0:00:04 > 0:00:07This is a film about the most intriguing 20th-century artist
0:00:07 > 0:00:10you may never have heard of.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14At least, I hope it is a film about him.
0:00:14 > 0:00:18Rather than one that just goes in search of him.
0:00:18 > 0:00:20Because above all, he is an enigma.
0:00:20 > 0:00:24His name? Edward Burra.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28His character? Diffident, self-contained.
0:00:28 > 0:00:34No wonder, perhaps, he spent his life trapped inside a crippled body.
0:00:34 > 0:00:39For him, I think, there were only two escapes, painting and travel.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45He loved Paris and France and came here often and if you know where
0:00:45 > 0:00:50to look, you can still find echoes of the city he knew and loved.
0:00:50 > 0:00:51BELL RINGS
0:00:51 > 0:00:53HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH:
0:01:20 > 0:01:24I get the feeling Edward Burra would have been very happy here.
0:01:24 > 0:01:27BIG BAND MUSIC PLAYS
0:01:35 > 0:01:37It's the Burra rhythm!
0:01:39 > 0:01:41His name may not be familiar,
0:01:41 > 0:01:44but Edward Burra is one of the overlooked geniuses
0:01:44 > 0:01:49of British art and one of the most acute chroniclers of the 20th century.
0:01:49 > 0:01:54Although his is definitely not the official version of history.
0:01:57 > 0:01:58He painted humanity's dark side.
0:02:01 > 0:02:07Its warmongers, lowlifes and outsiders.
0:02:09 > 0:02:13Illuminating dark and murky corners wherever he went.
0:02:14 > 0:02:20His idiosyncratic tour of the 20th century is strange,
0:02:20 > 0:02:24unsettling and always compelling.
0:02:34 > 0:02:37Edward Burra died in 1976.
0:02:37 > 0:02:39I never met him.
0:02:40 > 0:02:45And I am not sure how well even his very best friends really
0:02:45 > 0:02:50knew him, or knew about his art, because Burra was quite
0:02:50 > 0:02:56possibly the single most elusive British artist of the 20th century.
0:02:56 > 0:03:03He very, very rarely talked about his images, in fact, he was so reticent,
0:03:03 > 0:03:06he did not even like to give them titles.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09He only ever give one interview to the media,
0:03:09 > 0:03:11and that was a filmed interview
0:03:11 > 0:03:14that he conducted towards the end of his life.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17It's rare footage, not very often seen
0:03:17 > 0:03:23and they keep it here in the archive of the British Film Institute.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25Here it is.
0:03:25 > 0:03:29Recorded four years before his death, the interview shows
0:03:29 > 0:03:33an artist deeply uncomfortable about revealing anything of himself,
0:03:33 > 0:03:35or his art.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37A man who hated being interviewed.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40Who would much rather be doing what he does best.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44I was just bored, I don't know what to do.
0:03:44 > 0:03:48- What would you be doing if you weren't here?- Painting.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56Born in 1905, Burra was a delicate and sickly child,
0:03:56 > 0:03:59plagued by illness. From a young age, he suffered
0:03:59 > 0:04:02from chronic debilitating arthritis.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05His joints began visibly to deform from the age of five or six
0:04:05 > 0:04:08and the pain never left him for the rest of his life.
0:04:11 > 0:04:16His one buffer against the hand fate had dealt him was prosperity.
0:04:16 > 0:04:18He was the son of a rich lawyer.
0:04:19 > 0:04:22Burra would never need to earn a living.
0:04:25 > 0:04:30He was born in this house, Springfield, near Rye
0:04:30 > 0:04:33and would spend much of his life living here
0:04:33 > 0:04:37with his mother and father, a semi-permanent invalid,
0:04:37 > 0:04:42always forced to return to this, his refuge and main painting space.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47The Window is one of Burra's earliest pictures,
0:04:47 > 0:04:50painted when he was still a teenager.
0:04:50 > 0:04:54Like many of his works, its whereabouts is uncertain
0:04:54 > 0:04:58and it is known only in black-and-white reproduction.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02It is an image that reveals his sense of his own predicament with piercing clarity.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06An ambiguous figure sits on this side of the window.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08Not wheelchair-bound, but certainly chair bound.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12While outside, life in all its vigour goes on.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15Two girls can be seen through the window, perhaps his sisters,
0:05:15 > 0:05:18little Betsy and Anne.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22But the central figure, Burra's alter ego, remains fixed
0:05:22 > 0:05:25and frozen in place.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28It is as if there would always be a sheet of glass
0:05:28 > 0:05:30between him and the world.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32He could look, but not touch.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40Throughout his childhood,
0:05:40 > 0:05:45Burra escaped the limits of his own body through painting and drawing.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48Art had become the most important thing in his life.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51At the young age of 15 in 1921,
0:05:51 > 0:05:56he decided to escape Rye for the Chelsea College of Art in London.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59He loved London's spirit of limitless possibility,
0:05:59 > 0:06:03but it was the hidden, darker side of the city
0:06:03 > 0:06:06that he caricatured in many of his early drawings.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12Burra received a fairly straightforward art education
0:06:12 > 0:06:14by the standards of the early 1920s
0:06:14 > 0:06:17with a strong emphasis on draughtsmanship,
0:06:17 > 0:06:19which perhaps helps to explain
0:06:19 > 0:06:22his very confident and strong sense of line,
0:06:22 > 0:06:24but equally important to him were
0:06:24 > 0:06:26the lifelong friends he made at art school.
0:06:26 > 0:06:31Clover Pritchard, the future photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer, and the future ballet dancer
0:06:31 > 0:06:36Billy Chappelle. What they had in common was a great sense of fun
0:06:36 > 0:06:39and as Burra later said, essentially, frivolity.
0:06:39 > 0:06:44"We spent all our time going to the cinema and reading Vogue magazine."
0:06:44 > 0:06:47I think those things, too, filtered straight into his art.
0:06:48 > 0:06:53Burra had developed a lifelong love of the cinema, especially B-movies
0:06:53 > 0:06:58and cheap serials, which he could enjoy while he was sitting down,
0:06:58 > 0:07:01one of the few positions in which he was comfortable.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04What Burra took from the cinema was his sense of composition,
0:07:04 > 0:07:07he was always very fond of extreme close-ups,
0:07:07 > 0:07:11or plunging, vertiginous perspectives, or close cropping.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14He goes for these heavily made-up faces
0:07:14 > 0:07:17with Cupid's bow lips and exaggerated expressions,
0:07:17 > 0:07:20just as you see them in the old silent movies.
0:07:20 > 0:07:24Films like The Hazards of Helen also hinted at the darker sides
0:07:24 > 0:07:30of human nature, they are full of undercurrents of sex and violence and crime.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33And right through to the end of his life,
0:07:33 > 0:07:37Burra would retain a deep affection for schlock horror, trashy movies.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44As well as going to the movies, the young Burra went to galleries
0:07:44 > 0:07:48of modern art, absorbing the new languages of Cubism,
0:07:48 > 0:07:50collage and abstraction.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54A mix of influences soon to be reflected in his own work.
0:07:54 > 0:07:57The Snack Bar is unusual for Burra,
0:07:57 > 0:08:00in that it is one of his very rare oil paintings, and yet,
0:08:00 > 0:08:05I think it is a classic Burra image and it gives a wonderful snapshot
0:08:05 > 0:08:08of where he is at as an artist in his early maturity.
0:08:08 > 0:08:12He is clearly fascinated by Leger, by Picasso,
0:08:12 > 0:08:15by painting the modern world as a kind of collage of startling detail.
0:08:15 > 0:08:19The wood grain of a door, the tiling of a floor,
0:08:19 > 0:08:21the texture of a bar counter.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25But I think what makes it quintessentially Burra-eque
0:08:25 > 0:08:28is the sense that underneath
0:08:28 > 0:08:31the apparently innocent surface of the scene,
0:08:31 > 0:08:37all kinds of rather disturbing currents seem to be running.
