0:00:06 > 0:00:10Abstraction was one of the most significant developments
0:00:10 > 0:00:12in the story of 20th-century art.
0:00:12 > 0:00:15By breaking free from the direct representation
0:00:15 > 0:00:18of the world around us, abstract artists created
0:00:18 > 0:00:21a new visual language
0:00:21 > 0:00:24and transformed the possibility of what art could be.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30The story of abstraction in Western art
0:00:30 > 0:00:34spans the radical geometric paintings of revolutionary Russia...
0:00:35 > 0:00:37..to post-war America,
0:00:37 > 0:00:41and the large-scale drips and splodges of Jackson Pollock
0:00:41 > 0:00:43and New York's abstract expressionists.
0:00:45 > 0:00:49While in Britain, artists responded to this visual revolution
0:00:49 > 0:00:53with an astonishing variety of groundbreaking new art.
0:00:53 > 0:00:57From Barbara Hepworth's naturally inspired forms
0:00:57 > 0:01:01to Bridget Riley's hard-edged, geometric painting,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05and Anthony Caro's industrial steel sculptures,
0:01:05 > 0:01:08British artists created some of the most pioneering
0:01:08 > 0:01:13and internationally-acclaimed abstract art of the 20th century.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19And along the way, the BBC has been there to both capture them
0:01:19 > 0:01:22at work and record their words.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26I got more and more involved in this idea that
0:01:26 > 0:01:29I wasn't making a human being but I was making
0:01:29 > 0:01:32a place where you could go.
0:01:32 > 0:01:35In this film, we'll delve into the archives to reveal
0:01:35 > 0:01:39the passionate and dedicated personalities behind the art.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41It's a life or death thing, you know.
0:01:41 > 0:01:43I mean, there are good things in it,
0:01:43 > 0:01:46it's just that I don't quite know... how to do it.
0:01:47 > 0:01:51Rhythm and repetition are at the root of movement.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55They create a situation within which the most simple, basic forms
0:01:55 > 0:01:58start to become visually active.
0:01:58 > 0:02:02And we'll see how abstract art sometimes confounded
0:02:02 > 0:02:05and even angered those who encountered it.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09To spend £15,000 on a sculpture that no-one really understands
0:02:09 > 0:02:12is a complete, complete waste of money.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15So how did the artists that created this challenging
0:02:15 > 0:02:19new form of art explain their work to the world?
0:02:19 > 0:02:24If abstract art doesn't describe the world around us - what IS it about?
0:02:24 > 0:02:28It's a question that's often been asked of abstract artists -
0:02:28 > 0:02:32and one which they've all tried to answer, in their own words...
0:02:42 > 0:02:47MUSIC: "Suffragette City" by David Bowie
0:02:50 > 0:02:53By the middle of the 20th century, British abstract artists
0:02:53 > 0:02:57were among the most original working anywhere in the world.
0:03:00 > 0:03:02Their art rewrote the rules...
0:03:04 > 0:03:07..captured the public imagination...
0:03:08 > 0:03:11..came to stand for the highest of ideals...
0:03:12 > 0:03:14..and used a new language
0:03:14 > 0:03:18of art that represented a dramatic break from what had gone before.
0:03:19 > 0:03:24For centuries, people presumed that a painting or a sculpture
0:03:24 > 0:03:25had to be OF something.
0:03:25 > 0:03:28Whether that something was a person, or a landscape
0:03:28 > 0:03:30or an event, but in the 20th century,
0:03:30 > 0:03:33that idea was turned on its head.
0:03:33 > 0:03:35Artists began to say -
0:03:35 > 0:03:38"No, our artworks don't need to represent ANYTHING.
0:03:38 > 0:03:39"They stand alone."
0:03:42 > 0:03:46In the first decades of the 20th century, artists in Europe began
0:03:46 > 0:03:49to create radical forms of abstract art,
0:03:49 > 0:03:53from Malevich's Suprematist paintings
0:03:53 > 0:03:58to Mondrian's simplified arrangements of line and colour.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01But this wasn't just a new style of painting -
0:04:01 > 0:04:04it was believed that this kind of art could change society.
0:04:06 > 0:04:10Both Malevich and Mondrian speak about this desire to create
0:04:10 > 0:04:14a dynamic kind of society
0:04:14 > 0:04:16of equal value.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20So, these non-human forms,
0:04:20 > 0:04:25square, circles, triangles, lines,
0:04:25 > 0:04:30seem to offer a kind of purity and, also, a universality.
0:04:30 > 0:04:34It was something they felt could be legible to anyone,
0:04:34 > 0:04:36regardless of
0:04:36 > 0:04:41their language or their nationality, or their place in society.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45But while Europe was going through one of the greatest
0:04:45 > 0:04:49art upheavals in history, Britain had largely clung to a romantic,
0:04:49 > 0:04:50figurative tradition.
0:04:52 > 0:04:55There were, however, a few radical exceptions -
0:04:55 > 0:04:59and leading them were Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.
0:04:59 > 0:05:05At first artistic allies, they became lovers and married in 1938.
0:05:05 > 0:05:07I mean, Barbara Hepworth
0:05:07 > 0:05:10and Ben Nicholson came together in the early 1930s.
0:05:10 > 0:05:12Together they moved towards abstraction.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14And really pretty much exactly at the same time,
0:05:14 > 0:05:17they both arrived at pure abstract art.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20You know, Barbara - pure abstract sculpture, Ben Nicholson -
0:05:20 > 0:05:22pure abstract painting and reliefs.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24So, absolutely, they were intrinsically
0:05:24 > 0:05:29linked in the 1930s and beyond in their journey into abstraction.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32While much of British art looked back,
0:05:32 > 0:05:37Ben Nicholson had forged many links with Continental avant-garde artists
0:05:37 > 0:05:41and developed his own distinctive form of abstract art in response.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44He was a consummate image-maker
0:05:44 > 0:05:48and every picture was a new problem that required a new solution.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51And by the mid 1930s, he has made the purest abstract works
0:05:51 > 0:05:54you'll almost ever see - these white reliefs with just
0:05:54 > 0:05:57a couple of circles and squares and rectangles.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59And when I look at those reliefs, I think -
0:05:59 > 0:06:02"Wow, those are audacious, those are beautiful."
0:06:09 > 0:06:13Nicholson was extremely camera shy - in fact, this rare footage of him
0:06:13 > 0:06:16with Hepworth and their three children is perhaps
0:06:16 > 0:06:17the only in existence.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23But it was Hepworth who, arguably, went on to make a greater impact
0:06:23 > 0:06:27in the public imagination as an abstract artist.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31And SHE was a far more willing participant in front of the camera.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41In 1961, the BBC travelled to Hepworth's home
0:06:41 > 0:06:44and studio in St Ives to film her at work.
0:06:49 > 0:06:51The shapes of her sculptures may remind
0:06:51 > 0:06:53one of the shapes of hills and trees.
0:06:54 > 0:06:59Their contours flow in the rhythms of the sea, of the beach,
0:06:59 > 0:07:04of sand dunes, of birds in flight, or of the human figure.
0:07:05 > 0:07:10Her sculpture may call these things to mind, but it never describes them.
0:07:11 > 0:07:13Their meaning is ambiguous.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23'It took a long time for me to find
0:07:23 > 0:07:26'my own personal way of making sculpture.
0:07:26 > 0:07:31'A long time to discover the purest forms which would exactly
0:07:31 > 0:07:37'evoke my own sensations and to visualise images which would express
0:07:37 > 0:07:43'the timelessness of primitive forces which I felt and the constant
0:07:43 > 0:07:49'urges towards survival and growth which I knew to be fundamental
0:07:49 > 0:07:53'both to the human being and to the landscape in which we stand.'
0:08:02 > 0:08:07Barbara Hepworth was born in 1903 in Wakefield in Yorkshire.
