0:00:07 > 0:00:10This is a programme about abstract art.
0:00:10 > 0:00:15It's a subject that can be as heavy or as light as you like.
0:00:15 > 0:00:17For me, it's just natural because I'm always doing it
0:00:17 > 0:00:20so I'm thinking about it all the time.
0:00:22 > 0:00:26But I also think about basic questions that many people have:
0:00:26 > 0:00:28How do we respond to abstract art?
0:00:28 > 0:00:31Is it supposed to be hard or easy?
0:00:33 > 0:00:37Is it about something or does it exist entirely on its own?
0:00:42 > 0:00:46You see, abstract artists chucking paint around, why be so vague?
0:00:46 > 0:00:50But then when they're precise, how does that help?
0:00:50 > 0:00:54These could seem unanswerable questions, but abstract art
0:00:54 > 0:00:59has been around for 100 years now, and is an ongoing thing.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03By exploring the private world of living abstract artists,
0:01:03 > 0:01:06and looking at some key figures from abstract art's history,
0:01:06 > 0:01:09I'm going to show you that in fact there are answers.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15Amid complicated and potentially confusing works,
0:01:15 > 0:01:18there are hidden rules you might not expect.
0:01:18 > 0:01:20Hey.
0:01:20 > 0:01:24- Hello, Matthew, lovely to see you. - Lovely to see you.
0:01:30 > 0:01:31No gap?
0:01:31 > 0:01:34- No gap, I'm going to get you to take some of it off.- Oh, OK.
0:01:36 > 0:01:40I work every day in a studio, paint abstract paintings
0:01:40 > 0:01:44based on patterns together with my painting partner, Emma Biggs.
0:01:46 > 0:01:49- You know how sometimes you get scrapes into it?- Yes.
0:01:49 > 0:01:54- Can you get some scrapes into it? - Yes, that kind of scrape.
0:01:54 > 0:01:56- Yes.- Like that? OK.
0:01:58 > 0:02:04But Emma's really the generator of the colours - she thinks them up,
0:02:04 > 0:02:09she physically mixes them, she mixes up the paint and she places them.
0:02:09 > 0:02:11I'm the applier.
0:02:11 > 0:02:17It's a kind of double act which, most of the time, the main emphasis
0:02:17 > 0:02:20is on what comes out of Emma's head.
0:02:22 > 0:02:24- Yeah, that's better.- Yeah?- Yeah.
0:02:26 > 0:02:29The history of abstract art is really
0:02:29 > 0:02:34a history of experiment, so a lot of things come up in experimentation.
0:02:34 > 0:02:37You've got colour theory art.
0:02:37 > 0:02:42People do very honourable and serious types of art
0:02:42 > 0:02:49based on scientific ideas of what makes colours zing together.
0:02:49 > 0:02:54Then you've got abstract art which is all about accident,
0:02:54 > 0:02:59but all of them are trying to find some kind of visual metaphor
0:02:59 > 0:03:03which will be rich enough for what one might call reality.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12Art is partly ideas and theories
0:03:12 > 0:03:16but it's really only anything at all because of how it looks.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Looking is something you have to get used to.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Here are some abstract squares.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25The kind of thing people often glance at
0:03:25 > 0:03:28and then turn away from baffled.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32The one on the left is by Mondrian, a famous figure,
0:03:32 > 0:03:36and the one on the right is by Liubov Popova who's less well
0:03:36 > 0:03:38known - we'll be meeting both those artists later.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44Each painting has shapes that echo the basic shape of the thing
0:03:44 > 0:03:48they appear on, the square shape of the canvas.
0:03:49 > 0:03:55In hers you're seeing squares stretched out, fragmented, morphed
0:03:55 > 0:03:59into triangles, tilted so they seem flying or full of movement.
0:04:06 > 0:04:11In his abstract squares the colour is stark, based on contrast.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18With hers the colour is continuous and sympathetic.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22The grey and the pink are a softer version of the harder
0:04:22 > 0:04:27black-red-white relationships. The grey and pink take the eye
0:04:27 > 0:04:32back gradually, making space throughout seem three-dimensional.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35So opening up to abstract values is an adventure
0:04:35 > 0:04:38and you start by being willing to look.
0:04:42 > 0:04:46The dynamism of the way in which shapes are placed prevents
0:04:46 > 0:04:50you from reading that white as if it were a hole that can seen through.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53It reads clearly as 'over' the other colours.
0:04:53 > 0:04:55That's not easy to pull off,
0:04:55 > 0:04:59it depends on the minor displacement of the angles everywhere.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05Pink follows red and grey has a blue-green character that
0:05:05 > 0:05:07also complements the red.
0:05:07 > 0:05:11It's the colour in Popova's painting that contributes more than anything
0:05:11 > 0:05:15else to the difference between her squares and Mondrian's squares.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31If abstracts have got something to do with reality
0:05:31 > 0:05:35but the artists aren't going to picture reality - why not?
0:05:35 > 0:05:37And what reality are we talking about?
0:05:42 > 0:05:47Art had been expected to picture reality according to approaches
0:05:47 > 0:05:50and styles that were acceptable to most people -
0:05:50 > 0:05:52a lovely landscape by Rubens.
