:13:491:13:54

It bounces the light around as well.

1:13:541:13:56

The walls become reflectors.

1:13:561:13:59

Patrick used to talk about how you could look at something and make it flat,

1:13:591:14:04

um, and therefore make it into a painting.

1:14:041:14:08

It involved a rather elaborate thing of closing one eye

1:14:081:14:12

and imagining in your head that what you know to be a deep view,

1:14:121:14:16

landscape, has become something completely flat and therefore could be on the surface of a canvas.

1:14:161:14:23

You can do that with these windows, if you take the frame of the window

1:14:231:14:27

and just abstract the shape that's outside and the colour that's outside.

1:14:271:14:31

That's one of his ways of helping people understand.

1:14:311:14:33

What then people found very difficult to understand was the nature of abstraction.

1:14:331:14:37

All figurative art is abstract.

1:14:371:14:40

All art is abstract. We're savouring these abstract elements of spatial reality, of colour reality,

1:14:401:14:47

of formal reality, whatever great painting of whatever period in the world we're looking at.

1:14:471:14:52

Everyone knows about Claude Monet's garden at Giverny,

1:15:001:15:03

the one with the water lilies and the Japanese footbridge.

1:15:031:15:07

But Patrick Heron's garden here at Eagle's Nest, while less famous, is just as exciting.

1:15:071:15:13

The overpowering effect of colour in this garden was to find dramatic expression in Heron's paintings.

1:15:181:15:26

He wrote passionately about his growing obsession.

1:15:261:15:29

"You're in a world of viridian greens, of a multitude of greys,

1:15:311:15:36

"soft cerulean blue, indigo, black, khaki and Venetian red.

1:15:361:15:41

"A worn asymmetric rectangle, a lopsided disc,

1:15:411:15:44

"an uneven triangle of smooth stone inlaid in the field path at your feet,

1:15:441:15:49

"are echoed precisely, it seems, in the boulders of the hedge by the stile,

1:15:491:15:54

"in the wall of the ancient church tower, in the configuration half-a-mile away

1:15:541:15:59

"of pale giant rocks balanced in an intricate chaos of the dark bracken slopes above you."

1:15:591:16:04

For Heron, colour was the means and end, the form and content, the image and the meaning of his work.

1:16:091:16:16

It was everything.

1:16:161:16:18

To understand what he really meant by this, I've come to see a very

1:16:221:16:26

special painting that's hidden away in the Tate Gallery stores.

1:16:261:16:30

Wow!

1:16:331:16:35

It's absolutely huge, it's like a whole continent of colour.

1:16:391:16:42

Come and have a look a little bit closer because it's at the edges

1:16:481:16:52

where the picture really comes to life. It's where one colour touches another, that's where Heron

1:16:521:16:56

detonates the image like a kind of explosive device.

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It's where he finds, along this line, what he called the colour of colour.

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His very favourite part was filling in the last patch of white.

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He said that when he did this the whole world would suddenly pulse.

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As you're standing here in front of this colossal coloured canvas, you completely understand it.

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The whole thing radiates light.

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While Patrick Heron was exploring an abstract world of colour, Peter Lanyon had stumbled across

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an exciting new way to see and experience the landscape.

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I have always watched birds in flight exploring the landscape, moving more freely than man.

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But in a glider, I had the same freedom.

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I'm now able to get away from the very familiar countryside,

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one of stone and grass and very treeless for instance,

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a rough, harsh countryside, into the air and to see it

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in conditions which I never expected I'd find. Conditions of solitude.

1:18:321:18:36

In 1960, Lanyon obtained his solo flying licence.

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His experience of gliding inspired a remarkable series of paintings.

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But you can't properly understand them unless you take to the skies yourself.

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It's just a matter of not doing paintings which are visual paintings

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so much, it's paintings which are related to some physical experience.

1:19:001:19:04

You know, when you're up here in this glider and you're looking down over Cornwall from high up,

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you realise that every other landscape painter in history missed a trick.

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This is the most incredible way to see the landscape, incredible!

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People say that Peter Lanyon's paintings are abstract.

1:19:301:19:34

When you're up here, you can see Peter Lanyon's everywhere you look.

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From up here, Lanyon saw the sea, beaches, cliffs, moors, fields

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and villages of Cornwall combined into one glorious vista beneath him.

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I am detached, actually,

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from this very rough and harsh country below me,

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but not entirely detached.

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In fact this whole thing of flying is giving me a better understanding,

1:20:051:20:11

I think, of the coast and the country underneath me

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than I'd have had by continuously walking over it.

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I think that...

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this may be important for the future of painting, I don't know.

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As far as I'm concerned, I think it's led me into something that's very important

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for just not landscape but for painting problems of time and of distance.

1:20:301:20:35

As I hovered on those West Country thermals, I suddenly understood what Lanyon's art was all about.

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It wasn't about modernism or nationalism, or history or myth,

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it was actually about pure unadulterated joy.

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The joy of feeling the sun on your face and the wind in your hair.