0:08:07 > 0:08:12She studied with Henry Moore at Leeds College of Art in the mid 1920s
0:08:12 > 0:08:15and the two remained friends and rivals throughout their lives.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21Hepworth began by making figurative sculpture,
0:08:21 > 0:08:25but in the first half of the 1930s, she made the move into abstraction.
0:08:27 > 0:08:30In an interview recorded decades later,
0:08:30 > 0:08:32she described the process she went through.
0:08:34 > 0:08:35So they gradually became
0:08:35 > 0:08:40more and more... abstract, in so far,
0:08:40 > 0:08:43as anatomically that took great...
0:08:44 > 0:08:47..latitude, you know...
0:08:47 > 0:08:51and tried to get everything that was not necessary
0:08:51 > 0:08:55to my idea until I got to 29,
0:08:55 > 0:08:59when I did this torso, which I can't find...
0:08:59 > 0:09:01called Ivory Wood.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05And that was entirely...
0:09:05 > 0:09:09a suggestion of a figure, it was a form which simply
0:09:09 > 0:09:11had strange...
0:09:12 > 0:09:15..undulations, nothing else.
0:09:15 > 0:09:17And then I thought suddenly,
0:09:17 > 0:09:21"I've got my own calligraphy now, I know what I have to do."
0:09:22 > 0:09:27From that point on, Hepworth's art was almost exclusively abstract.
0:09:27 > 0:09:30And yet her art always remained influenced by the human form
0:09:30 > 0:09:32and the natural world.
0:09:33 > 0:09:38She is seen as the maker of the most pure abstract forms
0:09:38 > 0:09:40and yet...
0:09:40 > 0:09:44a human presence or the idea of a human figure,
0:09:44 > 0:09:46exists through almost all of her sculptures.
0:09:46 > 0:09:49When you see in the 1930s, the later 1930s
0:09:49 > 0:09:53when she makes these elegant, tapering wooden forms,
0:09:53 > 0:09:54they still hark back...
0:09:54 > 0:09:57they clearly have evolved from the standing figure.
0:09:57 > 0:09:59When you see two forms together,
0:09:59 > 0:10:02there is certainly a metaphorical reference
0:10:02 > 0:10:05to the idea of two figures in, sort of,
0:10:05 > 0:10:07harmonious composition, if you like.
0:10:07 > 0:10:10And I think one of the things that runs through
0:10:10 > 0:10:15most of Hepworth's art is the use of harmonious spatial arrangements
0:10:15 > 0:10:19as a kind of metaphor or a symbol for a human harmony.
0:10:21 > 0:10:27'Many people select a stone or a pebble to carry for the day.
0:10:28 > 0:10:34'The weight and form and texture felt in our hands relates us
0:10:34 > 0:10:38'to the past and gives us a sense of a universal force.'
0:10:39 > 0:10:43She loved tactility, the touch of a pebble,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46she wanted to try and capture
0:10:46 > 0:10:49how the human form interacted with the wind,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52with natural forces around it.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54Perhaps its great strength
0:10:54 > 0:10:57lies in the fact that it transcends those sources,
0:10:57 > 0:11:02that she managed to evolve a purity of form which still resonates today.
0:11:02 > 0:11:07I think, any generation, any society can look at those
0:11:07 > 0:11:10and somehow find a pleasure and a recognition, in the textures,
0:11:10 > 0:11:16the volumes, these very lyrical, rather poetic shapes that she's evolved.
0:11:29 > 0:11:34Through the 1950s and '60s, Hepworth's reputation grew and grew,
0:11:34 > 0:11:37and in 1968 she had a major retrospective of her work
0:11:37 > 0:11:39at the Tate Gallery.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43The BBC was there when a group of Yorkshire schoolchildren
0:11:43 > 0:11:46visited the exhibition and met the artist.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49GIRL: ..say it was like a spider's web
0:11:49 > 0:11:52because the strings are much too thick.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56Yes, the crossed effect is... looks wonderful - yes.
0:11:56 > 0:11:58I agree with you there.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01The first question the children asked her was,
0:12:01 > 0:12:03"Why do your sculptures have holes in them?"
0:12:04 > 0:12:10Well, I found out as I worked, and that's a long time ago now,
0:12:10 > 0:12:13about 1931,
0:12:13 > 0:12:17that, erm, by carving right through with a hole,
0:12:17 > 0:12:18I was able to
0:12:18 > 0:12:23see the landscape through the hole and see what was happening behind
0:12:23 > 0:12:25- the sculpture.- Right.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28And be able to put my fingers and my hands around it...
0:12:28 > 0:12:31In another room, you have a piece of sculpture called Square Form -
0:12:31 > 0:12:34this reminds me of being on a jetty because the squares are climbing
0:12:34 > 0:12:38on top of one another as if this was a race to try and reach the sky,
0:12:38 > 0:12:40to see who became the highest.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44- Am I right or am I wrong, please? - You're quite right.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46Absolutely right, yes!
0:12:47 > 0:12:51I didn't realise I liked abstract art until when I was about 15
0:12:51 > 0:12:53and I was on my own at the Edinburgh Festival
0:12:53 > 0:12:56and I got up early one morning, a beautiful sunny morning
0:12:56 > 0:12:58and went down to the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01And there's a huge exhibition of Barbara Hepworth there
0:13:01 > 0:13:03and I was completely bowled over.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05I don't think art has to be very complicated,
0:13:05 > 0:13:09or has to be very difficult, and I think it was the purity of her ima...
0:13:09 > 0:13:12her shapes in that lovely dappled green landscape.
0:13:12 > 0:13:14It just completely entranced me.
0:13:14 > 0:13:18And I spent hours and hours and hours just walking around and staring at the holes
0:13:18 > 0:13:21and the shapes... those beautiful biomorphic forms
0:13:21 > 0:13:24and the complex, little lattices inside them and so on.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27But that was the moment I realised I loved abstract painting,
0:13:27 > 0:13:30or abstract art, I should say, and it's never left me.
0:13:36 > 0:13:40Barbara Hepworth has had a huge impact - I mean, she was a really
0:13:40 > 0:13:44pioneering artist, making the first completely abstract sculptures.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48She's pretty much as close to a household name
0:13:48 > 0:13:49as a modern artist can be.
0:13:49 > 0:13:52You know, Henry Moore, of course, was a hugely important figure
0:13:52 > 0:13:56in the post-war years, but so too was Barbara Hepworth.
0:13:56 > 0:13:57And together, I think
0:13:57 > 0:14:02they did more than almost anyone to bring British art to the world.
0:14:02 > 0:14:05But also to popularise abstraction.
0:14:05 > 0:14:10And, I think, a perfect symbol of her importance in the post-war years
0:14:10 > 0:14:15is if you look at, in the early 1960s,
0:14:15 > 0:14:18the United Nations commissioned a huge 21-foot-high
0:14:18 > 0:14:22abstract sculpture to stand in front of the United Nations.
0:14:22 > 0:14:25And what's interesting about that is they chose Barbara Hepworth.
0:14:25 > 0:14:27They choose a female artist,
0:14:27 > 0:14:30from Britain, living in Cornwall, and they choose something abstract.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32And I think that says a lot.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41Barbara Hepworth was one of the first British artists to go abstract,
0:14:41 > 0:14:45but she was soon joined by a very different kind of abstract artist.
0:14:47 > 0:14:52Victor Pasmore, filmed here at his house in Malta by the BBC in 1979,
0:14:52 > 0:14:56gave up making figurative art midway through his career
0:14:56 > 0:14:57and went on to become
0:14:57 > 0:15:01one of the most influential figures in post-war British abstraction.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05Few artists let you watch the creation of a big work from start to finish.
0:15:05 > 0:15:10Pasmore said he wouldn't and couldn't, then he relented.
0:15:10 > 0:15:13'The style is dependent on what you start with.