0:05:56 > 0:06:01But then, in the 19th century, new ideas about reality meant
0:06:01 > 0:06:05Cezanne could picture reality as patterned shapes.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09In the early 20th century the Cubist painter Braque
0:06:09 > 0:06:15responded to Cezanne by picturing reality as a flattened space.
0:06:15 > 0:06:19A few years later abstract art responded to Cubism with shapes
0:06:19 > 0:06:21and spaces only.
0:06:25 > 0:06:29People's sense of what was real was up for grabs
0:06:29 > 0:06:34because everyday existence was full of rapid change caused my science.
0:06:34 > 0:06:39Artists saw spirituality as both a challenge to the
0:06:39 > 0:06:43power of science and a way of harnessing it.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48This counterintuitive idea came from the spiritual movement of
0:06:48 > 0:06:53Theosophy, which was founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59Blavatsky took aspects of eastern religion
0:06:59 > 0:07:03and aspects of science, mostly evolution, and came up with
0:07:03 > 0:07:07a spiritual movement based on evolution of the soul.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20Abstract art started at the very peak of Theosophy's popularity.
0:07:23 > 0:07:27People thought spirituality was like X rays or infrared radiation
0:07:27 > 0:07:29or electricity.
0:07:31 > 0:07:33It could be revealed.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45There were a lot of different artistic takes on the spiritual,
0:07:45 > 0:07:48but the strangest was the earliest.
0:07:48 > 0:07:54Hilma Af Klint who was born in 1862 and lived and worked in Sweden.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58These are paintings by her from 1907.
0:08:05 > 0:08:10For decades nobody knew about them, but recently they've emerged
0:08:10 > 0:08:13and started to be exhibited all the over the world.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27From totally invisible she's become the main
0:08:27 > 0:08:31excitement about historic abstract art.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37A woman doing abstraction, plus doing it so it's full of meaning.
0:08:47 > 0:08:49What kind of meaning?
0:08:49 > 0:08:52Abstract artists were into spirituality
0:08:52 > 0:08:57but Af Klint thought of herself as being in touch with actual spirits.
0:09:02 > 0:09:04She conducted seances in this room
0:09:04 > 0:09:10and received messages from spirits who were called the High Masters.
0:09:21 > 0:09:26She produced 23,000 pages of notes, working out what the
0:09:26 > 0:09:30High Masters were telling her to paint.
0:09:30 > 0:09:32It was all Theosophical meaning.
0:09:34 > 0:09:40Theosophy says colours and shapes can symbolise the soul's journey.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44The tip of a coloured pyramid is the soul arriving within
0:09:44 > 0:09:48the golden circle of pure spirit.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51And there's pure spirit, Theosophy claims,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55when dark is balanced with light, masculine with feminine.
0:09:58 > 0:10:02All Af Klint's painting are profoundly Theosophical.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06The not-Theosophical thing about them is the general look.
0:10:06 > 0:10:08This look doesn't come from spirits,
0:10:08 > 0:10:12because, to risk controversy for a moment, there's no such
0:10:12 > 0:10:17factual thing as a spirit - they are mental projections.
0:10:17 > 0:10:21To have the ability to create such a mental projection without
0:10:21 > 0:10:25suffering debilitating mental illness is a fantastic thing.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28But when it comes to creating a work of art, a mental projection
0:10:28 > 0:10:33alone isn't sufficient because art isn't made just from visions.
0:10:37 > 0:10:41It's made from visual traditions, the other abstract artists,
0:10:41 > 0:10:44rooted in the visual traditions of painting,
0:10:44 > 0:10:48explained themselves only partly by spirituality.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51With her it's everything. It was beamed down to her
0:10:51 > 0:10:56by a High Master on the astral plane who commissioned paintings from her.
0:10:56 > 0:10:58She knew what the reason was.
0:10:58 > 0:11:01So that those down on the earthly plane,
0:11:01 > 0:11:05if they've enlightened themselves enough, might benefit from them.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08That could be you, so keep an open mind.
0:11:18 > 0:11:23It was only recently, decades after her death in 1944, at 82,
0:11:23 > 0:11:25that Af Klint became known.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29Now her work is categorised as the first abstract art
0:11:29 > 0:11:33but there's very little evidence she thought of it as art at all.
0:11:33 > 0:11:38Rather than abstraction, a type of art that didn't exist in 1907,
0:11:38 > 0:11:40she thought it was direct meaning.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43To us it looks like abstract art
0:11:43 > 0:11:48but it's really diagrams explaining theosophical ideas.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54To see what else there is to abstraction
0:11:54 > 0:11:55you have to look elsewhere.
0:12:03 > 0:12:07The Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky,
0:12:07 > 0:12:09is the lord of abstraction.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16He said it was created from inner necessity
0:12:16 > 0:12:20and it didn't need nature to picture. It contained
0:12:20 > 0:12:24all of nature anyway, just in abstract art's shapes and colours.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34He meant the artist's sensitivity, his feelings
0:12:34 > 0:12:38and memories are full of nature's impressions.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41They can be got down onto the canvas in a completely abstracted way.
0:12:47 > 0:12:51This is a painting by Kandinsky from 1912.
0:12:51 > 0:12:56Its title, Painting With Black Arch, encourages you to think about
0:12:56 > 0:12:58only what you're actually seeing.