1:20:551:20:58

The joy of being in a world that you love.

1:20:581:21:02

As an art historian, I spend most of my time in libraries and lecture rooms.

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I never thought in a million years I'd be going up in a glider and seeing Cornwall below me,

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and I have one person to thank for that, and that's Peter Lanyon.

1:21:121:21:16

I believe that these aerial paintings are the culmination of 200 years of British landscape art,

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and with them, Lanyon was on his way to becoming the Turner of the 20th century.

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Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron were now the torch bearers of the St Ives movement.

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A movement that had gained national and international fame

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for combining the hard-edged abstraction of the 1930s

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with a love for the natural world.

1:21:571:22:00

Ben Nicholson left St Ives for Switzerland in 1957,

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but the momentum was now unstoppable.

1:22:121:22:16

Even the Americans were beginning to take notice.

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For a few brief years, Cornish artists were going shoulder to shoulder with the Americans.

1:22:201:22:26

People were genuinely speaking of New York and St Ives in the same breath,

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and the Americans were glancing nervously across the Atlantic,

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not to see what was happening in London, Paris or Berlin,

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but to see what was happening here.

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In the years either side of 1960, many American artists and critics

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even made the long journey to St Ives to see what was going on.

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Mark Rothko, a giant of abstract expressionism was just one of them.

1:22:541:22:59

A creative dialogue and, at times, a vitriolic rivalry

1:22:591:23:03

have been opened up between these two artistic centres.

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But the transatlantic cultural currents weren't just one way.

1:23:071:23:12

Between 1957 and 1965, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron together

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had eight one-man shows in America.

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And in 1964, St Ives triumphed again when Barbara Hepworth unveiled

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a monumental sculpture at the United Nations in New York City.

1:23:281:23:34

No one then could possibly have predicted that the glory years of St Ives were over.

1:23:371:23:45

The trigger for this unexpected decline came out of the blue.

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On Thursday 27th August 1964,

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Peter Lanyon was on a gliding course.

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For a few glorious moments he circled high above the fields,

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but as he came in to land, something went terribly wrong.

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Maybe it was a momentary lapse in concentration,

1:24:151:24:18

perhaps a freak gust of wind.

1:24:181:24:22

Whatever the reason, his glider plummeted to the ground

1:24:221:24:27

and he was catapulted from his cockpit.

1:24:271:24:30

Four days later,

1:24:311:24:33

he was dead.

1:24:331:24:34

Lanyon's death was the beginning of the end for the St Ives movement.

1:24:411:24:47

The times had changed, its celebration of nature was suddenly out of date.

1:24:471:24:54

Pop art was now the movement of the moment.

1:24:541:24:57

There was one final tragedy to come.

1:24:571:25:00

In May 1975, Barbara Hepworth died

1:25:041:25:08

in a tragic fire at her studio in St Ives.

1:25:081:25:13

It was over.

1:25:131:25:14

40 years on, and Cornwall is still drawing artists and tourists.

1:25:221:25:29

The arrival of Tate St Ives in 1994 has helped to encouraged

1:25:291:25:34

contemporary art and reaffirm the reputations of these past masters.

1:25:341:25:41

I think there must have been a pioneering spirit that people making paintings to break new ground,

1:25:411:25:45

and they really thought they had found a new language

1:25:451:25:48

and they were speaking in it, and the world was listening.

1:25:481:25:51

I think that the work that was made here by those artists

1:25:531:25:57

is the real thing, and so I think people should seek it out.

1:25:571:26:01

The important thing about all great art is that it's timeless.

1:26:021:26:06

You know, it achieves a value because of its relevance to its moment,

1:26:061:26:11

but it also embodies timeless values

1:26:111:26:14

and it can speak to different generations, but in different ways.

1:26:141:26:18

I think the exciting thing about looking at the art of St Ives now

1:26:181:26:23

is that we can look at that work in ways different to the ways

1:26:231:26:27

it was looked at at the time and has been subsequently.

1:26:271:26:30

From the perspective of a new century, the achievements

1:26:331:26:36

of the St Ives colony look grossly undervalued.

1:26:361:26:40

In our consumer world, their art remains unfashionable, but I marvel at their bravery,

1:26:421:26:49

dedication, and the sheer range of quality of work that spanned more than half-a-century.

1:26:491:26:55

It's their passion for nature, their defiant radicalism and, more than anything,

1:26:551:27:01

their unyielding optimism that defines the art of Cornwall as a high watermark in 20th century art.

1:27:011:27:08

Britain doesn't figure much in the history of modern art.

1:27:151:27:18

When we think of modernism, we think of Paris and New York,

1:27:181:27:22

but the artists who lived and worked here

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are an integral part of that story.

1:27:241:27:26

They abstracted this Cornish landscape, they turned space and rhythm into sculpture.

1:27:261:27:33

They turned its light and warmth into paint.

1:27:331:27:36

But we've forgotten how important their work is,

1:27:361:27:39

simply because it came from such an unlikely place.

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But I think it's about time we look again at the art and artists of Cornwall.

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