0:08:37 > 0:08:42The young woman shovelling what George Melly once called "a distinctly phallic sandwich"
0:08:42 > 0:08:47into her mouth wears the clothes and make-up of a cheap whore.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51The blank-faced young food-monger
0:08:51 > 0:08:55seems to be cutting into that piece of sausage with disturbing relish.
0:08:55 > 0:09:00Could he be dreaming the dark thoughts of a schlock horror sex murderer?
0:09:13 > 0:09:17In 1925, Burra had travelled to Paris
0:09:17 > 0:09:21to see the great city of modern art and modern life at first-hand.
0:09:21 > 0:09:26He arrived when Paris was at its peak as a centre for the avant-garde,
0:09:26 > 0:09:29and the city would change Burra for ever.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35Burra loved the energy and the dynamism of Paris,
0:09:35 > 0:09:37and he particularly loved the city at night.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40I'm on my way to one of his favourite haunts,
0:09:40 > 0:09:43one of the most famous places in all of Paris - there it is,
0:09:43 > 0:09:46the Folies Bergere, with its orange neon sign.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50And right in the middle, you can see this huge frieze,
0:09:50 > 0:09:54showing a cavorting dancer, with her pneumatic limbs
0:09:54 > 0:09:58and her short bob, the classic image of the '20s flapper.
0:09:58 > 0:10:03And that image, of a dancing woman, letting all her inhibitions go,
0:10:03 > 0:10:07that would come to occupy centre stage in Edward Burra's imagination.
0:10:16 > 0:10:18Les Folies de Belleville
0:10:18 > 0:10:22is Burra in the first flush of his love affair with Paris.
0:10:22 > 0:10:24But what an ambiguous love affair.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27Right of stage, the cross-legged dancer,
0:10:27 > 0:10:32her modesty protected by a piece of diamante the size of a postage stamp,
0:10:32 > 0:10:36stares out at the audience with fierce impassivity.
0:10:36 > 0:10:39Her trailing hand reaches out towards the phallic dagger,
0:10:39 > 0:10:44thrust nonchalantly into the black dancer's loincloth.
0:10:44 > 0:10:46This is the spectacle of sex, the promise Of sex,
0:10:46 > 0:10:50without the slightest prospect of sex.
0:10:50 > 0:10:52All sex could ever be for Edward Burra.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57His own predicament mimed in the harsh, angular forms of a stage show.
0:11:05 > 0:11:10'I met Sandrine Voillet, an expert on Parisian popular entertainment,
0:11:10 > 0:11:13'backstage at another famous nightspot of the '20s,
0:11:13 > 0:11:16the music hall des Champs Elysee.'
0:11:16 > 0:11:20So here we are, one of Burra's favourite Paris hangouts.
0:11:20 > 0:11:23I get the feeling it probably hasn't changed much since then.
0:11:23 > 0:11:28No, it hasn't changed since 1925, when La Revue Negre actually opened.
0:11:28 > 0:11:30So this is how it would've been
0:11:30 > 0:11:35- when Josephine Baker was dancing for the Parisian bourgeois? - The Charleston.- Wow!
0:11:44 > 0:11:48When she appeared, there was a huge scream. People were gobsmacked!
0:11:48 > 0:11:53- Imagine the effect on the male audience!- Poor Edward Burra!
0:11:53 > 0:11:55He said he only had one erection in his whole life,
0:11:55 > 0:11:57watching Mae West in the movies.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00Maybe there was a tremor when he saw Josephine Baker.
0:12:01 > 0:12:05Josephine Baker really epitomised
0:12:05 > 0:12:07the new style of a woman.
0:12:07 > 0:12:11Showing her body, not having a corset anymore, having short hair,
0:12:11 > 0:12:13so she is really the modern woman.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16What's behind this embrace of black culture, American culture?
0:12:16 > 0:12:19There is a real appetite for pleasure.
0:12:19 > 0:12:24People want to put behind them the trauma of the First World War.
0:12:24 > 0:12:28And the people who can afford to go to nightclubs and cabarets,
0:12:28 > 0:12:31come here to have fun.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34You call that the Roaring Twenties, we call them Les Annees Folles -
0:12:34 > 0:12:35the crazy years.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38- So it's the party after the trauma? - Absolutely.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43The straitjacket that has held the continent for four long, tragic years has loosened,
0:12:43 > 0:12:47and Paris, the heart of the Continent, lets herself go.
0:12:47 > 0:12:49Post-war Paris really was a party town.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53The streets of Europe's major cities were full of reminders
0:12:53 > 0:12:55of the brutality of World War One.
0:12:55 > 0:12:58Crippled bodies of young soldiers,
0:12:58 > 0:13:03who had been literally dismembered by shrapnel, and machine-gun fire.
0:13:03 > 0:13:07So no wonder there was such an appetite in the nightclubs
0:13:07 > 0:13:11for the spectacle of young, unblemished, dancing bodies.
0:13:13 > 0:13:16Burra loved the un-English exuberance of Paris.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20He sketched the dancers of the chorus line,
0:13:20 > 0:13:24advancing on the audience like a new model army,
0:13:24 > 0:13:26stormtroopers of liberating decadence.
0:13:28 > 0:13:32By day, he went to the record shops, where you could buy the soundtrack
0:13:32 > 0:13:36to this new era of social and sexual freedom.
0:13:36 > 0:13:40The new music, known in Paris as "le jazz", or "le blues".
0:13:42 > 0:13:45And he painted the favourite of his hangouts,
0:13:45 > 0:13:49a store on the Boulevard Clichy, called Minuit Chanson - Midnight Song.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55"It's glorious", he wrote to his friend and fellow painter Paul Nash.
0:13:55 > 0:13:59"You put bits in the slot and listen to gramophone records.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02"The clientele is enough to frighten you a little bit,
0:14:02 > 0:14:06"what with listening with one ear and looking at the intrigues going on elsewhere.
0:14:06 > 0:14:08"The people are glorious.
0:14:08 > 0:14:11"Such tarts, all crumbling, and all sexes and colours."
0:14:11 > 0:14:14As well as record shops and music hall entertainments,
0:14:14 > 0:14:18Burra loved to paint Paris's bars and cafes,
0:14:18 > 0:14:21dwelling on the minutiae of the cheap decor.
0:14:21 > 0:14:25Brightly patterned tiled floors, gleaming chrome counters,
0:14:25 > 0:14:28steaming coffee machines.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31And he was fascinated by their ever-changing clientele.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35The whole city was, for him, an unfolding entertainment,
0:14:35 > 0:14:37a kind of living cinema.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45Burra also travelled to the south of France,
0:14:45 > 0:14:50where he was drawn to the seamier port towns, like Marseille,
0:14:50 > 0:14:54with their air of abject poverty and their picturesque shabbiness.
0:14:57 > 0:15:02In his Dockside Cafe, there's a palpable sense of boredom
0:15:02 > 0:15:03and seediness.
0:15:03 > 0:15:06Men hanging around with no real place to go.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12And maybe there is more going on at the counter
0:15:12 > 0:15:17between the greasy matelot and the fanged barmaids than the mere purchase of a cup of coffee.
0:15:18 > 0:15:23As in Paris, Burra was drawn to the nightlife of the port towns,
0:15:23 > 0:15:27in particular their Spanish-style flamenco establishments.
0:15:27 > 0:15:31Here, in a painting called Flamenco Dancer,
0:15:31 > 0:15:34he's compressed a whole lot of different memories
0:15:34 > 0:15:36of the things he experienced on his travels.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40It's an image of a sexual predator.
0:15:40 > 0:15:45Burra has depicted her as a cross between a femme fatale
0:15:45 > 0:15:48and a dangerous insect.
0:15:48 > 0:15:53He's made her train resemble the sting of a scorpion,
0:15:53 > 0:15:55her male victims, completely entranced.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59And for once, you get the sense that Burra, the sexual outsider,
0:15:59 > 0:16:02the man on the outside of life, is quite glad to be there.