0:15:13 > 0:15:18'If you start with a blob that will dictate a certain style -
0:15:18 > 0:15:22'if I start with a line it will dictate another line.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26'I refuse to operate or function on any absolute line.
0:15:29 > 0:15:31'I start with the physical painting
0:15:31 > 0:15:34'and the process will determine the style
0:15:34 > 0:15:36'and the form of the picture, to some extent,
0:15:36 > 0:15:38'not the whole extent, but to some...
0:15:38 > 0:15:41'and so it depends what I choose to start with.'
0:15:43 > 0:15:46For naturalist painters, there are often time constraints
0:15:46 > 0:15:49which pressure them - sunsets fade, flowers droop
0:15:49 > 0:15:52and models charge by the hour.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55Does Pasmore have similar pressures in his abstract work?
0:15:56 > 0:16:02I usually like to have... something...like the BBC
0:16:02 > 0:16:05coming along and saying, "Will you...paint a picture?"!
0:16:05 > 0:16:10Something objective like that, but I like painting when I'm relaxed...
0:16:10 > 0:16:13because I like the picture to paint itself,
0:16:13 > 0:16:18and if you are very... tense while you're painting and...
0:16:18 > 0:16:20you concentrate on the wrong thing.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29Pasmore started out as one of Britain's foremost figurative painters.
0:16:30 > 0:16:34But from 1947, his art changed radically,
0:16:34 > 0:16:37and he decided to follow a completely abstract path.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42Over the next few decades, Pasmore became a passionate advocate
0:16:42 > 0:16:46for abstraction, as revealed in this BBC profile from the 1960s.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51In England, Victor Pasmore was one of the first artists
0:16:51 > 0:16:54to adopt a professional approach after the war.
0:16:54 > 0:16:59A change in the 1950s from a limpid post-impressionist style,
0:16:59 > 0:17:03via abstract paintings to three-dimensional constructions.
0:17:03 > 0:17:07Pasmore has been very influential in disseminating this approach
0:17:07 > 0:17:09through his own example and also as a teacher.
0:17:15 > 0:17:20- PASMORE:- Perhaps the most significant factor about this
0:17:20 > 0:17:23new approach to painting and sculpture,
0:17:23 > 0:17:28completely free from natural representation,
0:17:28 > 0:17:33is the fact that it provides a completely new and more dynamic
0:17:33 > 0:17:38relationship between the work of art, the artist and the spectator.
0:17:39 > 0:17:44For Pasmore, painting alone wasn't enough, he wanted to take
0:17:44 > 0:17:47the universal language of abstraction to a wider world.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52He was drawn to the kind of ideas developed before the war -
0:17:52 > 0:17:55that through the fusing of art, architecture and design,
0:17:55 > 0:17:59artists could bring about social improvement.
0:17:59 > 0:18:04Pasmore very much takes on many of the ideals of the 1930s.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08So the idea of an art that is integrated with architecture and design
0:18:08 > 0:18:11is central to his development of a new constructivism,
0:18:11 > 0:18:14"constructionism" as he calls it.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18Because of his commitment to those ideas, he's employed by
0:18:18 > 0:18:21Peterlee New Town in the north-east of England
0:18:21 > 0:18:23to design a section of that town...
0:18:23 > 0:18:26which has pretty much completely disappeared now...
0:18:26 > 0:18:28but the one residue of his contribution
0:18:28 > 0:18:34is this extraordinary pavilion that bridges part of the estate there.
0:18:34 > 0:18:37To add a touch of class to one of his estates,
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Pasmore had built a precast concrete pavilion above an artificial pond.
0:18:41 > 0:18:44The tenants call it adding insult to injury.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49The Apollo Pavilion embodied Pasmore's ideal of what abstraction
0:18:49 > 0:18:52could stand for.
0:18:52 > 0:18:54But the residents were less than impressed.
0:18:56 > 0:18:58Over the years, it hasn't weathered well,
0:18:58 > 0:19:01and the local children have made it their own.
0:19:01 > 0:19:03DISCORDANT INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
0:19:07 > 0:19:10The people who live around the pavilion want it taken down
0:19:10 > 0:19:15because of the unmentionable things that local youths get up to inside,
0:19:15 > 0:19:17underneath and on top of it.
0:19:17 > 0:19:21And so in 1982, Pasmore travelled to Peterlee to defend it -
0:19:21 > 0:19:25the BBC's Nationwide programme was there to record the encounter.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31Now, can you not, sort of, sympathise with these people?
0:19:31 > 0:19:35And back our plea to have this thing demolished?
0:19:35 > 0:19:39So that these tenants can live in peace and quiet.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42It's your... If you want the thing demolished, get it demolished.
0:19:42 > 0:19:44There are few people here... How many? 25?
0:19:44 > 0:19:46Well, actually, there's a lot more...
0:19:46 > 0:19:48This doesn't represent... this doesn't represent Peterlee.
0:19:48 > 0:19:50This little lot here doesn't represent...
0:19:50 > 0:19:53Of all the new towns in Britain, Peterlee is the one
0:19:53 > 0:19:58that started off with the greatest support and the highest ambitions.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01But, for many, it's a dream that went badly wrong.
0:20:01 > 0:20:05Not for lack of ideas, perhaps for too many of them.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10Today, the pavilion is a listed monument
0:20:10 > 0:20:15and it remains an imposing symbol of Pasmore's ideals.
0:20:19 > 0:20:21JAUNTY MUSIC
0:20:22 > 0:20:25Anyone who thinks abstract artists are too abstract
0:20:25 > 0:20:29should drop in at the Whitechapel Art Gallery where there's an exhibition
0:20:29 > 0:20:32devoted to collaboration between architects, painters and sculptors.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35They point out that yesterday's tomorrow is not today,
0:20:35 > 0:20:39so maybe today's tomorrow won't be quite what you expected.
0:20:39 > 0:20:44By the mid '50s, abstract art was a familiar part of the British art scene.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46But a new generation of artists had different ideas about
0:20:46 > 0:20:48what abstract art was for.
0:20:50 > 0:20:56In 1958, the BBC's Monitor programme interviewed one upcoming painter...
0:20:56 > 0:20:59The young artists of today, like Gillian Ayres,
0:20:59 > 0:21:02are more interested in abstracts than in people.
0:21:02 > 0:21:05The post-war generation of painters don't feel that social
0:21:05 > 0:21:08and political issues come directly into painting.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12They put their energy directly into their painting.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14Painters paint their environment and their times,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16but they don't illustrate it.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19If they do, it becomes literary and sentimental.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23I want to paint something that says something visually in paint.
0:21:25 > 0:21:29Gillian Ayres had studied at Camberwell under Victor Pasmore,
0:21:29 > 0:21:32but had developed a more lyrical style that did away with
0:21:32 > 0:21:35the more ordered abstract forms of the previous generation.
0:21:40 > 0:21:45Aged 84, Ayres is still working today at her studio in Cornwall.
0:21:48 > 0:21:55I've been painting abstracts... I suppose, really most of my life.
0:21:55 > 0:21:57I wanted to be a painter
0:21:57 > 0:22:01since I was about 13...but it doesn't mean one's achieved it,
0:22:01 > 0:22:04it means it was one's ambition.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07I mean, there was abstraction, but there was also painting and, erm...
0:22:07 > 0:22:14I used to go over to France whenever I had any money, which wasn't that often,
0:22:14 > 0:22:17and look at whatever painting was around,
0:22:17 > 0:22:18but I can remember...
0:22:19 > 0:22:21..a whole crowd of French art students.
0:22:21 > 0:22:25And they didn't say a woman couldn't paint, they said the English
0:22:25 > 0:22:30can't paint, erm, which was pretty screwy when you, sort of, think of Turner.
0:22:32 > 0:22:36I think most of her painting is celebration of life -
0:22:36 > 0:22:38it's not particularly dark.