0:12:58 > 0:13:03That black arch is unmistakable
0:13:03 > 0:13:07but Kandinsky knows that seeing art is a kind of heightened
0:13:07 > 0:13:12seeing - it's made loaded by you being very visually alert, and
0:13:12 > 0:13:18by your thoughts and expectations being primed by some kind of theory.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25The book of the Lord is called On The Spiritual In Art.
0:13:25 > 0:13:30Kandinsky published it in 1911 and it was read throughout Europe.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34It was the first moment of abstract art becoming widely known.
0:13:38 > 0:13:43Like Hilma Af Klint, Kandinsky was inspired by Theosophy's
0:13:43 > 0:13:47notion of a coming New Age of the Great Spiritual.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51Kandinsky's artistic approach was different
0:13:51 > 0:13:53to Hilma Af Klint's though.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58She thought paintings were diagrams to be interpreted by study.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02He thought the actual materials of painting - colour, shape,
0:14:02 > 0:14:06line - could be manipulated to affect the soul.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27His line moves across the paper, it's captured on film in the 1920s.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32He's in his 60s and has been painting abstractly
0:14:32 > 0:14:34since he was in his late 40s.
0:14:40 > 0:14:44Making a mark, he doesn't know in advance what's going to happen,
0:14:44 > 0:14:48because he's not copying anything, but his instinct for making is
0:14:48 > 0:14:53guided by his experience of making, judging what works what doesn't.
0:14:56 > 0:14:59That's a visual thing, not a spiritual thing.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03He had to get the spiritual to connect to the visual.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17Madame Blavatsky was not Kandinsky's only spiritual mentor.
0:15:19 > 0:15:23This is a meditation centre built by one of Blavatsky's followers
0:15:23 > 0:15:24Rudolf Steiner.
0:15:32 > 0:15:36Kandinsky read Steiner's theories - he was drawn to Steiner's
0:15:36 > 0:15:41proposal that we all inhabit not one but several bodies
0:15:41 > 0:15:44and one of these, the astral body, is invisible.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58He began attending Steiner's lectures in 1908.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04By coincidence, this was the same year that Hilma Af Klint
0:16:04 > 0:16:06first met Steiner.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11Unknown to each other, these two pioneers of very different types
0:16:11 > 0:16:16of abstract art, were each equally aware that Steiner's education
0:16:16 > 0:16:21programme in Theosophy had the title "How To Know Higher Worlds."
0:16:29 > 0:16:33Art could be higher than nature, Kandinsky concluded.
0:16:33 > 0:16:39Theosophy was essential in the mix but he needed other elements too.
0:16:45 > 0:16:50They were the primitive, the musical and the way colour works.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58The surfaces of the place he painted in, in Bavaria,
0:16:58 > 0:17:02were covered in simple art, done by unknown artists -
0:17:02 > 0:17:06anything outside the Western mainstream, he called it primitive.
0:17:06 > 0:17:11The primitive, he claimed, gets to the essence of the spiritual.
0:17:15 > 0:17:20His insight about music and art is that music affects us profoundly
0:17:20 > 0:17:23but it doesn't represent anything.
0:17:23 > 0:17:25He said art could be like music.
0:17:30 > 0:17:35His paintings before abstraction were glowing landscapes, composing
0:17:35 > 0:17:39them gave him a clue - working with colour was like playing the piano.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51He said colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers
0:17:51 > 0:17:56and the soul is the piano with its many strings.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key and then
0:18:00 > 0:18:04another key in order to make the soul vibrate.
0:18:12 > 0:18:15He was struck by Impressionist paintings by Monet
0:18:15 > 0:18:18that could be imagined not even to be pictures, he thought,
0:18:18 > 0:18:21but just colours and by his own landscapes.
0:18:21 > 0:18:24One day he saw a painting that had really good colour.
0:18:24 > 0:18:27He didn't realise it was one of his own on its side.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33Trivial accidents like not recognising your own painting
0:18:33 > 0:18:38or not realising a picture is a picture were the jolts of absurdity
0:18:38 > 0:18:42that Kandinsky needed in order to get his abstract experiment going.
0:18:42 > 0:18:44So the theory in action,
0:18:44 > 0:18:49the black arch in Painting With Black Arch is the means
0:18:49 > 0:18:56by which the red shape dominates the blue shape, bearing down on it.
0:18:56 > 0:19:00The black is the accent that animates everything.
0:19:02 > 0:19:06Let's take a major rhythmic organisational idea, like music.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11The painting goes diagonally there
0:19:11 > 0:19:15and is countered by different a diagonal movement here.
0:19:15 > 0:19:17One movement counters another.
0:19:33 > 0:19:39The arch's blackness is continued elsewhere in other black lines,
0:19:39 > 0:19:41variations on a theme,
0:19:41 > 0:19:45pronounced or merged-in depending on their surrounding colour,
0:19:45 > 0:19:50like musical chords depend for their mood on what chord comes next.
0:19:59 > 0:20:04Well, the visuals of Painting With Black Arch have a logic
0:20:04 > 0:20:07that can be explained in musical terms - repetition
0:20:07 > 0:20:10and surprise, movement countermovement.
0:20:13 > 0:20:19It's not just logic, it's sensual impact, and in my view it's great.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38Where does the idea that abstract art is difficult come from -
0:20:38 > 0:20:41from the viewer or the artist?
0:20:50 > 0:20:54What would it mean if Fiona Rae said her abstracts were spiritual?