0:16:02 > 0:16:07He's watching what's going on and feels happy he is not part of it.
0:16:07 > 0:16:09Over here, as so often again in Burra,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12you get this huge foreground detail,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15perhaps she's the next flamenco dancer to perform.
0:16:15 > 0:16:20Perhaps she's wondering if she can live up to the example of her rival.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24It's a picture full of hallucinatory details,
0:16:24 > 0:16:27and look at this, almost storybook image,
0:16:27 > 0:16:30of a boat under the moonlight.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33I don't think any one experience inspired this image,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35I think it's an example of exactly what Burra did
0:16:35 > 0:16:39with the excitement of all that he'd seen abroad,
0:16:39 > 0:16:43compressed it into a single image full of colour, light, vigour
0:16:43 > 0:16:45and sexual energy.
0:16:46 > 0:16:51Burra's art isn't the only record of his youthful peregrinations across France.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55He was also a prolific letter-writer.
0:16:55 > 0:16:59I've come to the Tate archive to meet Jane Stevenson,
0:16:59 > 0:17:06his biographer, to see whether his letters might add more pieces to the puzzle of the man.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10Jane, how much time did you spend here in the Burra archive at the Tate?
0:17:10 > 0:17:14It's quite hard to remember, but the main point was it was such fun.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19I get the feeling sometimes he was a man who almost lived through his correspondence?
0:17:19 > 0:17:22He did, because he was so disabled.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26He must have written at least one letter a day for his whole life.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30So at the very least, he thought it was worth it.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34I think he wrote the way he drew, which was by holding the pen, or brush, static,
0:17:34 > 0:17:37and moving from the shoulder.
0:17:37 > 0:17:41How much of his personality do you think is reflected in these letters?
0:17:41 > 0:17:45What you get from the letters is the observation. This one...
0:17:45 > 0:17:47THEY LAUGH
0:17:47 > 0:17:49That's fantastic!
0:17:49 > 0:17:53He loved the distinction between people trying to be smart and cool,
0:17:53 > 0:17:55and what they actually looked like.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58You get the sense from that of this eye,
0:17:58 > 0:18:02that he's sort of eating the world up with his eyes, and then writing it down
0:18:02 > 0:18:05and transforming it into these cartoons,
0:18:05 > 0:18:09which are seen through this rather camp, caricatural,
0:18:09 > 0:18:14- and yet somehow affectionate sensibility, would that be fair to say?- Yes.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17Do think there is a sense in which he sees life as a kind of theatre?
0:18:17 > 0:18:21Yes. What we have is the important question
0:18:21 > 0:18:25of whether their mutual friend Billy has or has not lost his virginity.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27Billy Chappell, the dancer?
0:18:27 > 0:18:31"And pray, dear, from whom did you hear that our little pox had been had?
0:18:31 > 0:18:34"I must try and find out."
0:18:34 > 0:18:38- That's Burra's love of gossip! - That's Burra's love of gossip, all right.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41They'd have loved text messages!
0:18:53 > 0:18:57Burra's life as an artist fell into an unusual pattern,
0:18:57 > 0:18:59forced on him by his illness.
0:18:59 > 0:19:04Exciting bursts of foreign travel would be followed by long periods of enforced rest,
0:19:04 > 0:19:07back with his parents in Sussex.
0:19:08 > 0:19:14I think Edward Burra was a complicated mixture of the bohemian and the conservative,
0:19:14 > 0:19:17and nowhere is that encapsulated more than in his attitude
0:19:17 > 0:19:21to his home town, Rye, where he was born and where he would die.
0:19:21 > 0:19:23On the one hand, he loved to complain about it,
0:19:23 > 0:19:27to mock what he saw as its aura of suffocating gentility,
0:19:27 > 0:19:30its tea shop cosiness. He called it "Tinkerbell Town".
0:19:30 > 0:19:34On the other hand, he needed it. This was his recuperation zone.
0:19:34 > 0:19:37He'd come back here after his adventures overseas,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40with his store of images and memories.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43This was where he would actually create the vast body of his work.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46Burra's method was idiosyncratic.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50He'd form a picture in his mind, and then simply paint it from left to right,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52as if rolling it out of his imagination.
0:19:52 > 0:19:58You can see the process very clearly in this unfinished landscape from the end of his life.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01Burra's arthritic hands were too weak to hold anything
0:20:01 > 0:20:04except watercolour brushes, so almost all his works,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08however large, were carried out in watercolour.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11But watercolour used thick and heavy, like oil paint,
0:20:11 > 0:20:15to give as much density and substance to every image.
0:20:15 > 0:20:19In one of his most playful paintings, The Tea Shop,
0:20:19 > 0:20:22done just a year after Les Folies de Belleville,
0:20:22 > 0:20:26he imagined the scantily-clad dancers of the Parisian nightclub scene
0:20:26 > 0:20:31descending on some staid tea shop in Rye, serving tea and cakes
0:20:31 > 0:20:35to a thoroughly bemused clientele of bowler-hatted, newspaper-reading,
0:20:35 > 0:20:40repressed Englishmen, and blue-rinsed ladies of a certain age.
0:20:40 > 0:20:42One of whom, to her astonishment,
0:20:42 > 0:20:45is having a pot of tea poured over her head
0:20:45 > 0:20:50by none other than a smirking vision of Josephine Baker herself.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55But if his art was meticulous and carefully constructed,
0:20:55 > 0:20:57real life was not so obliging.
0:21:02 > 0:21:05Because of his personal fragility,
0:21:05 > 0:21:08I think Burra always had a very keen sense of mortality.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12But death actually entered his life for the first time
0:21:12 > 0:21:15with the passing away of his maternal grandmother.
0:21:15 > 0:21:19They were very fond of each other, and Burra was particularly horrified,
0:21:19 > 0:21:22he kept the image with him until the end of his life.
0:21:22 > 0:21:27He was horrified by how long it took them to lower her coffin
0:21:27 > 0:21:31into the seemingly bottomless pit of the grave.
0:21:33 > 0:21:35But while the death of his grandmother was sad,
0:21:35 > 0:21:39it wasn't entirely unexpected. She'd lived a long life.
0:21:39 > 0:21:43But a genuine tragedy would, very shortly afterwards,
0:21:43 > 0:21:45befall the Burra family.
0:21:48 > 0:21:50It was here at Springfield in 1929
0:21:50 > 0:21:54that real tragedy befell the Burra family.
0:21:54 > 0:22:00His younger sister Betsy, with whom Edward was very close,
0:22:00 > 0:22:02fell mortally ill with meningitis.
0:22:02 > 0:22:07Betsy's bedroom was just off the landing at the top of these stairs.
0:22:10 > 0:22:15And at the very end, Burra spent his sister's last day
0:22:15 > 0:22:16watching her die.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22And that night, he stayed with her, keeping a long vigil.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26I think it's as if this man, who spent so much of his life
0:22:26 > 0:22:30living through his eyes, wanted to drink her in one last time.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34Wanted to fix her image on his retina.
0:22:34 > 0:22:39Preserve her, at least as a memory that could never be obliterated.
0:22:41 > 0:22:44He hasn't got a vocabulary to handle it.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48He and his friends were all busy being smart at each other,
0:22:48 > 0:22:49and witty, and observant,
0:22:49 > 0:22:53so there isn't room in that world for genuine tragedy.
0:22:53 > 0:22:57The most significant thing to me is a long letter,
0:22:57 > 0:23:00which is mostly about other subjects, skinny dipping,
0:23:00 > 0:23:05idiot things like that, and he has obviously written this,
0:23:05 > 0:23:09and then looked at the letter, and he ends up writing,
0:23:09 > 0:23:12in the margin at the bottom,
0:23:12 > 0:23:16"Believe me, I feel her death very much."
0:23:16 > 0:23:21Burra's response to sadness, at least in early life, was never to dwell on the pain.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24And during the decade that followed Betsy's death,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27he seems to have been even more determined
0:23:27 > 0:23:30to escape his troubles by travelling to foreign cultures.