0:22:38 > 0:22:41So there isn't a wide range of emotional expression
0:22:41 > 0:22:43in Gillian's paintings.
0:22:43 > 0:22:45She is about the extraordinary luck
0:22:45 > 0:22:47and the fact of being alive on this
0:22:47 > 0:22:51multicoloured, extraordinary planet at any time.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54It is pure celebration of life and the life force.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58In 1988, Ayres was filmed in her studio,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02describing the process and thinking behind her work.
0:23:02 > 0:23:07There is this awful thing where you can really love a bit in a painting.
0:23:07 > 0:23:09I don't save it, I'm afraid.
0:23:09 > 0:23:11And, erm...
0:23:12 > 0:23:14..the bit often has to go.
0:23:15 > 0:23:19I would love the idea of keeping - you could actually like a bit
0:23:19 > 0:23:24of a painting and mean to keep it and that doesn't always work.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27Sometimes they can just be changed a bit,
0:23:27 > 0:23:30but sometimes the whole damn painting goes,
0:23:30 > 0:23:32but some of it's regrettable.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35You know...you try and keep it and then, in the end,
0:23:35 > 0:23:37you've changed so much round it, it can't stay there,
0:23:37 > 0:23:40it simply doesn't mean anything any more.
0:23:41 > 0:23:46With her, I always get that sense that...
0:23:46 > 0:23:52she knew that dot was needed there, because it was needed there.
0:23:52 > 0:23:55Not because she needed to represent something with the dot,
0:23:55 > 0:24:00but there was something needed there and she knew.
0:24:00 > 0:24:02And that must be an extraordinary thing to know.
0:24:02 > 0:24:04Because I don't know it.
0:24:04 > 0:24:10All I know is that when I look, I get enough from that to keep me
0:24:10 > 0:24:15going imaginatively... and that, that's very satisfying.
0:24:17 > 0:24:18I feel that...
0:24:19 > 0:24:24..there's a sort of now truth, probably,
0:24:24 > 0:24:25somewhere out there...
0:24:27 > 0:24:28..of shapes.
0:24:28 > 0:24:37And...I suppose there's a visual language of one's time.
0:24:37 > 0:24:39And I think all my life
0:24:39 > 0:24:41I've felt it's...
0:24:41 > 0:24:44in abstraction, but it can't...you know,
0:24:44 > 0:24:45it's not as simple as that.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55Through the 1950s,
0:24:55 > 0:24:59Gillian Ayers had developed her own distinctive visual language,
0:24:59 > 0:25:03but the scale and ambition of her painting derived in part from a new
0:25:03 > 0:25:08and irresistible force in abstract art - one from across the Atlantic.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC
0:25:16 > 0:25:21The glamorous and spectacular story of abstraction in the 20th century,
0:25:21 > 0:25:22there is no doubt that
0:25:22 > 0:25:26it's New York in the late '40s, early '50s, where abstraction is taken
0:25:26 > 0:25:30to a new level, metaphorically, and in terms of monumentality and scale.
0:25:30 > 0:25:33And, of course, we all know the impulses for that,
0:25:33 > 0:25:36the European avant-garde is forced during the
0:25:36 > 0:25:38Second World War to migrate from Paris to New York
0:25:38 > 0:25:42and New York becomes this, kind of, cultural as well as economic and political centre of the West.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46And, in a sense, abstraction and American abstract expressionism -
0:25:46 > 0:25:49"the triumph of American painting" as one writer described it,
0:25:49 > 0:25:51is there.
0:25:51 > 0:25:53In the late '50s, a serious of exhibitions
0:25:53 > 0:25:56of American abstract expressionist art opened in London.
0:25:57 > 0:26:01The first showcased the work of Jackson Pollock.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04He had his first exhibition, I think in a small...
0:26:04 > 0:26:06in the Arts Club in Dover Street,
0:26:06 > 0:26:12but the major public show was at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1958.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15And that show was transformative on many levels.
0:26:15 > 0:26:17He worked with an architect who redesigned
0:26:17 > 0:26:22the whole gallery to present this new spirit in painting.
0:26:22 > 0:26:29And, out of this...one exhibition, tremendous excitement,
0:26:29 > 0:26:35shock, even outrage, that something which was so formless
0:26:35 > 0:26:41and almost aggressively anti-form could be regarded as art.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47The drips and splodges of the abstract expressionists
0:26:47 > 0:26:51were a controversial next step in the story of abstraction -
0:26:51 > 0:26:54which was turning out to be a revolution in many stages.
0:26:56 > 0:27:01Through the 1940s and '50s, America had been cooking up its own
0:27:01 > 0:27:04abstract movement, which was, in many ways, more audacious that
0:27:04 > 0:27:08anything that had happened in Europe and this was, of course, the abstract expressionist movement,
0:27:08 > 0:27:11with those titanic figures like Jackson Pollock
0:27:11 > 0:27:15and Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman - people who were painting
0:27:15 > 0:27:18on a huge scale, but also people who were thinking on a huge scale.
0:27:18 > 0:27:23I mean, these artists had colossal American-sized ambitions.
0:27:25 > 0:27:30Gone were ideas of universal truth, favoured by early abstract artists -
0:27:30 > 0:27:34here was a more personal, almost unconscious form of self expression.
0:27:38 > 0:27:40One British artist that took up
0:27:40 > 0:27:43the challenge of abstract expressionism was John Hoyland.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48Hoyland was born in Sheffield in 1934,
0:27:48 > 0:27:52and by the time he had finished at art school in London in 1960,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55he was already a committed abstract artist.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01Hoyland's style ranged throughout his career from more rigid
0:28:01 > 0:28:04geometric work to freer, more expressive painting,
0:28:04 > 0:28:07in which large fields of colour dominate.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12In 1979, the BBC's Arena team filmed Hoyland in his studio
0:28:12 > 0:28:16and documented the making of a single work.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20The resulting film, Six Days In September, is a fascinating insight
0:28:20 > 0:28:25into the process of creating an abstract painting.
0:28:25 > 0:28:29'Just making a painting, I mean... seems such a ridiculous...
0:28:30 > 0:28:33'..a ridiculous activity in a way.
0:28:33 > 0:28:34'I mean...
0:28:34 > 0:28:36'I mean...nobody wants it particularly.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39'And, er...
0:28:39 > 0:28:43'you don't know if you can do it, if you're strong enough to do it.
0:28:43 > 0:28:45'Erm...
0:28:46 > 0:28:50'It's just you...on your own in a room.'
0:28:53 > 0:28:58John Hoyland is an artist who emerges in the 1960s
0:28:58 > 0:29:02and is...you know, would acknowledge the importance to him
0:29:02 > 0:29:05of American abstract expressionism...
0:29:05 > 0:29:07and I think that idea of a painting
0:29:07 > 0:29:10which can be environmental and completely envelop the viewer,
0:29:10 > 0:29:13is what really, kind of, excites Hoyland,
0:29:13 > 0:29:15and you see him in the later '60s producing these
0:29:15 > 0:29:21enormous canvases in which sort of large, almost like huge slabs
0:29:21 > 0:29:25of paint, float on a sort of thinner veils of colour on the canvas...
0:29:25 > 0:29:28and they become, something which, sort of...
0:29:28 > 0:29:31you can get lost in as a viewer.
0:29:33 > 0:29:38I mean, it's all...panic, panic at this point.
0:29:38 > 0:29:40I'm trying to coax a painting along,
0:29:40 > 0:29:44but I'm not trying to...impose on it, you know?
0:29:44 > 0:29:48I'm not trying to force a...a rigid idea on it.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53So I think it's just happening.
0:29:53 > 0:29:57I'm letting the paint...trying to let the paint work for me,
0:29:57 > 0:30:00trying to let the paint do things for me.