0:20:56 > 0:21:01If Kandinsky's rule was to transcend nature, her rule is
0:21:01 > 0:21:03the rule of surprise move.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10At the moment, I'm experimenting with making a painting
0:21:10 > 0:21:12just in black and white.
0:21:12 > 0:21:14I usually use colour.
0:21:14 > 0:21:16What's the reason to not use colour?
0:21:16 > 0:21:21I don't know how quite to express that in a positive way
0:21:21 > 0:21:24but I suddenly felt incredibly fed up with colour,
0:21:24 > 0:21:27and I wanted to start again by clearing everything out
0:21:27 > 0:21:32and go back to a very basic black and white beginning.
0:21:34 > 0:21:36I've seen a really nice sort of loopy gesture
0:21:36 > 0:21:38that I think I can put down here.
0:21:38 > 0:21:42It really, the process... I know that it's quite strange being filmed
0:21:42 > 0:21:45doing this but the process really is like this. It's like, "Shall I?"
0:21:45 > 0:21:49"No, I won't. "Yeah." "No, I won't." "What about?" "No, actually."
0:21:49 > 0:21:51And then suddenly you do something like that quite casually
0:21:51 > 0:21:54without even thinking about it. So I'm just going to...
0:21:58 > 0:22:02I also think it's important not to take the same size brush
0:22:02 > 0:22:04or the same bit of colour
0:22:04 > 0:22:08and repeat it all over a canvas like a sort of pattern or something.
0:22:08 > 0:22:11So although a finished painting needs to have its own rhythm
0:22:11 > 0:22:14and its own structural integrity, I like the idea of somehow
0:22:14 > 0:22:17getting different bits of paint language to join up
0:22:17 > 0:22:21and do that and not to do with little repetitions.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24- So you don't literally join up by doing the same thing?- No.
0:22:24 > 0:22:29- There are differences, different zones of energy.- Yeah.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33Like kind of, I want the viewer to not be entirely sure
0:22:33 > 0:22:36what the focus is or what the most important thing is.
0:22:36 > 0:22:39That the whole thing overall is the experience.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51I suppose that, in a way, maybe that's what makes me
0:22:51 > 0:22:52an abstract painter.
0:22:52 > 0:22:55In that I think that the marks all exist as themselves,
0:22:55 > 0:22:58in themselves, and by themselves, as well as going together
0:22:58 > 0:23:01to make some image you might read in one way or another.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04Yeah, you're aware that there are component parts
0:23:04 > 0:23:09but there is also an energy running through them all that unifies them.
0:23:09 > 0:23:11Yes, and I'm also trying to make a picture of something
0:23:11 > 0:23:14that doesn't exist, which is an impossibility of course, but...
0:23:16 > 0:23:18..I'll just keep trying.
0:23:18 > 0:23:20Maybe that's a good definition of abstraction?
0:23:20 > 0:23:24I think so, yeah. Yeah, it is, it's an impossible task
0:23:24 > 0:23:28but it's a very interesting one.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40When colours are related together by abstract art,
0:23:40 > 0:23:45it's not just colours artists like or they hope the public will like.
0:23:45 > 0:23:47They're noticing something
0:23:47 > 0:23:54that colour does - how it can be wrong or right, in or out of key.
0:23:54 > 0:23:58How the colour of light in the real world filters out all
0:23:58 > 0:24:03differences and creates a single visual register within which
0:24:03 > 0:24:05all differences are unified.
0:24:16 > 0:24:23In 1914, Sonia Delaunay, one of the great founders of abstract art,
0:24:23 > 0:24:26created this colour painting.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29It's called Electric Prisms.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35Delaunay invented a whole new way of compressing
0:24:35 > 0:24:40arrangement in art down to colour and form.
0:24:43 > 0:24:44What are colour and form?
0:24:47 > 0:24:52Form in art means arrangement or structure, but it also means
0:24:52 > 0:24:56the individual elements that the structure is made up from.
0:24:56 > 0:25:02Think of music. A piece of music is an arrangement, or a composition.
0:25:02 > 0:25:06But it is made up of smaller musical events that are all related
0:25:06 > 0:25:11together so there is a single unity, which is what composition is.
0:25:11 > 0:25:13The composition is a form
0:25:13 > 0:25:17and the individual musical events are forms too.
0:25:27 > 0:25:32Colour isn't something that exists and light reveals it to us.
0:25:32 > 0:25:33Colour IS light.
0:25:37 > 0:25:44And Delaunay's abstract rule was to create light by scientific laws.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58In the 1910s, abstract artists were awed by the power of science.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02If it could cause people to get round the world at high speed, and
0:26:02 > 0:26:06communicate with each other across vast distances, as well as explore
0:26:06 > 0:26:09the depths of the unconscious as psychoanalysis was doing -
0:26:09 > 0:26:14the modern science of the mind - maybe science could also radically
0:26:14 > 0:26:20transform art, so art could be a cosmic vision of everything.
0:26:26 > 0:26:28Throughout history, artists had played
0:26:28 > 0:26:32with our perception of colour intuitively, but in the 19th century
0:26:32 > 0:26:39science began codifying new laws about how we perceive colour.
0:26:39 > 0:26:45Colours go from red to mauve to blue, through all the spectrum,
0:26:45 > 0:26:47and round back again to red.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51For a long time this had been visualised as a colour wheel.