0:23:30 > 0:23:32None more so than America.
0:23:40 > 0:23:45For Burra, America had an attraction unlike any other country in the world.
0:23:45 > 0:23:52He'd journeyed there many times in his imagination, through the jazz and cinema that he loved.
0:23:52 > 0:23:57When he finally visited, in 1933, aged 28, he stayed in Harlem,
0:23:57 > 0:23:59which had a profound impact on him.
0:23:59 > 0:24:04He loved the style and attitude of black New Yorkers, and the rhythm of the streets.
0:24:04 > 0:24:08He was having the best time when he was in New York.
0:24:08 > 0:24:10I think he was really enjoying himself.
0:24:10 > 0:24:14If any of the work can be joyful,
0:24:14 > 0:24:18and not light, it's never light, but that's him feeling...
0:24:21 > 0:24:25..he's in a place he wants to be, I think. He's having a good time.
0:24:25 > 0:24:30The vibrancy and colour of the place are vividly conveyed
0:24:30 > 0:24:32in his pictures of Harlem street life.
0:24:32 > 0:24:36They instantly evoke an extraordinary time and place,
0:24:36 > 0:24:41the birth of America's first genuinely confident, exuberant black culture.
0:24:41 > 0:24:44And Burra was on hand to record it all.
0:24:44 > 0:24:49Not just the brash street fashions, but the importance of pose a gesture.
0:24:49 > 0:24:51Just by the way he stands and holds his cigarette,
0:24:51 > 0:24:55a man can embody the hip and the cool.
0:24:56 > 0:25:01But as in Paris, it was New York by night that really captured Burra's imagination.
0:25:01 > 0:25:03The bars, the nightclubs.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06"We went to the Savoy dancehall the other night,"
0:25:06 > 0:25:08Burra wrote about his time in Harlem.
0:25:08 > 0:25:11"You would go mad. I've never in my life seen such a display.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15"And the women had to be twirled around 10 times.
0:25:15 > 0:25:17"It's most extraordinary."
0:25:17 > 0:25:21Burra himself couldn't dance. He could barely walk.
0:25:21 > 0:25:23But in these pictures of his favourite Harlem club,
0:25:23 > 0:25:28he managed something very much like dancing with the paintbrush.
0:25:28 > 0:25:30There's a tremendous, giddy energy
0:25:30 > 0:25:32about this panoramic watercolour of the Savoy dancehall.
0:25:35 > 0:25:38It's a pictorial fantasy of being thrust
0:25:38 > 0:25:41into a mass of writhing, cavorting bodies.
0:25:44 > 0:25:47Burra's art mirrored the world that he was observing.
0:25:47 > 0:25:51Burlesque shows in Paris, whores and matelots in Marseilles
0:25:51 > 0:25:53and dancing black couples in New York.
0:25:54 > 0:25:56'His eye was drawn to them all.
0:25:56 > 0:25:58'I have the feeling the one place
0:25:58 > 0:26:02'he was desperately trying not to look was within.
0:26:02 > 0:26:04'But no one can avoid confronting reality forever.'
0:26:04 > 0:26:06How do you paint?
0:26:06 > 0:26:10Do you make notes or... What do you do?
0:26:10 > 0:26:12I paint straight onto a piece of paper.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17'And the experience of travelling to one particular place,
0:26:17 > 0:26:19'perhaps his favourite place of all.
0:26:19 > 0:26:24'would force Burra to face the world in a far more naked and serious way.
0:26:27 > 0:26:29'That place was Spain.'
0:26:30 > 0:26:34Burra travelled light. He didn't plan his journeys.
0:26:35 > 0:26:37He himself, it seems, sometimes
0:26:37 > 0:26:40didn't know if he was going to go away for a week
0:26:40 > 0:26:42or for six months.
0:26:42 > 0:26:44His mum once famously said, "I don't know if Edward's gone out
0:26:44 > 0:26:46"for a packet of cigarettes
0:26:46 > 0:26:49"or if he's gone for a journey across Spain."
0:26:49 > 0:26:53He wouldn't tell anybody where he was going, what he was doing.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57And unlike most English travellers to Spain,
0:26:57 > 0:27:02Burra really knew Spanish culture, really had a feeling for it.
0:27:03 > 0:27:06He could speak Spanish, he could read Spanish.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10And, in fact, one of his favourite quotes,
0:27:10 > 0:27:11almost his motto,
0:27:11 > 0:27:15came from the Spanish poet Gongora.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19Whenever Burra had been away and been on one of that his journeys,
0:27:19 > 0:27:22if someone was quizzing him about what he'd been doing
0:27:22 > 0:27:25or where he'd been, who he'd been talking to,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27and perhaps he didn't like that person,
0:27:27 > 0:27:30he'd take this quote from Gongora, throw it in their face.
0:27:32 > 0:27:33A mis solidades voy,
0:27:33 > 0:27:35de mis solidades vengo.
0:27:37 > 0:27:38To my solitudes I go,
0:27:38 > 0:27:41from my solitudes I come.
0:27:41 > 0:27:44Keep your nose out of my business, in other words.
0:27:46 > 0:27:51'Burra travelled to Spain many times during his youth,
0:27:51 > 0:27:52'particularly in the 1930s.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56'The journey there was much less arduous than that to America.
0:27:56 > 0:27:58'Yet in just a few days,
0:27:58 > 0:28:02'he could get as far away as possible from the terribly enclosed world
0:28:02 > 0:28:03'of his home in Rye.'
0:28:04 > 0:28:09Burra was part of an entire generation of post-war Englishmen
0:28:09 > 0:28:12who were determined to travel to escape the monotony,
0:28:12 > 0:28:17the dreariness, the greyness of what they saw as safe old England.
0:28:17 > 0:28:20As another member of this generation Norman Douglas wrote,
0:28:20 > 0:28:24"The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28"horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional."
0:28:28 > 0:28:30God save the King! Travel was a way out.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34They wanted to escape into sunshine, into colour, into freedom.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37Burra's great friend Billy Chappell
0:28:37 > 0:28:40captured the allure Spain held for the artist.
0:28:40 > 0:28:42Spain possessed every element that was most pleasing
0:28:42 > 0:28:46to Edward's senses. Satisfying his eyes, his ears, his nose,
0:28:46 > 0:28:49his emotions and his taste buds.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52The fabric of Spanish life might have been specially designed
0:28:52 > 0:28:53for his pleasure.
0:28:54 > 0:28:58"I don't want to leave Spain," he had written to Chapell.
0:28:58 > 0:28:59"Not till I must."
0:29:00 > 0:29:04Above all, Burra loved Spain's rawness, its roughness,
0:29:04 > 0:29:08the way everything seemed a bit seedier and seamier
0:29:08 > 0:29:12and rough round the edges, even than in places like Marseilles.
0:29:12 > 0:29:15He loved the fact that the flamenco dancers in Spain
0:29:15 > 0:29:20were often rather past their prime but still going strong.
0:29:20 > 0:29:21This is one of them.
0:29:21 > 0:29:26Madame Pastora, preserved forever by Edward Burra.
0:29:26 > 0:29:30What he loved about her, I think, was her brilliant, proud brashness.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34Her determination to embody joy and song and sexiness
0:29:34 > 0:29:37despite advancing years.
0:29:37 > 0:29:40I can't help wondering if he didn't see in her an emblem
0:29:40 > 0:29:45of his own determination to embrace life, despite his wasting illness.
0:29:46 > 0:29:50And even today, when you walk in Burra's footsteps through a town
0:29:50 > 0:29:54like Granada, you still catch glimpses of his Spain.
0:29:54 > 0:29:57In fact, you can even find people who look as though
0:29:57 > 0:30:01they've walked or danced straight out of one of his paintings.
0:30:01 > 0:30:02SPANISH SINGING
0:30:07 > 0:30:09Madame Pastora might be dead
0:30:09 > 0:30:10but long live La Perona!