0:30:00 > 0:30:04'It always amuses me when they...people say
0:30:04 > 0:30:05'they've been having problems,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08'nervous problems or suicidal problems
0:30:08 > 0:30:11'and they get them into painting as a form of therapy.
0:30:11 > 0:30:13- LAUGHING:- 'And it always amuses me
0:30:13 > 0:30:15'because I think if you want to drive someone crazy,
0:30:15 > 0:30:17'the thing to do is to get them painting.'
0:30:17 > 0:30:19I think John Hoyland would admit
0:30:19 > 0:30:25that by the time he came to abstraction in the early '60s,
0:30:25 > 0:30:27it was a familiar and well-worn territory,
0:30:27 > 0:30:31but he would, quite rightly, have refused to believe
0:30:31 > 0:30:33that it was a territory that was closed down.
0:30:33 > 0:30:34I think he saw all sorts of possibilities.
0:30:37 > 0:30:38HOYLAND LAUGHS
0:30:38 > 0:30:42I don't know if I should do this, but I'm going to just do it anyway,
0:30:42 > 0:30:45cos I'm not satisfied with what's there.
0:30:45 > 0:30:46So...see what happens.
0:30:54 > 0:30:57You always have to walk that tightrope between,
0:30:57 > 0:31:00on the one hand, fussing with a painting,
0:31:00 > 0:31:03on the other hand, just leaving it so that it's not really...
0:31:04 > 0:31:06..you know, it's not really come together.
0:31:06 > 0:31:09You've got to exercise some control, but if you have too much control,
0:31:09 > 0:31:11then nothing's going to happen.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16I don't quite know what to do next.
0:31:19 > 0:31:21I keep seeing John Hoyland paintings,
0:31:21 > 0:31:27and I think, "Why isn't this man one of the best-known figures
0:31:27 > 0:31:30"of the English 20th century?
0:31:30 > 0:31:32"Why isn't there a John Hoyland Room?"
0:31:32 > 0:31:36You just keep wondering about a figure like John Hoyland,
0:31:36 > 0:31:40that if only he'd been in New York,
0:31:40 > 0:31:44he would be recognised as being a great painter.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48It's a life-or-death thing - I'd hate to lose this painting.
0:31:48 > 0:31:50Maybe we won't lose it.
0:31:50 > 0:31:53Maybe we'll manage to do something with it,
0:31:53 > 0:31:54turn it around.
0:31:54 > 0:31:56There are good things in it -
0:31:56 > 0:31:59it's just that I don't quite know how to do it.
0:31:59 > 0:32:00But I may hit on it.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03I may come in here one morning -
0:32:03 > 0:32:06unfortunately, I may come in here one morning when you're not here -
0:32:06 > 0:32:12and just suddenly think, "Maybe I'll just do something."
0:32:12 > 0:32:14That's very often how it happens, actually.
0:32:14 > 0:32:16You think, "I'm not painting today -
0:32:16 > 0:32:18"forget this painting, I'm not going to do it."
0:32:18 > 0:32:20Then you go in and say,
0:32:20 > 0:32:22"Maybe I'll just put this on here", you know?
0:32:22 > 0:32:26And then maybe in five minutes, ten minutes,
0:32:26 > 0:32:30you've just found the key to lock in the whole idea.
0:32:30 > 0:32:31But it's finding the key
0:32:31 > 0:32:34and then just hitting the right spot, you know?
0:32:34 > 0:32:36And I can't guarantee it -
0:32:36 > 0:32:39I can't guarantee I can do it on the camera, you know?
0:32:40 > 0:32:41That's the way it is.
0:32:49 > 0:32:51The Responsive Eye is the title of an exhibition on view
0:32:51 > 0:32:54at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City
0:32:54 > 0:32:58between February 23rd and April 25th, 1965.
0:33:02 > 0:33:07As this 1965 CBS documentary entertainingly reveals,
0:33:07 > 0:33:11abstract art continued to both intrigue and provoke the public.
0:33:16 > 0:33:19How do people respond to The Responsive Eye?
0:33:19 > 0:33:21We talked to some of them as they came out of the exhibit.
0:33:23 > 0:33:25Did you find it as disturbing as you'd heard?
0:33:27 > 0:33:30Physically, yes, it was disturbing to my eyes -
0:33:30 > 0:33:33I felt like I was going around in circles after a while.
0:33:33 > 0:33:35But artistically, I thought it was excellent.
0:33:35 > 0:33:39Among the artists on show at this exhibition
0:33:39 > 0:33:40was a young British painter.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45Here is Current by the British artist, Bridget Riley.
0:33:45 > 0:33:47It is black on white, no colour.
0:33:47 > 0:33:51But look carefully - many viewers notice blues and yellows,
0:33:51 > 0:33:53darting around the ripples.
0:33:53 > 0:33:55You don't find it disturbing?
0:33:55 > 0:33:58I don't mind being disturbed.
0:33:58 > 0:34:01Art is something you live with and appreciate and enjoy.
0:34:01 > 0:34:02And you couldn't live with this.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05You can't appreciate it for more than five minutes.
0:34:06 > 0:34:08Throughout the early 1960s,
0:34:08 > 0:34:11Riley had developed a form of hard-edged monochrome painting
0:34:11 > 0:34:13that played with visual perception.
0:34:14 > 0:34:16It became known as op art.
0:34:22 > 0:34:26The paintings captured the public imagination
0:34:26 > 0:34:28and they went on to spark a craze
0:34:28 > 0:34:30that took the fashion world by storm.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39But Riley's ambitions as an artist
0:34:39 > 0:34:43were a world away from designs for mini skirts and hats,
0:34:43 > 0:34:47and she moved away from purely black and white works
0:34:47 > 0:34:49and began experimenting with colour.
0:34:54 > 0:34:58In 1979, Riley participated in a film made by The Arts Council
0:34:58 > 0:35:02that explored the theory behind her striking abstract works.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09Bridget Riley's art is an exploration of the possibilities of vision.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13It is the result of continual trials and testing and experiment
0:35:13 > 0:35:16to find out what the eye can see,
0:35:16 > 0:35:18to experience what looking feels like.
0:35:30 > 0:35:34Rhythm and repetition are at the root of movement.
0:35:34 > 0:35:35They create a situation
0:35:35 > 0:35:38within which the most simple, basic forms
0:35:38 > 0:35:40start to become visually active.
0:35:41 > 0:35:46By massing them and repeating them, they become more fully present.
0:35:46 > 0:35:50Repetition acts as a sort of amplifier for visual events which,
0:35:50 > 0:35:52seen singly, would hardly be visible.
0:35:55 > 0:35:56But to make these basic forms
0:35:56 > 0:35:59release the full visual energy within them,
0:35:59 > 0:36:02they have to breathe, as it were -
0:36:02 > 0:36:06to open and close, or to tighten up and then relax.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11A rhythm that's alive has to do with changing speed
0:36:11 > 0:36:17and feeling how the visual speed can expand and contract -
0:36:17 > 0:36:21sometimes go slower and sometimes go faster.
0:36:21 > 0:36:22The whole thing must live.
0:36:29 > 0:36:32Riley was herself revolutionary
0:36:32 > 0:36:36in pioneering this idea of using the stripe,
0:36:36 > 0:36:42and using the way it's potentially so kinetic as eye-catching.
0:36:42 > 0:36:44She would arrest us.
0:36:44 > 0:36:49And I've seen, even today, people walking past
0:36:49 > 0:36:52and literally stop in their tracks
0:36:52 > 0:36:55because of the, kind of, dazzling effect of her work.
0:36:55 > 0:36:57It has this extraordinary power.
0:36:57 > 0:37:00It's a very simple but refined technique.
0:37:02 > 0:37:06Of course, colour as light and colour as paint
0:37:06 > 0:37:08behave in quite different ways.