0:26:56 > 0:27:02But in 1855 the colour chemist, Eugene Chevreul, said colours
0:27:02 > 0:27:06opposite each other on the wheel have the same intensity
0:27:06 > 0:27:11and placing them side by side causes what he calls an optical vibration.
0:27:14 > 0:27:18Delaunay absorbed that scientific rule and took it over to serve
0:27:18 > 0:27:24her own rule of painterly evocation of the emotional lift of light.
0:27:35 > 0:27:41Softened colour is subjected to a rigorous but wavering grid,
0:27:41 > 0:27:43that circular layout.
0:27:45 > 0:27:50The grid is the form she's using. She's unafraid of breaking it.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53Colour overlaps the borders onto adjacent colours
0:27:53 > 0:27:57following a colour need. Where there is a chance that the
0:27:57 > 0:28:01relationship between the colours threatens to be the visual
0:28:01 > 0:28:04equivalent of out of tune, she changes the colour logic.
0:28:04 > 0:28:09Bringing light green over purple so primrose will sing out.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16Or intensifying yellow red to darker red so it will connect to
0:28:16 > 0:28:19a rhythmic pulse of dark and light accents everywhere.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26Delaunay was married to another colourist, Robert Delaunay.
0:28:26 > 0:28:30They were impressed that their friend Kandinsky liberated
0:28:30 > 0:28:32colour from having to picture anything.
0:28:33 > 0:28:37But the Delaunays had a very different approach to Kandinsky.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39Think of them in Paris over there
0:28:39 > 0:28:44and him working in Germany over there.
0:28:46 > 0:28:50Colour in Kandinsky is emotion - emotion events.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53They're interwoven to create a dynamic drama.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56He doesn't use the full range of colours.
0:28:58 > 0:29:02With Delaunay it's just a simple design - radiating bands.
0:29:02 > 0:29:04But she uses a vast range of colour
0:29:04 > 0:29:06and it's a real enquiry into what colour can do.
0:29:10 > 0:29:14Every single element of the painting is about a fusing or
0:29:14 > 0:29:20clarifying of form through subtle adjustments of colour
0:29:20 > 0:29:24so that the overall form, or composition,
0:29:24 > 0:29:30celebrates light as a sheer, overwhelming, spirit-lifting force.
0:29:48 > 0:29:53The Delaunays got that radiating circles layout from the glow
0:29:53 > 0:29:58of colour around the electric lights by night in Paris.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02The old gaslights had only just been replaced by electricity.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07Sonia Delaunay recorded in her memoirs at night on walks,
0:30:07 > 0:30:12arm in arm, we enter the era of light.
0:30:12 > 0:30:16The halos made the colours and shadows swirl and vibrate like
0:30:16 > 0:30:21unidentified objects falling from the sky and beckoning our madness.
0:30:28 > 0:30:34In 1912, when Kandinsky's On The Spiritual In Art was spreading
0:30:34 > 0:30:39its message, Robert Delaunay wrote a manifesto called, simply, Light.
0:30:41 > 0:30:46The manifesto had a climactic last sentence,
0:30:46 > 0:30:49like the words of a colour prophet, "Let us attempt to see."
0:31:08 > 0:31:12The rule John McLean obeys is the rule to keep
0:31:12 > 0:31:16looking for the infinitesimal adjustments that will give
0:31:16 > 0:31:20simple shapes a convincing subtlety, like light in the world.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26Let's go on and get rid of that iridescence.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36Oh, look, I really like the way that red's differentiating
0:31:36 > 0:31:40- itself from the rest.- Yeah.
0:31:51 > 0:31:55So they're very simple shapes but it's the treatment of them
0:31:55 > 0:31:59as well as the placement of them that's important.
0:31:59 > 0:32:03Yes. I do quite a lot of landscapes.
0:32:03 > 0:32:05I don't feel any...
0:32:05 > 0:32:08I feel a complete continuity between figuratively painting
0:32:08 > 0:32:10and abstract painting.
0:32:10 > 0:32:12I don't see any difference
0:32:12 > 0:32:19and I realise perhaps I'm not really a purist.
0:32:19 > 0:32:23Yes, you don't think it's about the purity of the abstract forms,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27you think there's a continuity between abstraction and reality.
0:32:27 > 0:32:30- Absolutely. - The visual world.
0:32:30 > 0:32:32Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
0:32:32 > 0:32:36It's interesting that already I'm feeling,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39"No, maybe I was being too...
0:32:41 > 0:32:43"..impetuous",
0:32:43 > 0:32:48but it's a very beautiful passage
0:32:48 > 0:32:54that now with the nacreous stuff coming through the very thin
0:32:54 > 0:32:56- glaze of red.- Indeed.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03And so maybe there's scope in this for something
0:33:03 > 0:33:07with sheer beauty like the wing of a moth,
0:33:07 > 0:33:10- or something fleeting like that. - Yeah.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14In fact that could be the redeeming bit of the whole painting.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18Maybe I've won it after all.
0:33:21 > 0:33:24So the approach is partly to pick out the forms
0:33:24 > 0:33:29and partly to allow the forms to seem to emerge from the ground.
0:33:29 > 0:33:33Yeah, and make sure the atmospheric
0:33:33 > 0:33:37- and, I guess, just not atmospheric. - Yeah
0:33:38 > 0:33:45I'd be loathed to touch that right away, it may be finished now.