0:30:10 > 0:30:13# La, la, la, la, la-la-la
0:30:13 > 0:30:15# La, la, la, la, la-la-la. #
0:30:16 > 0:30:18Burra's spirits were lifted
0:30:18 > 0:30:23by all aspects of Spanish culture. And for him, even the bullfight
0:30:23 > 0:30:25was really just a piece of light theatre.
0:30:25 > 0:30:29The death of the animal an occasion for mass excitement.
0:30:29 > 0:30:33"I went to a bullfight last Sunday, my dear," he wrote in a letter,
0:30:33 > 0:30:35"It's gorgeous, all the bulls gore everybody.
0:30:35 > 0:30:37"Do the bulls bleed? Yes, sir!
0:30:37 > 0:30:42"Do the audience roar with laughter? The costumes are lovely.
0:30:42 > 0:30:43"My favourite costume was vermillion trimmed with black lace."
0:30:46 > 0:30:50The Bullfight shows Burra drinking in the spectacle,
0:30:50 > 0:30:53but painting it all without any great sense of horror.
0:30:53 > 0:30:55Looking at it, I can't help thinking
0:30:55 > 0:31:00that he'd managed to turn himself into such a disengaged voyeur,
0:31:00 > 0:31:04there was a risk of him becoming a merely superficial artist.
0:31:04 > 0:31:08A lightly caricatural, rather inconsequential painter
0:31:08 > 0:31:11of life under the Mediterranean sun.
0:31:13 > 0:31:14But then came this.
0:31:16 > 0:31:18The greatest shift in his art
0:31:18 > 0:31:19and his life.
0:31:21 > 0:31:26It's a nightmare vision of a modern Medusa.
0:31:28 > 0:31:31A blanket of dead bodies draped over her shoulder.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36A sudden turn to darkness, nightmare.
0:31:36 > 0:31:40A terrible sense of man's inhumanity to man.
0:31:42 > 0:31:44And then there's Beelzebub.
0:31:45 > 0:31:48The devil dripping blood from a weapon
0:31:48 > 0:31:50over a world in ruins.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58It's as if something had broken in his mind.
0:31:58 > 0:32:00What happened? What turned Edward Burra?
0:32:03 > 0:32:07To understand that, I'm on my way to a town just north of Zaragoza,
0:32:07 > 0:32:09or what's left of it.
0:32:13 > 0:32:16Burra arrived in Spain just before the outbreak
0:32:16 > 0:32:18of the Spanish Civil War.
0:32:18 > 0:32:21As he later said, "One day when I was lunching
0:32:21 > 0:32:23"with some Spanish friends,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27"smoke kept blowing by the restaurant window.
0:32:27 > 0:32:28"I asked where it came from.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32""Oh, it's nothing," someone answered with a shade of impatience.
0:32:32 > 0:32:35""It's only a church being burned."
0:32:35 > 0:32:37"That made me feel sick."
0:32:40 > 0:32:45When Burra came to Spain in 1936, he found he'd stumbled into a world
0:32:45 > 0:32:48which was on the brink of tearing itself apart.
0:32:48 > 0:32:51And when the Spanish Civil War broke out,
0:32:51 > 0:32:55the level of atrocities committed on both sides was truly horrific.
0:32:55 > 0:32:56During the first few days of the war,
0:32:56 > 0:33:00over 50,000 people lost their lives.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04The way in which they did so was peculiarly horrible.
0:33:04 > 0:33:08It was called the paseos - the promenades -
0:33:08 > 0:33:10with grim irony.
0:33:10 > 0:33:12And what happened was that up to 1,000 people,
0:33:12 > 0:33:152,000 people at a time, who happened to be in the wrong place,
0:33:15 > 0:33:20on the wrong side, would simply be taken out of town and shot dead.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23It's very hard in modern Spain to get a sense
0:33:23 > 0:33:27of the terrible violence that ripped the society apart,
0:33:27 > 0:33:33but here, you still can, because this is the town of Belchite.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38It was torn apart by an exceptionally violent conflict
0:33:38 > 0:33:40between the Republicans and the Nationalists.
0:33:40 > 0:33:46But they preserved the whole of this ruined city as a memorial
0:33:46 > 0:33:47to an atrocious time, that must never be forgotten.
0:33:47 > 0:33:48ARTILLERY FIRE
0:33:48 > 0:33:49SHELLS WHINE AND CRASH
0:34:04 > 0:34:06The battle for Belchite ripped the heart out of the town.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09Amongst those caught up in the conflict was Maria,
0:34:09 > 0:34:11who was then just a child.
0:34:11 > 0:34:11TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:
0:34:48 > 0:34:50How do you feel when you return?
0:35:05 > 0:35:07ANDREW SPEAKS SPANISH:
0:35:08 > 0:35:11The fascists won the battle for Belchite,
0:35:11 > 0:35:13and the town was abandoned.
0:35:13 > 0:35:16But what's left behind is a stark reminder
0:35:16 > 0:35:18of the disasters of war.
0:35:18 > 0:35:23And it was from this rubble that Burra's new art would emerge.
0:35:27 > 0:35:31In this one bombed-out structure,
0:35:31 > 0:35:35you can feel 1,000 years of Spanish culture...
0:35:38 > 0:35:42..just going up in smoke, in a flash. When you stand here,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45you can really sense what it was
0:35:45 > 0:35:47that so shocked Burra
0:35:47 > 0:35:52about this collective descent into a kind of Spanish insanity.
0:35:52 > 0:35:58How could a people abolish their own past, destroy their own history,
0:35:58 > 0:36:011,000 years of it, in a single flash
0:36:01 > 0:36:03of an exploding bomb?
0:36:06 > 0:36:10War In The Sun is Burra's most solemn meditation
0:36:10 > 0:36:13on the Spanish Civil War.
0:36:13 > 0:36:15It's a picture, full of a sense of menace and foreboding.
0:36:15 > 0:36:19Everywhere you look, you see details of modern warfare.
0:36:19 > 0:36:23Tank number 26, with its caterpillar track,
0:36:23 > 0:36:26an ack-ack gun, thrust up into the sky,
0:36:26 > 0:36:28shrapnel-scarred masonry.
0:36:29 > 0:36:33And yet, the picture also is very puzzling.
0:36:33 > 0:36:38Because within this modern scene of modern warfare,
0:36:38 > 0:36:41Burra has introduced all these characters
0:36:41 > 0:36:45in what seems to be a form of Renaissance costume.
0:36:45 > 0:36:49These figures also suggest to me that Burra is trying to evoke
0:36:49 > 0:36:53memories of the era of the Spanish conquistadors,
0:36:53 > 0:36:56that time when the Spanish raped Latin America.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00And I think, through this layering of past and present,
0:37:00 > 0:37:02Burra is trying to suggest
0:37:02 > 0:37:08that mankind is hardwired to violence. We've always gone to war.
0:37:08 > 0:37:10We always will go to war.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13History is one mistake after another
0:37:13 > 0:37:16that we can't help repeating.
0:37:16 > 0:37:20And I think that idea of history as a trap, of war as a trap,
0:37:20 > 0:37:24is conveyed expressively by the almost theatrical
0:37:24 > 0:37:26prison architecture of this scene.
0:37:26 > 0:37:30Have a look at all these heavy grilles, heavy bars.
0:37:30 > 0:37:33These people are trapped in a tragedy
0:37:33 > 0:37:37that perhaps they don't fully understand.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39But for me, the strangest, most surreal,
0:37:39 > 0:37:42and disquieting detail of all
0:37:42 > 0:37:43is up here,
0:37:43 > 0:37:46where we've got a convoy of troops,
0:37:46 > 0:37:50heading away from this Spanish,
0:37:50 > 0:37:52sunlit scene,
0:37:52 > 0:37:57towards what seems like an English house and an English landscape.
0:37:57 > 0:38:00Is that Burra's way of asking himself whether this violence,
0:38:00 > 0:38:04this atrocity, may not actually remain restricted to Spain?