0:37:10 > 0:37:12It was artists like Monet and Seurat
0:37:12 > 0:37:15who taught us to make paint behave as light does -
0:37:15 > 0:37:19by dividing up the colour on the canvas
0:37:19 > 0:37:21so that it works optically,
0:37:21 > 0:37:25only mixing in the actual process of seeing it.
0:37:25 > 0:37:29Seeing it is when the painting starts to live.
0:37:29 > 0:37:31That is when it begins.
0:37:33 > 0:37:35And we say that painters shouldn't think -
0:37:35 > 0:37:39that, more than anything, they must stop thinking.
0:37:39 > 0:37:40But Bridget Riley thinks,
0:37:40 > 0:37:44and when she puts two colours beside each other,
0:37:44 > 0:37:49using thought and using perhaps some mathematical system, even,
0:37:49 > 0:37:53something very deep can happen to the viewer,
0:37:53 > 0:37:57to the eye, as the colours hit against each other.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02Something quite spiritual, something quite satisfying,
0:38:02 > 0:38:03comes from her mind.
0:38:06 > 0:38:07March back...
0:38:07 > 0:38:09Riley had always been fascinated
0:38:09 > 0:38:13by the paintings of the 19th century French artist Georges Seurat
0:38:13 > 0:38:18and the dynamic possibilities of placing one colour against another.
0:38:18 > 0:38:21In this BBC documentary about his work,
0:38:21 > 0:38:24she details his use of colour.
0:38:24 > 0:38:30I once painted out this colour wheel of Seurat's
0:38:30 > 0:38:34which he used for... to identify contrasts.
0:38:34 > 0:38:40I added to the pure pigmentary centre
0:38:40 > 0:38:44the two outer rings with each colour lightened with white.
0:38:44 > 0:38:50And you can see in the red group and in the yellow-green group,
0:38:50 > 0:38:57on the edges, throws up an illusion of the adjacent colour.
0:38:57 > 0:39:03It is the surrounding influences of everything
0:39:03 > 0:39:05which are interacting the whole time,
0:39:05 > 0:39:11which make a, um...generalisation about colour
0:39:11 > 0:39:14quite impossible to maintain.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20I think one of the things we have to be careful about
0:39:20 > 0:39:21when we talk about abstract art
0:39:21 > 0:39:25is we need to avoid thinking of it as a single thing.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28It's a bit like talking about...I don't know,
0:39:28 > 0:39:30blue art or something.
0:39:30 > 0:39:32They may be...
0:39:32 > 0:39:35Artists are using non-figuration
0:39:35 > 0:39:37for very different reasons, with different ends,
0:39:37 > 0:39:41and you see, in the 1960s, Bridget Riley developing an art
0:39:41 > 0:39:45which is really about visual perception and illusion.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49And, in a way, it's almost sort of coincidental that to do that,
0:39:49 > 0:39:51the painting needs to be abstract, because of course,
0:39:51 > 0:39:54as soon as you had anything which looked like a thing,
0:39:54 > 0:39:58then other mental processes would go on.
0:39:58 > 0:40:01So, you know, it's just a clear demonstration
0:40:01 > 0:40:04that...what makes her an abstract artist
0:40:04 > 0:40:07is quite different to what makes John Hoyland or Gillian Ayres
0:40:07 > 0:40:09an abstract artist.
0:40:11 > 0:40:15Looking is a pleasure, a continual surprise.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20Sight, the activity of looking,
0:40:20 > 0:40:24helps us to be more truthfully aware of the condition of being alive.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32Riley wasn't the only artist to push colour to extremes
0:40:32 > 0:40:35in pursuit of underlying human experiences.
0:40:37 > 0:40:40Howard Hodgkin had begun as a figurative painter.
0:40:41 > 0:40:43But as his style developed,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46he turned increasingly to the language of abstraction
0:40:46 > 0:40:49to represent intimate emotional experiences.
0:40:52 > 0:40:55Hodgkin is one of those smack-you-in-the-eye,
0:40:55 > 0:40:56knock-you-over painters.
0:40:56 > 0:40:57If you're not impressed,
0:40:57 > 0:41:00not bowled over by Hodgkin, there's something wrong with you -
0:41:00 > 0:41:02you probably just don't like painting at all.
0:41:05 > 0:41:12Now 82, Hodgkin has never considered himself an abstract artist.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16I've always had trouble with being described as an abstract artist,
0:41:16 > 0:41:20because I don't really believe I am one.
0:41:21 > 0:41:26I think that an abstract artist is much more pure.
0:41:26 > 0:41:32What I've always said - it sounds horribly pompous -
0:41:32 > 0:41:38that I'm a figurative painter of emotional situations is true.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43But whether that makes me an abstract artist or not,
0:41:43 > 0:41:44I'm not quite clear.
0:41:46 > 0:41:48Hodgkin is normally closely guarded
0:41:48 > 0:41:51about the way his painted forms describe his subjects.
0:41:52 > 0:41:57But in 1984, he gave this uncharacteristically frank account
0:41:57 > 0:42:00of his painting Tea to the BBC's Arena programme.
0:42:03 > 0:42:08I was asked round to some friends for tea.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11And this very ordinary-looking person appeared
0:42:11 > 0:42:12who was a friend of theirs,
0:42:12 > 0:42:15though apparently, they didn't know him very well.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18And he said, "What do you do?" And I said, "Oh, I'm a painter."
0:42:19 > 0:42:22And I said, "What do you do?"
0:42:22 > 0:42:23He said, "Oh, I'm a prostitute."
0:42:25 > 0:42:28And so he started telling me
0:42:28 > 0:42:30about what it was like to be a prostitute.
0:42:30 > 0:42:33And I sort of sat there listening to what he had to say,
0:42:33 > 0:42:35which was fascinating.
0:42:35 > 0:42:40And he'd clearly never, ever before told anybody what he was doing
0:42:40 > 0:42:41and what it was like and so on.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47The picture is an attempt
0:42:47 > 0:42:49at containing this extraordinary situation.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52I hate saying that this brush stroke,
0:42:52 > 0:42:55this colour stands for this thing.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58But this particular picture is one of the few
0:42:58 > 0:43:00that I have ever described the subject of
0:43:00 > 0:43:03in any detail in public,
0:43:03 > 0:43:06because I think describing the subject of a picture
0:43:06 > 0:43:12tends to come between you, as the spectator, and the picture.
0:43:14 > 0:43:17And you start looking for things which perhaps you won't find.
0:43:17 > 0:43:19But I would say about this,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22that I think the overall rhythm of the picture,
0:43:22 > 0:43:26the way it's like an interior which is spattered with blood,
0:43:26 > 0:43:30is, in some way, an equivalent
0:43:30 > 0:43:34to the fact one's hearing this extraordinary narrative
0:43:34 > 0:43:38which is like a descant going on across what one had to look at,
0:43:38 > 0:43:41the sort of, "Pass me a cup of tea" or, "Pass me a drink"
0:43:41 > 0:43:44or, "Give me a light" sort of conversation
0:43:44 > 0:43:46that was going on at the same time.
0:43:46 > 0:43:50I think that Howard Hodgkin is a, sort of, poetic abstractionist.
0:43:50 > 0:43:53He's called himself a figurative abstractionist.
0:43:53 > 0:43:58He draws on his world, his recollections,
0:43:58 > 0:44:02his relationships and his immediate surroundings.
0:44:02 > 0:44:05I think he's more like Marcel Proust -
0:44:05 > 0:44:08he's someone that draws on those recollections
0:44:08 > 0:44:09and tries to find...
0:44:09 > 0:44:12Rather than finding language or words to describe it,
0:44:12 > 0:44:16he finds colours and marks to describe it.
0:44:16 > 0:44:20So we may look at his work and see dots and dashes,
0:44:20 > 0:44:23but we look at the title and it's the name of somebody -
0:44:23 > 0:44:26it's apparently a portrait.