0:33:45 > 0:33:47Yeah.
0:33:47 > 0:33:54But I feel with my own work that the simpler I can make it,
0:33:54 > 0:33:59in a strange way, the more profound I feel it is.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13For the Swizz artist, Paul Klee, whose abstracts were often nothing
0:34:13 > 0:34:18but squares, nevertheless the rule was always to observe nature.
0:34:20 > 0:34:25In order to make something abstract seem true to the world around us
0:34:25 > 0:34:28Klee uses tonally graded colour.
0:34:32 > 0:34:34Tone is different to colour.
0:34:34 > 0:34:39Colour is colour but tone is the alteration of colour's vivid
0:34:39 > 0:34:46bright vibrating impact by making that colour lighter or darker.
0:34:52 > 0:34:54Tone here is mostly dark,
0:34:54 > 0:34:58but with a number of high spots where colour seems to sing out
0:34:58 > 0:35:04like sunshine hitting a hill or light seen through the trees.
0:35:15 > 0:35:21In 1914, when Klee was 35, he went on a trip to Tunisia.
0:35:32 > 0:35:33The trip was to alter him
0:35:33 > 0:35:37from being one kind of artist to a completely different kind.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43And the big moment was an evening visit
0:35:43 > 0:35:46to the Kairouan mosque in Tunis.
0:36:03 > 0:36:05You never really see the mosque in the dozens
0:36:05 > 0:36:09of watercolours that he produced following this visit.
0:36:09 > 0:36:13And of course it isn't Islamic culture or Islamic decorative art
0:36:13 > 0:36:15that interests Klee in this moment.
0:36:15 > 0:36:19You see carefully controlled different degrees of
0:36:19 > 0:36:23transparency and colour that tells you
0:36:23 > 0:36:25about constantly shifting light.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31You get the feeling not that he saw something that was different
0:36:31 > 0:36:35to anything he'd ever seen, like a colour miracle,
0:36:35 > 0:36:38but more that he came to the realisation that there was something
0:36:38 > 0:36:40in him that he could work with
0:36:40 > 0:36:44and that he hadn't attended to before and that he could now define.
0:36:49 > 0:36:53The power of his visual experiments from that trip
0:36:53 > 0:36:56is in one thing affecting another -
0:36:56 > 0:36:59as if everything is perception
0:36:59 > 0:37:02nothing is anything in itself.
0:37:02 > 0:37:04Everything is perception.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08The light on some glass or concrete,
0:37:08 > 0:37:12the organisation of shapes in the city, the look of the Earth,
0:37:12 > 0:37:17the shapes of clouds and their relationship to the horizon.
0:37:17 > 0:37:23We organise this sensual input just as we organise our minds about
0:37:23 > 0:37:28who we are and where we fit in the world and how society is made up.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34Klee tried to do something about society.
0:37:34 > 0:37:39He was part of the Bavarian uprising in 1919.
0:37:39 > 0:37:43Within months this socialist revolution, inspired by events
0:37:43 > 0:37:48in Russia, was crushed, the leaders murdered, and Klee's dreams
0:37:48 > 0:37:52of a communist society sympathetic to his kind of art were ended.
0:38:00 > 0:38:04For the next 20 years, until his death in 1940,
0:38:04 > 0:38:09Klee divided his time painting and teaching - most influentially in
0:38:09 > 0:38:14the Bauhaus, the school of art and design set up in Germany in 1919.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19The first thing you have to do as a visual artist,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23he would tell his students there, is pay attention to the infinite
0:38:23 > 0:38:26subtlety of tonal shades in nature.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33The Nazis had different ideas to Klee's about nature
0:38:33 > 0:38:37and his art was publicly mocked, along with Kandinsky
0:38:37 > 0:38:43and Mondrian, in the notorious 1937 exhibition called Degenerate Art.
0:38:47 > 0:38:50They called Klee a Jew even though he actually
0:38:50 > 0:38:54came from a Catholic family and they said he distorted reality.
0:38:58 > 0:39:01We all hate the Nazis of course,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04but did they have a point about distortion?
0:39:04 > 0:39:07After all, what's the difference between Klee controlling colour
0:39:07 > 0:39:12so there's a feeling of reality and him just distorting reality?
0:39:15 > 0:39:19Well, I agree with Klee - I think there is no single correct
0:39:19 > 0:39:21interpretation of what's out there.
0:39:21 > 0:39:25We each organise what we perceive and create our own version of it.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28Klee is trying to pick that process apart.
0:39:28 > 0:39:32He's offering proposals about what perception is.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50In our studio the rule is to think about what's really seen
0:39:50 > 0:39:52when anyone sees anything.
0:39:55 > 0:40:02We can only see any kind of form because of the way light reveals it.
0:40:02 > 0:40:06It's through light and dark
0:40:06 > 0:40:09that you sort of understand the shape of something.
0:40:09 > 0:40:12So that's a fundamental aspect of seeing,
0:40:12 > 0:40:14that we're abstracting in our works.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20I mean, if you were to look at, for example, here. This area, which is
0:40:20 > 0:40:24lighter or one side and brighter on the other, so that in a sense
0:40:24 > 0:40:29you read as lighter, and those two areas you read as darker and that is
0:40:29 > 0:40:35contrasted with lighter tones behind it and a darker tone behind that.