0:38:04 > 0:38:08Perhaps the violence will spread, even reach his beloved England?
0:38:11 > 0:38:14Within three years, the prophecy in the painting came true
0:38:14 > 0:38:18and Britain was plunged into the violence of World War II.
0:38:19 > 0:38:23What was Burra's experience of the Second World War?
0:38:23 > 0:38:27I think it made him feel ever more aware of being trapped
0:38:27 > 0:38:30in this fragile, recalcitrant body, watching helplessly
0:38:30 > 0:38:34as the world descended into atrocity.
0:38:34 > 0:38:36After all, here in Rye,
0:38:36 > 0:38:39he was at the front line of the Battle of Britain.
0:38:39 > 0:38:42German planes sweeping across the Channel in waves,
0:38:42 > 0:38:43on their way to London.
0:38:43 > 0:38:47All Burra can do is look up, helplessly.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50He's a bystander. What does he do?
0:38:50 > 0:38:52He tends his parents' garden,
0:38:52 > 0:38:55he helps to care for a family of refugees that they've taken in.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58And we know, in a rather sad note from one of his letters,
0:38:58 > 0:39:01that he buys up the town's entire supply of aspirin.
0:39:01 > 0:39:04It's the only painkiller he can find
0:39:04 > 0:39:06for his inflamed joints.
0:39:07 > 0:39:10Burra was still only in his 30s,
0:39:10 > 0:39:13but increasingly incapacitated by chronic illness.
0:39:15 > 0:39:19So, here we have a photograph of Edward Burra as a young man.
0:39:19 > 0:39:24And he's holding a paintbrush here, and this hand here,
0:39:24 > 0:39:26is absolutely typical for someone with active,
0:39:26 > 0:39:29already fairly advanced rheumatoid arthritis.
0:39:29 > 0:39:32You can see swelling of the joints along here,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35and swelling of the other joints and his fingers, and some wasting
0:39:35 > 0:39:38of the muscles in his hand, and some deformity of his wrist.
0:39:38 > 0:39:43So, this indicates active, almost certainly very painful disease.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47The other condition he had was hereditary spherocytosis,
0:39:47 > 0:39:48which is a genetic condition
0:39:48 > 0:39:52causing a change in the shape of red cells.
0:39:52 > 0:39:57Basically, it causes an anaemia, which can cause tiredness.
0:39:57 > 0:40:02His mother seems to have had the same condition, so he probably inherited it from her.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10During the Second World War, during the Battle of Britain,
0:40:10 > 0:40:14in his lonely solitude, Burra went deeper and deeper
0:40:14 > 0:40:18into this new art of darkness.
0:40:18 > 0:40:21He created a whole succession of chilling images,
0:40:21 > 0:40:27such as Soldiers At Rye of 1941, in which the soldiers of the title
0:40:27 > 0:40:32wear these rather horrible Venetian, carnival-esque masks, bird masks,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35which I think was Burra's surreal way
0:40:35 > 0:40:38of suggesting that war simultaneously
0:40:38 > 0:40:44depersonalises us and turns us into these predatory creatures.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47There's something horribly claustrophobic
0:40:47 > 0:40:48about the whole image,
0:40:48 > 0:40:53the way the bodies seem almost to mesh and overlap with each other,
0:40:53 > 0:40:57like pieces of machinery on this flat expanse of paper.
0:40:57 > 0:41:02These pictures were gathered together with others,
0:41:02 > 0:41:05such as the Medusa, Beelzebub,
0:41:05 > 0:41:09a whole host of Burra's new and seriously dark art,
0:41:09 > 0:41:13and they were put on display at the Redfern Gallery in London.
0:41:13 > 0:41:16The response of the critics was immediate and very strong.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23Osbert Lancaster wrote in the Observer,
0:41:23 > 0:41:27"Edward Burra is a serious artist working with serious themes.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30"What Burra is trying to do, unless I'm very much mistaken,
0:41:30 > 0:41:35"is not to select and record some single aspect of the modern tragedy,
0:41:35 > 0:41:37"but to digest it whole
0:41:37 > 0:41:41"and transform it into something of permanent aesthetic significance."
0:41:44 > 0:41:49With the war, Burra's sensibility seems to have gone permanently awry.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53He lost the ability to laugh at the world, and the amused lightness
0:41:53 > 0:41:58of his earlier work more or less disappeared. Someone asked him
0:41:58 > 0:41:59why he no longer painted
0:41:59 > 0:42:02light-hearted satires of modern life.
0:42:02 > 0:42:05He replied, "What can a satirist do with Auschwitz?"
0:42:09 > 0:42:12But after the war, thanks to his friendship with Billy Chappell
0:42:12 > 0:42:15and brilliant dancer-choreographer Frederick Ashton,
0:42:15 > 0:42:18there was one place where Burra preserved
0:42:18 > 0:42:21something of his earlier playfulness and joie de vivre.
0:42:21 > 0:42:23Designs for the ballet.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27'James Gordon has spent the best part of the last 20 years
0:42:27 > 0:42:30'collecting Burra's ballet designs.'
0:42:32 > 0:42:35- It's certainly a theatrical space! - It is.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39- Wow! How many Burras have you got? - I think there's 70 or 80.
0:42:39 > 0:42:41What do you think of his colour?
0:42:41 > 0:42:44I'm always struck by its un-English sense.
0:42:44 > 0:42:47His English colour is so reticent.
0:42:47 > 0:42:49And these are all full of colour.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53I think that is just...fantastic.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58- That is...- Lovely drawing. - That really is good.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00He was very into combs and hair.
0:43:01 > 0:43:05You can almost feel the brilliantine sticking to the forehead.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09- And there's the nose!- Her nose, yeah, her nose is great, isn't it?
0:43:09 > 0:43:11I think that's really good.
0:43:11 > 0:43:15Being Burra, of course, he painted something on the back, as well.
0:43:15 > 0:43:17Mrs Ashton!
0:43:17 > 0:43:20Is that Freddie Ashton as a sort of homme fatal?
0:43:20 > 0:43:24It was actually a take-off of Mussolini, making a fool of him.
0:43:24 > 0:43:27That's a caricature of Freddie Ashton as Mussolini?
0:43:27 > 0:43:28That's gold dust!
0:43:28 > 0:43:31- So you get two for the price of one as a Burra collector!- Yes.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33- Does that happen often? - Quite often.
0:43:33 > 0:43:36It's disappointing to look behind and there's nothing!
0:43:37 > 0:43:42I don't look at these as stage designs. They're works of art.
0:43:42 > 0:43:45'Much of this art, some of Burra's most vibrant, intoxicating work,
0:43:45 > 0:43:50'would have been lost if it hadn't been for James' avid collecting.
0:43:51 > 0:43:55'Even today, Burra's theatrical designs are greatly undervalued.
0:43:58 > 0:44:01'Away from his designs for the ballet, from the start of the '50s,
0:44:01 > 0:44:05'Burra embarked on a period of restless experiment.
0:44:05 > 0:44:08'He painted a number of religious pictures,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11'in particular this phantasmagorical scene,
0:44:11 > 0:44:14'The Expulsion Of The Moneychangers.
0:44:14 > 0:44:17'A dream, perhaps, of a world being purged from evil,
0:44:17 > 0:44:21'but one that still has the texture of a nightmare.
0:44:21 > 0:44:24'The vengeful Christ half hidden at the back,
0:44:24 > 0:44:29'the foreground dominated by wailing figures and lost souls.
0:44:29 > 0:44:32'He also painted a series of compelling,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34'explosive flower pictures.
0:44:34 > 0:44:37'Were these Burra's way of finding life,
0:44:37 > 0:44:41'colour and vigour after all the death of war?
0:44:41 > 0:44:44'Were they his bouquets for those who'd died?
0:44:44 > 0:44:46'They seem poised between celebration
0:44:46 > 0:44:48'and something more sinister.
0:44:48 > 0:44:51'Strange details lurk, staring eyes,
0:44:51 > 0:44:55'and the flowers themselves
0:44:55 > 0:44:57'seem almost predatory.