0:44:26 > 0:44:28It's taking abstraction into a whole other area
0:44:28 > 0:44:33which is emotional and descriptive
0:44:33 > 0:44:36of a feeling and a relationship and maybe a dialogue.
0:44:38 > 0:44:42The Green Chateau, 1976-1980.
0:44:45 > 0:44:50Still Life In A Restaurant, 1976-79.
0:44:55 > 0:44:59Red Bermudas, 1978-80.
0:45:03 > 0:45:08Mr and Mrs EJP, 1972-73.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12Really, if you look at the story of his painting, it is of simplicity,
0:45:12 > 0:45:15like a lot of painters, who become...who don't have to put in
0:45:15 > 0:45:17all the other bits by the end, because they know exactly what to do.
0:45:17 > 0:45:20They don't have to fill in the dots, they just do the basic work
0:45:20 > 0:45:23and that's true of painters like Titian,
0:45:23 > 0:45:24it's true of painters like Matisse
0:45:24 > 0:45:26and it's true of Howard Hodgkin.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29His early pictures are very, very elaborate.
0:45:29 > 0:45:31Lots and lots of washes, lots of changes of colour,
0:45:31 > 0:45:34colour obliterated by colour, lots of splodges,
0:45:34 > 0:45:37lots of zigzag designs, lots of lines.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41And bit by bit by bit, he realises, "I don't need all that stuff.
0:45:41 > 0:45:44"I just need that extraordinary smokey-green emerald
0:45:44 > 0:45:46"with some bright light shining through it
0:45:46 > 0:45:48"and I need a little scarlet there," and so forth.
0:45:48 > 0:45:50So it's radical simplification.
0:45:51 > 0:45:55Over the decades, Hodgkin has routinely turned down requests
0:45:55 > 0:45:57from the BBC to filmed at work.
0:45:58 > 0:46:00But then, in 2006,
0:46:00 > 0:46:04to the complete surprise of Imagine presenter Alan Yentob,
0:46:04 > 0:46:07Hodgkin picked up his paintbrush in front of the camera.
0:46:10 > 0:46:12'It was our last day of filming,
0:46:12 > 0:46:16'and just when it seemed that Howard had typically contrived
0:46:16 > 0:46:19'to have the last word, something extraordinary happened.
0:46:20 > 0:46:23'He did exactly what he said he never would.
0:46:23 > 0:46:27'He picked up a paintbrush and prepared to paint.'
0:46:35 > 0:46:37Breaking all the rules.
0:46:43 > 0:46:44HODGKIN CLEARS HIS THROAT
0:46:45 > 0:46:47Broken all the rules.
0:46:57 > 0:46:59'I wonder what will become of that.'
0:47:02 > 0:47:06People say, "How do you do it?"
0:47:06 > 0:47:07Cos I don't know.
0:47:10 > 0:47:11I really don't.
0:47:13 > 0:47:18When I...go to sleep at night,
0:47:18 > 0:47:21I...work...
0:47:24 > 0:47:26..which causes all sorts of problems.
0:47:26 > 0:47:28HE LAUGHS
0:47:28 > 0:47:32I can't say what's going on in my head,
0:47:32 > 0:47:33because I don't know.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39What I do know about is what I can do with the results.
0:47:47 > 0:47:51But as Hodgkin was exploring his emotional life through colour,
0:47:51 > 0:47:54other artists were grappling with more physical realities.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58First time I came here, I don't know how many years ago,
0:47:58 > 0:48:02five years ago, probably, I was looking for propellers
0:48:02 > 0:48:05and those, sort of, twisting shapes to use in my sculpture.
0:48:07 > 0:48:09From the time he became an abstract artist,
0:48:09 > 0:48:13Anthony Caro used the industrial materials of the modern world
0:48:13 > 0:48:14to make his sculpture.
0:48:16 > 0:48:19But Caro's relationship with abstraction
0:48:19 > 0:48:20was never straightforward,
0:48:20 > 0:48:23as he explained to the BBC in 1984.
0:48:24 > 0:48:26I think abstraction is difficult.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30There is a difficulty of response to any sort of thing
0:48:30 > 0:48:35which doesn't give you the handle of saying, what's it of?
0:48:37 > 0:48:39I swore that I'd never make an abstract sculpture -
0:48:39 > 0:48:42the one thing I said I'd never do is make an abstract sculpture.
0:48:42 > 0:48:44What I'd meant was I hope I'll never make an empty sculpture.
0:48:45 > 0:48:50You know? I want to make sculptures which had to do with...
0:48:53 > 0:48:56..with life, not to be an exercise,
0:48:56 > 0:48:59I never wanted to make an exercise.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01And it was really - in order to make them more to do with life,
0:49:01 > 0:49:05that I found myself having to eventually turn to abstraction,
0:49:05 > 0:49:07reluctantly, reluctantly.
0:49:09 > 0:49:13More than a decade before, Caro was interviewed by the BBC
0:49:13 > 0:49:16as he prepared to open an early retrospective
0:49:16 > 0:49:17at the Hayward Gallery in London.
0:49:21 > 0:49:26It's very difficult analysing what goes on in your mind
0:49:26 > 0:49:27when you're in the studio, because...
0:49:29 > 0:49:32..I don't think it's very good to be too self-conscious
0:49:32 > 0:49:34about the actual process.
0:49:36 > 0:49:40Anthony Caro was born in 1924 in London.
0:49:41 > 0:49:44After training at the Royal Academy Schools,
0:49:44 > 0:49:48he went on to work in the studio of Henry Moore.
0:49:48 > 0:49:52Moore opened his eyes up to broader possibilities for sculpture,
0:49:52 > 0:49:54but not fully abstract at all.
0:49:54 > 0:49:56It's more the expressionistic power,
0:49:56 > 0:50:00the expressive power of sculpture that he learns from Moore.
0:50:00 > 0:50:04And, in a way, Moore's particular approach to abstraction,
0:50:04 > 0:50:08which is a melding of figure and landscape,
0:50:08 > 0:50:11is something that Caro can only push so far.
0:50:11 > 0:50:15I wanted my people to be more real. I wanted...
0:50:15 > 0:50:19In fact, I made this figure of a woman,
0:50:19 > 0:50:22um...that was very big,
0:50:22 > 0:50:26and I wanted it to be as real in a room as me talking to you.
0:50:26 > 0:50:31And I found that...I couldn't, cos it was just clay.
0:50:31 > 0:50:32It was a model.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36And I think that I had come to the end of making models.
0:50:36 > 0:50:41Caro's move into abstraction came suddenly.
0:50:41 > 0:50:44In 1959, on a trip to America,
0:50:44 > 0:50:47he saw sculpture made with industrial materials.
0:50:47 > 0:50:49Soon after, he began making
0:50:49 > 0:50:52large-scale bolted and welded steel forms,
0:50:52 > 0:50:55painted with brightly coloured paint.
0:50:55 > 0:50:58Nothing like it had been seen before in Britain.
0:50:58 > 0:51:03People want a lot of art to be made in some way that can be written down
0:51:03 > 0:51:04or can be explained,
0:51:04 > 0:51:06and I don't think it can be.
0:51:06 > 0:51:08I think art has to be in its own language.
0:51:09 > 0:51:15And obviously, my language is the language of shape and interval
0:51:15 > 0:51:18and hollowness and convexity.
0:51:18 > 0:51:20These are the sort of things one thinks about.
0:51:20 > 0:51:22Hopefully, what comes out
0:51:22 > 0:51:26is something to do with my response to the world,
0:51:26 > 0:51:27my response to being alive.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36Caro makes sculpture which sits directly on the floor,
0:51:36 > 0:51:39so he's making a new relationship with us -
0:51:39 > 0:51:41we're almost part of the work.
0:51:41 > 0:51:43We move around it in a different way.