0:40:35 > 0:40:42So it sort of gives some kind of a sense of the image occupying
0:40:42 > 0:40:46space a bit like... As if it had some sculptural form I suppose.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49- Like a haystack in the field or a pyramid.- Yeah.
0:40:49 > 0:40:54So you've got light, dark and then you've got light, light, dark, dark.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57Yes, exactly. And when that is adjacent to something which does
0:40:57 > 0:41:01immediately the opposite. Where you have light here, you have
0:41:01 > 0:41:04dark there. Where you have dark here, you have light there.
0:41:04 > 0:41:08Where that happens, consistently across the whole canvas,
0:41:08 > 0:41:10it gives you a kind of pulsing feel.
0:41:10 > 0:41:14Yeah, so there is a rigid adherence to a system of light and dark.
0:41:14 > 0:41:16Like there is in life.
0:41:16 > 0:41:19Light and dark, light and dark, wherever you look.
0:41:26 > 0:41:30The relationship between colour in abstract art
0:41:30 > 0:41:33and what might loosely be called reality
0:41:33 > 0:41:35doesn't always stay the same.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37It depends how colour is used.
0:41:42 > 0:41:47The next artist is the toughest as far as giving reality a break goes.
0:41:48 > 0:41:53It's Mondrian, who follows a rule of always using very few colours.
0:42:05 > 0:42:10Here's a painting by Mondrian in his famous style,
0:42:10 > 0:42:14severely minimal lines and rectangles.
0:42:15 > 0:42:22It's from 1922 and it's made up only of black lines and white,
0:42:22 > 0:42:25or a sort of bluish off-white,
0:42:25 > 0:42:28and a few strong primaries -
0:42:28 > 0:42:32blue, yellow, red.
0:42:32 > 0:42:36Even these few elements are reduced down even more
0:42:36 > 0:42:40in that the whole of the surface, or almost
0:42:40 > 0:42:45the entirety of the surface, is just that white, or off-white.
0:42:45 > 0:42:48And the stronger colours are confined to accents
0:42:48 > 0:42:52along the perimeters of the square - blue, yellow, red.
0:42:54 > 0:42:59The centre is opened out, so there's nothing there but a square.
0:42:59 > 0:43:01And that square seems to tell
0:43:01 > 0:43:07you about nothing except the square of the outer edges of the painting.
0:43:10 > 0:43:14In fact, every shape tells you about every other shape,
0:43:14 > 0:43:18in that it is either a variation on it or repetition of it.
0:43:19 > 0:43:22What else are you seeing in it? Nothing.
0:43:22 > 0:43:26Except you could see more in what you're already seeing.
0:43:28 > 0:43:31You're seeing shapes talking to shapes,
0:43:31 > 0:43:34they're telling each other about themselves,
0:43:34 > 0:43:37they're defining themselves by their slight differences.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46He said the masculine is manifested vertically
0:43:46 > 0:43:48the feminine, horizontally.
0:43:48 > 0:43:50It's the mysticism of Theosophy.
0:43:54 > 0:43:58Theosophy says in the future, all social imbalance will be
0:43:58 > 0:44:01balanced out in a new societal shape.
0:44:03 > 0:44:07Mondrian says his art visualises that new shape.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12Here's Mondrian in his theosophical pose.
0:44:12 > 0:44:15He actually mixed Theosophy with the philosophy of Hegel.
0:44:15 > 0:44:20Hegel said the universe is governed by rules of tension
0:44:20 > 0:44:21and contradiction.
0:44:23 > 0:44:28In Mondrian's painterly version of Hegel's philosophical rule
0:44:28 > 0:44:31that every element is determined by its contrary,
0:44:31 > 0:44:36Mondrian offers a line, but also a gap.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41There's a black bar that looks as though it will repeat to fill
0:44:41 > 0:44:43that space, but it doesn't.
0:44:43 > 0:44:46In the first case, you're forced to see that line.
0:44:46 > 0:44:50Also the edge of the painting that the line stops short of.
0:44:50 > 0:44:52You're forced to consider that edge.
0:44:52 > 0:44:56And in the other case, you're forced to see that whole horizontal
0:44:56 > 0:44:59empty rectangle he's started dividing
0:44:59 > 0:45:02because he deliberately doesn't continue dividing it.
0:45:07 > 0:45:10Mondrian influenced modern architecture,
0:45:10 > 0:45:13but it had no interest for him.
0:45:13 > 0:45:17He thought architects were hopeless materialists.
0:45:17 > 0:45:22He envisaged a new-shape architecture environment
0:45:22 > 0:45:23all over the world
0:45:23 > 0:45:29that would be pure flat planes, lacking solidity of any kind.
0:45:29 > 0:45:34I don't know how that would work and I suspect Mondrian didn't either.
0:45:42 > 0:45:47He's tough on what he thinks of as deception, he wants to get to truth.
0:45:47 > 0:45:49He's dealing all the time with ideas,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52but the main one is visual order.
0:45:52 > 0:45:56He provides a visual organisation so elegant and complex,
0:45:56 > 0:46:00that it's capable of endless reinterpretation,
0:46:00 > 0:46:04but you've got to recognise in the first place that it is visual.