0:44:57 > 0:45:01'Nothing is straightforward in Burra's later work.'
0:45:02 > 0:45:08I don't remember them, the paintings. I don't remember when I did them.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11People are always asking about the date.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14I never can remember, not the right dates, you know?
0:45:16 > 0:45:20And I've never written the date on, or hardly ever.
0:45:22 > 0:45:25'I think Burra in his later years did his very best work of all.
0:45:27 > 0:45:30'But because it's so slippery and because he was so secretive
0:45:30 > 0:45:31'about its meanings,
0:45:31 > 0:45:35'you won't find it in mainstream museums of textbooks.
0:45:35 > 0:45:41'You have to seek it out in the collections of private individuals,
0:45:41 > 0:45:44'people drawn to the Burra mystery. Men like Frank Cohen.'
0:45:44 > 0:45:49The thing about Burra that you've got to understand,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52some things are factual and easy to look at,
0:45:52 > 0:45:55and other things are not so easy to look at.
0:45:55 > 0:45:57I'd love to be able to explain that.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00These look like bodies that are melting, or something.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03He creates a kind of symbolic language in this post-war art.
0:46:03 > 0:46:04There are the factory chimneys,
0:46:04 > 0:46:07which brings one to mind of things like Auschwitz, maybe?
0:46:07 > 0:46:10He'd probably shudder and say, "Oh, dearie, don't be so specific."
0:46:10 > 0:46:12You can depict it any way you want.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15'As well as the enigmatically-titled It's All Boiling Up,
0:46:15 > 0:46:19'Frank owns a host of other late Burras,
0:46:19 > 0:46:23'including this disconcerting painting, Sugar Beet, East Anglia,
0:46:23 > 0:46:27'where all the figures have been painted as though transparent.'
0:46:27 > 0:46:31When you get older, in my opinion, I think you can see through people.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35They become vacant. I think they're just looking through people
0:46:35 > 0:46:39and seeing how phoney the whole thing is. That's the way I see it.
0:46:39 > 0:46:41'And as a self-made man who started life
0:46:41 > 0:46:44'in the markets of the north-west,
0:46:44 > 0:46:48'Frank's particularly fascinated by this picture of 1949, The Market.'
0:46:49 > 0:46:53Look, she's bare-chested, that one, so what's all that about?
0:46:53 > 0:46:55She's topless and she's being handed a plate of fish!
0:46:55 > 0:46:58The more you look, the more unreal it becomes!
0:46:58 > 0:47:00And look at that one there, something's going on
0:47:00 > 0:47:04in the background there, in the room. It looks like a brothel or something.
0:47:04 > 0:47:07Can you see that? There's a girl dancing.
0:47:07 > 0:47:10You can spend an hour and a half looking at these!
0:47:10 > 0:47:11Do you like that about Burra,
0:47:11 > 0:47:14that he was so reticent about talking of his work
0:47:14 > 0:47:17that he left it to us to guess, so each picture's
0:47:17 > 0:47:20a sort of enigma that we try and fill in the gaps ourselves?
0:47:20 > 0:47:22I doubt very much if you ever spoke to him in his life,
0:47:22 > 0:47:25he would actually explain what the work was about.
0:47:25 > 0:47:28- He refused to.- He never spoke to anyone about it.- Not about meaning.
0:47:28 > 0:47:31He wasn't interested in talking about his work.
0:47:35 > 0:47:40A turning point came in 1957, with the death of Burra's father.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45As he had watched when Betsy died, so now he watched once again,
0:47:45 > 0:47:49but this time the sense of loss was tempered with resignation.
0:47:49 > 0:47:52"The dying didn't seem to unduly put out Father.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55"I stayed up from about two on his last night,
0:47:55 > 0:47:58"and he had some trouble breathing, and had some whisky,
0:47:58 > 0:48:02"and all his wits about him. Became unconscious at about 9:30 or so
0:48:02 > 0:48:05"and didn't really know anybody, breathing quite peaceful,
0:48:05 > 0:48:07"and died at 2:15.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12"It was as if bubbles rose from a stagnant pond.
0:48:12 > 0:48:15"I was dreading the funeral, but it went off very nicely.
0:48:15 > 0:48:17"As I'd had four double whiskeys,
0:48:17 > 0:48:21"I couldn't think why everybody looked so glum."
0:48:21 > 0:48:23Burra faltered into the 1960s,
0:48:23 > 0:48:27but still pursued his idiosyncratic course through life,
0:48:27 > 0:48:29supported by close friend and dealer Gerald Corcoran,
0:48:29 > 0:48:32who'd been showing his work ever since the war.
0:48:32 > 0:48:34When we came back to London from Yorkshire,
0:48:34 > 0:48:36where my father was stationed,
0:48:36 > 0:48:38he became part of our lives, part of my life,
0:48:38 > 0:48:40for as long as I can remember.
0:48:40 > 0:48:44He didn't really like to talk about himself.
0:48:44 > 0:48:47He was much more keen to talk about the movies
0:48:47 > 0:48:49or the latest science-fantasy book.
0:48:49 > 0:48:52He stayed with a group of different people when he came to London,
0:48:52 > 0:48:54and each group was always worried
0:48:54 > 0:48:57about how drunk he got with the other group.
0:48:57 > 0:48:59They were all worried about his health all the time,
0:48:59 > 0:49:01which was pretty awful.
0:49:01 > 0:49:05What do you talk about to your friends?
0:49:05 > 0:49:09We talk about cooking and we talk about other friends
0:49:09 > 0:49:11and we talk about books occasionally,
0:49:11 > 0:49:13and we talk about the cinema
0:49:13 > 0:49:18and the theatre, and we talk about how terrible actors are,
0:49:18 > 0:49:20and we talk about...
0:49:20 > 0:49:22Oh, all kinds of things.
0:49:22 > 0:49:27You know? Very little about art.
0:49:27 > 0:49:29'I just had this picture of him,
0:49:29 > 0:49:31'perched on the sofa with pungent cigarettes'
0:49:31 > 0:49:37and a glass of whisky, and he had huge, thick socks for some reason,
0:49:37 > 0:49:40cos I think his feet hurt, and big shoes.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42I was quite in awe of him
0:49:42 > 0:49:46because you got a sense that he was very, very observant
0:49:46 > 0:49:50and knew exactly what was going on and noticing everything.
0:49:50 > 0:49:53Also, because he was so fragile too,
0:49:53 > 0:49:55you felt he had to be careful.
0:49:55 > 0:49:59The other place I used to see him a lot was at Bumble Dawson.
0:49:59 > 0:50:01She was one of his early friends from art school.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05There was one evening when a friend of mine who was a great hippie,
0:50:05 > 0:50:09gave him a great big joint and he loved it.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12I think it took him back to his youth, because in the Twenties,
0:50:12 > 0:50:14when there was that gang of them,
0:50:14 > 0:50:18from art school, there's nothing they didn't get up to.
0:50:18 > 0:50:23They tried absolutely everything, so he was completely unshockable.
0:50:25 > 0:50:29One radical change that was sweeping across the face of Britain
0:50:29 > 0:50:31did test Burra's unshockabilty.
0:50:34 > 0:50:38NEWSREEL: Let us get on with the job of building another motorway,
0:50:38 > 0:50:40having done everything humanly possible
0:50:40 > 0:50:44to ensure we have got things right in the beginning.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49'Do you think the countryside has changed much in England?'
0:50:49 > 0:50:53I think the countryside in this part of the country
0:50:53 > 0:50:56is distinctly changed, especially along main roads.
0:51:01 > 0:51:06Towards the end of his life, Burra became much preoccupied by the notion that mankind,
0:51:06 > 0:51:12with its obsession with fossil fuels, energy, modernity, machines,
0:51:12 > 0:51:15was almost raping the landscape that he loved
0:51:15 > 0:51:19and I think this image, called Picking a Quarrel,
0:51:19 > 0:51:24is perhaps the image that goes to the centre of all those concerns.