0:51:43 > 0:51:47We're not looking up at a statue in a frontal way,
0:51:47 > 0:51:49or at a reclining figure,
0:51:49 > 0:51:54where the relationship would be as one would be with a human presence.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57No, we're actually being asked to see this work
0:51:57 > 0:51:59from many different vantage points.
0:51:59 > 0:52:01Where is the front? We don't know.
0:52:01 > 0:52:05And that's another really exciting thing about his work.
0:52:05 > 0:52:10He opens up all of these different dimensions
0:52:10 > 0:52:13to understanding the work - it changes as we move around it.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17Through the 1960s, Caro taught at the highly influential
0:52:17 > 0:52:20St Martins School of Art.
0:52:20 > 0:52:23- Well, have you tried to sell any? - Yes - I'm trying to at the moment.
0:52:23 > 0:52:25- Have you succeeded? - I'm going to find out.
0:52:25 > 0:52:28Well, good luck. If you succeed, well, good luck.
0:52:28 > 0:52:32But it seems to me that, uh...
0:52:32 > 0:52:34You're going to be in a lot more trouble trying to sell your art
0:52:34 > 0:52:36before you're really ready
0:52:36 > 0:52:38than if you were digging roads.
0:52:38 > 0:52:42He was a very generous-spirited man, he was a very great teacher.
0:52:42 > 0:52:45Gilbert and George were students of his for a time
0:52:45 > 0:52:49and, um, they...they loved...
0:52:49 > 0:52:52They told me a story that he'd said to them
0:52:52 > 0:52:56when they'd left St Martins School of Art,
0:52:56 > 0:52:58"I rather hope you don't succeed,
0:52:58 > 0:53:01"but I have a strong feeling you will - good luck."
0:53:01 > 0:53:04And they liked the politeness, they said, of that.
0:53:04 > 0:53:07But he then asked me later, "How are Gilbert and George?"
0:53:07 > 0:53:08I said, "Very well."
0:53:08 > 0:53:10He said, "Do you think they're great artists?"
0:53:10 > 0:53:14I said, "I do, Tony." And he went, "Good for you!"
0:53:14 > 0:53:16And left it at that.
0:53:16 > 0:53:20Caro always faced any criticism with good humour.
0:53:20 > 0:53:25In 1980, it fell again to the BBC's teatime Nationwide programme
0:53:25 > 0:53:27to take abstract artists to task
0:53:27 > 0:53:30when it brought Caro to meet students at a West London college
0:53:30 > 0:53:34who were using one of his public sculptures as a bike rack.
0:53:35 > 0:53:38This isn't like any bicycle rack you've ever seen
0:53:38 > 0:53:40because this is a sculpture.
0:53:40 > 0:53:44It was constructed by world-famous sculptor Anthony Caro.
0:53:44 > 0:53:46It cost £15,000,
0:53:46 > 0:53:49but as far as the students of this college are concerned,
0:53:49 > 0:53:52it makes a far better bicycle rack than it does a work of art.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55But the subtleties of Caro's work is lost on the students,
0:53:55 > 0:53:58and back in Hammersmith, the temperature is rising.
0:53:58 > 0:54:02The great man himself has bravely agreed to face his critics.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05We think that because of all these education cut backs,
0:54:05 > 0:54:10to spend £15,000 on a sculpture that nobody really understands
0:54:10 > 0:54:13is a complete waste of money.
0:54:13 > 0:54:16The main thing is whether...whether you get some pleasure
0:54:16 > 0:54:19or whether it lifts your heart a little bit
0:54:19 > 0:54:23as you walk out of that building there.
0:54:23 > 0:54:26- Does it lift anybody's hearts? - Not really, no.
0:54:27 > 0:54:31Do you object to it having a use? I mean, people putting bikes on it?
0:54:31 > 0:54:34- Do you object to that? - I think as you get more used to it,
0:54:34 > 0:54:37you'll respect it more and you won't put bicycles on it!
0:54:37 > 0:54:38Do you not think, though,
0:54:38 > 0:54:41even if you don't appreciate or understand modern art,
0:54:41 > 0:54:44it's certainly made you think again about this?
0:54:44 > 0:54:48I think it ought to be in a place where more people can see it -
0:54:48 > 0:54:50just outside the college so the public can see it
0:54:50 > 0:54:52- as well as the students. - Well said.
0:54:52 > 0:54:55Who would like to see this sculpture taken away?
0:54:55 > 0:54:58- ALL: No! - Why not?
0:54:58 > 0:55:01It's part of the college - it was here when we started.
0:55:01 > 0:55:03That's the nicest thing I've heard!
0:55:03 > 0:55:06You see? You are actually getting used to it.
0:55:06 > 0:55:08You are getting accustomed to it.
0:55:08 > 0:55:11One day, come in before the bicycles come in and have a good look at it
0:55:11 > 0:55:13and see whether you like it or not - that's all!
0:55:22 > 0:55:26Anthony Caro was one of the last of a generation of British artists
0:55:26 > 0:55:30that made the decisive move from figurative art to abstraction.
0:55:34 > 0:55:35In the last few decades,
0:55:35 > 0:55:39artists have continued to make abstract art,
0:55:39 > 0:55:42but they've used abstraction in quite different ways
0:55:42 > 0:55:43and for different ends.
0:55:48 > 0:55:51Abstraction is fully integrated into the language of visual art
0:55:51 > 0:55:55to the extent where it's just one element in the artist's armoury.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59Artists like the sculptor Anish Kapoor
0:55:59 > 0:56:01have used the language of abstraction
0:56:01 > 0:56:03to create new forms of expression.
0:56:05 > 0:56:08Damien Hirst made his spot paintings
0:56:08 > 0:56:12that are now among the most famous abstract art of recent years.
0:56:13 > 0:56:17And more recently, the Turner Prize was awarded to Richard Wright,
0:56:17 > 0:56:19who creates elaborate abstract designs
0:56:19 > 0:56:23that he paints directly onto the walls of the gallery.
0:56:23 > 0:56:27But the old opposition between figurative and abstract art
0:56:27 > 0:56:29seems to be over.
0:56:29 > 0:56:33We live in an art world that has this bewildering variety of things
0:56:33 > 0:56:35that we call art.
0:56:35 > 0:56:38And in that bewildering variety of activity,
0:56:38 > 0:56:43abstraction, which was once such a powerful word,
0:56:43 > 0:56:45now, I suppose, seems rather quaint.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54And you know, looking back through the 20th century,
0:56:54 > 0:56:56abstract art was something
0:56:56 > 0:56:59that people worked their whole careers for.
0:56:59 > 0:57:02It seemed like the be all and end all.
0:57:02 > 0:57:05People fought over it like it was a cold war.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09It was the most important thing in art in the 20th century.
0:57:11 > 0:57:13The pioneering artists featured in these films
0:57:13 > 0:57:16represent a remarkable period in British art.
0:57:19 > 0:57:22It tool a long time to discover the purest forms
0:57:22 > 0:57:26which would exactly evoke my own sensations.
0:57:30 > 0:57:32You always have to walk that tightrope between,
0:57:32 > 0:57:35on the one hand, fussing with a painting,
0:57:35 > 0:57:37on the other hand, just leaving it.
0:57:39 > 0:57:42British abstract artists were not a single movement -
0:57:42 > 0:57:44instead, they responded
0:57:44 > 0:57:47to the radical possibilities of abstraction
0:57:47 > 0:57:50with a dazzling variety of styles and ideas,
0:57:50 > 0:57:56from sculpture evoking our relationship with the natural world
0:57:56 > 0:57:59to painting that contains profound self-expression...
0:58:01 > 0:58:04..and art that asks questions of the very basis
0:58:04 > 0:58:06of visual perception itself.
0:58:06 > 0:58:08Looking is a pleasure.
0:58:09 > 0:58:15Sight, the activity of looking, helps us to be more truthfully aware
0:58:15 > 0:58:17of the condition of being alive.