0:51:24 > 0:51:28Man himself has become a kind of oil stain on the landscape
0:51:28 > 0:51:31and in the centre of the image,
0:51:31 > 0:51:36we've got these bright yellow dumper trucks and cranes.
0:51:36 > 0:51:40And the cranes, which are scooping up slag,
0:51:40 > 0:51:45seem almost to be dripping it out of their mouths like blood.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47They're almost like automated versions
0:51:47 > 0:51:51of the figure of Beelzebub that he had created
0:51:51 > 0:51:53to emblematise the Spanish Civil War.
0:51:53 > 0:51:58This is another kind of civil war in which mankind is killing itself
0:51:58 > 0:52:01with its addiction to petrol, to fuel, to coal.
0:52:06 > 0:52:08Burra's landscapes are evidence
0:52:08 > 0:52:10of his prescient environmental awareness,
0:52:10 > 0:52:14But they also express more complicated emotions
0:52:14 > 0:52:16than a simple, sentimental love of nature.
0:52:16 > 0:52:19His version of the natural world
0:52:19 > 0:52:21is a metamorphic, shape-shifting place.
0:52:24 > 0:52:28Hills and valleys swell and heave like living forms.
0:52:28 > 0:52:30The clefts made by paths or streams
0:52:30 > 0:52:34often resemble the orifices or declivities of a body.
0:52:36 > 0:52:39Skies pulse with ominous energy.
0:52:39 > 0:52:43Clouds haunt the land like spirits.
0:52:43 > 0:52:47Here, at last, Burra uses watercolour as watercolour,
0:52:47 > 0:52:52painting in washes and veils to suggest transience.
0:52:52 > 0:52:56But I also think that Burra's late landscapes, for the first time,
0:52:56 > 0:52:58present you with a world
0:52:58 > 0:53:01in which the artist himself is immersed.
0:53:01 > 0:53:05He's not that perpetual onlooker, somehow separated from what he sees.
0:53:05 > 0:53:09He is plunging himself into the landscape.
0:53:09 > 0:53:12It's as if, for one last time,
0:53:12 > 0:53:15he wants to connect with something bigger than himself.
0:53:19 > 0:53:23Burra did still travel but his journeys were increasingly internal.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27He took to going on driving holidays to the north of England
0:53:27 > 0:53:29with his sister, Ann.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33Increasingly, he turned to just one subject,
0:53:33 > 0:53:37the countryside that unfolded before him through the windscreen.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41'I think he knew that time was running out.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45'In 1973, the Tate would stage a retrospective of his work.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48'Burra, engrossed in his landscape preoccupations,
0:53:48 > 0:53:52'was noticeably absent from the private views.
0:53:53 > 0:53:55'A year before, he had agreed to be filmed
0:53:55 > 0:53:59'but he was the most reluctant of interviewees.'
0:54:00 > 0:54:04You never go to your gallery openings, I know that,
0:54:04 > 0:54:07but could you tell us why you don't go?
0:54:08 > 0:54:12No, I shan't dream of telling you why I don't go.
0:54:15 > 0:54:17'She comes face-to-face with Edward Burra'
0:54:17 > 0:54:21and it's like coming face-to-face with a blank
0:54:21 > 0:54:24or face-to-face with a Samuel Beckett character
0:54:24 > 0:54:28who is trapped in his own end game. He just doesn't want to tell you
0:54:28 > 0:54:30what he's thinking, or feeling.
0:54:31 > 0:54:35I think this was Burra's most defiant way
0:54:35 > 0:54:39of saying, "If you want to know about my art, don't ask me about it.
0:54:39 > 0:54:41"Look at the art."
0:54:41 > 0:54:44I never tell anybody anything.
0:54:48 > 0:54:50So they just make it up.
0:54:54 > 0:54:56I don't see that it matters.
0:54:59 > 0:55:02It's at this point that she asks him what does matter.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06I think this is one of the very few moments in the interview
0:55:06 > 0:55:08where you just glimpse into the...
0:55:11 > 0:55:16..rather nihilistic darkness behind those eyes.
0:55:16 > 0:55:18'What does matter?
0:55:18 > 0:55:19'Nothing.'
0:55:25 > 0:55:29There you have it. What matters? Nothing.
0:55:35 > 0:55:39Burra's very last landscapes turn increasingly morbid,
0:55:39 > 0:55:43as if its subject is no longer nature itself,
0:55:43 > 0:55:46but his sense that his own journey through the world
0:55:46 > 0:55:48is nearing its end.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52These paintings are full of a sense of passage, emblems and symbols
0:55:52 > 0:55:58that seem to suggest the transition from one place or state to another.
0:56:02 > 0:56:06Boats leaving for some other place, some unknown country.
0:56:08 > 0:56:13Cars crossing a suspension bridge, travelling to who knows where.
0:56:14 > 0:56:17They're very moving pictures but in them,
0:56:17 > 0:56:21I feel Burra was finally confronting his sense of his own mortality.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28I think Burra's sense of nature towards the end of his life
0:56:28 > 0:56:33is deeply romantic, in the sense that he's not painting
0:56:33 > 0:56:37a stretch of the Northumberland landscape, he's painting his sense
0:56:37 > 0:56:39of his own impending death.
0:56:39 > 0:56:41The landscape resembles a woman
0:56:41 > 0:56:44and at the centre of it, there's this womb-like enclosure.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47The eye is drawn to it,
0:56:47 > 0:56:52As I feel Burra felt himself drawn to it. He's envisaged death
0:56:52 > 0:56:56with a wonderful poetic sense, I think,
0:56:56 > 0:56:59as a form of reverse birth.
0:56:59 > 0:57:03He'll be drawn back into this womb, into this world of nature.
0:57:03 > 0:57:05And he accepts it.
0:57:05 > 0:57:08It is a picture that is full of resignation,
0:57:08 > 0:57:12full of beauty and, for me, also full of a kind of heroism.
0:57:17 > 0:57:22On 22nd October 1976, Edward Burra died
0:57:22 > 0:57:24after a short illness.
0:57:24 > 0:57:26He was 71.
0:57:31 > 0:57:32So, who was Edward Burra?
0:57:32 > 0:57:37First and foremost, for a man of such extreme fragility,
0:57:37 > 0:57:40he was someone who packed a lot in. Think of all he'd seen,
0:57:40 > 0:57:44responded to and depicted in the course of his life.
0:57:44 > 0:57:46He'd been a twentieth-century eye,
0:57:46 > 0:57:50he'd been there in Paris in the Twenties and depicted that.
0:57:50 > 0:57:54He had been to Harlem in the Thirties and caught its energy.
0:57:54 > 0:57:58He then experienced the Spanish Civil War
0:57:58 > 0:58:01and from the lonely prospective of Rye, the Second World War.
0:58:01 > 0:58:04I think those experiences deepened and darkened
0:58:04 > 0:58:05the nature of his vision.
0:58:05 > 0:58:09He probably would have said, "Oh, I'm just a miserable old bugger!"
0:58:09 > 0:58:11But he was more than that too.
0:58:11 > 0:58:15Right at the end of his life, in these extraordinary landscapes,
0:58:15 > 0:58:19for the first time, having so long felt
0:58:19 > 0:58:21that he was on the outside looking in.
0:58:21 > 0:58:25with the late landscapes, I don't feel that anymore.
0:58:25 > 0:58:27He's there, he's in nature,
0:58:27 > 0:58:29in the middle of it all.
0:58:29 > 0:58:31Of course, he's not only in that
0:58:31 > 0:58:34he's also in the process of his own death,
0:58:34 > 0:58:37a process every human being has to go through.
0:58:37 > 0:58:41He went through it and depicted his own sense of going through it
0:58:41 > 0:58:45with such purity, such intensity
0:58:45 > 0:58:47and such bravery.
0:59:09 > 0:59:12Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:59:12 > 0:59:15E-mail: subtitling@bbc.co.uk