0:46:04 > 0:46:08And if the particular nature of that organisation -
0:46:08 > 0:46:10pure abstraction -
0:46:10 > 0:46:13accords with Mondrian's theosophical beliefs,
0:46:13 > 0:46:19namely that everything we see around us is only an illusion -
0:46:19 > 0:46:24maya is the Indian word for that illusion adopted by Theosophy as
0:46:24 > 0:46:27Theosophy adopts terms from all religions -
0:46:27 > 0:46:33so a purely abstract painting is more true to the real reality that
0:46:33 > 0:46:36lies behind everything than a painting that attempts to
0:46:36 > 0:46:41capture aspects of the illusion version of that higher reality.
0:46:41 > 0:46:46That is a mind twist as well as a sentence twist.
0:46:46 > 0:46:51Nevertheless, the painting is a visual work of art that
0:46:51 > 0:46:54demands to be seen on its own visual terms.
0:47:01 > 0:47:05Nature doesn't disappear in abstract art - nature's laws
0:47:05 > 0:47:10are condensed into a visual form, that's the rule Tess Jaray follows.
0:47:10 > 0:47:14Paintings that combine all sorts of processes including printing
0:47:14 > 0:47:16instead of painting.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19I have to clean that up pretty fast.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21I see you're doing something that has to be quite precise,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24but precision isn't the meaning of what you're doing.
0:47:24 > 0:47:26Absolutely not, precision is only ever a tool.
0:47:27 > 0:47:32It should look as though there is an ambiguity between what
0:47:32 > 0:47:34is in front and what is behind.
0:47:34 > 0:47:35You can't quite tell
0:47:35 > 0:47:39and that is a way of engaging people with the object.
0:47:39 > 0:47:43As you say, there is an ambiguity about the front and behind.
0:47:43 > 0:47:46There's a sort of flicker between the two colours.
0:47:46 > 0:47:48Exactly that, so you're not just being presented with something,
0:47:48 > 0:47:51you are being asked to participate.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55Yes, so in looking, you're kind of part of the process
0:47:55 > 0:47:58- of what's happening.- Yes.
0:47:58 > 0:48:01But you're doing small things here that one could almost pick up
0:48:01 > 0:48:04and hold like an icon or timeless objects.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07You're doing things that are very, very resolutely abstract
0:48:07 > 0:48:09with only a couple of colours.
0:48:09 > 0:48:11There's a certain type of surface, very much
0:48:11 > 0:48:13a physical thing as well as an optical thing.
0:48:13 > 0:48:15I think that is incredibly important.
0:48:15 > 0:48:17I mean, in a way, this is how we see the world.
0:48:17 > 0:48:18Everything is surface.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21You know, when I talk to you, that's all I'm seeing.
0:48:23 > 0:48:26Because I want the colour to be as intense as possible,
0:48:26 > 0:48:29I get it screen printed with oil-based ink.
0:48:29 > 0:48:35If I use paint, it's almost impossible to get a completely
0:48:35 > 0:48:37smooth surface.
0:48:37 > 0:48:44The more evidence you have on a surface of the way it's done,
0:48:44 > 0:48:51the less you're going to understand or feel the intensity of the colour.
0:48:51 > 0:48:52Right.
0:48:52 > 0:48:56I mean, I would like to reduce everything down to its essentials.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00In that way, it's kind of following nature.
0:49:00 > 0:49:05So you're very, very concentrated visual events, in a way.
0:49:05 > 0:49:10They're a concentrated, honed, condensed version
0:49:10 > 0:49:14- of reality of the world. - Yes, exactly that.
0:49:14 > 0:49:19- Very simplified shapes.- Yes, and I try to say it with as little added,
0:49:19 > 0:49:23as little pretension as directly... I mean, this whole very
0:49:23 > 0:49:29complicated system is really set up in order to produce something that
0:49:29 > 0:49:33looks as though it's totally simple and it's just popped into the world.
0:49:46 > 0:49:51Jesus inside geometric shapes. This is an icon in the Byzantine style
0:49:51 > 0:49:55from the 15th century.
0:49:55 > 0:50:00The Russian abstract artist, Malevich, respected this look.
0:50:00 > 0:50:04Byzantine art stripped down the realistic style that existed
0:50:04 > 0:50:10in Greek and Roman times. Art that shows in detail how reality looks.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16So a higher reality can be contemplated,
0:50:16 > 0:50:21Byzantine art ditched the detailed look in favour of simple signs.
0:50:23 > 0:50:26And for the same reason, Malevich displayed his abstract
0:50:26 > 0:50:31paintings as if they were icons in a Russian church. He's offering
0:50:31 > 0:50:37a modern proposal about simple signs serving a higher reality.
0:50:54 > 0:50:58The rule that form is feeling, Kandinsky stated it,
0:50:58 > 0:51:02but Malevich took it to the furthest extreme.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07When Malevich created his pure geometric abstract art style, which
0:51:07 > 0:51:12he called Suprematism, in 1915, the First World War was under way.
0:51:18 > 0:51:22There were food shortages, collapsing morale, there was
0:51:22 > 0:51:25despair at brutality and death.
0:51:28 > 0:51:32The following year, Malevich was a soldier in the army himself.
0:51:38 > 0:51:41You're looking at squares again, what are these ones doing?
0:51:45 > 0:51:51Two of them - one black, one red, one large, one small, one tilted,
0:51:51 > 0:51:53suggesting movement.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57Paint is capable of so much more than this,
0:51:57 > 0:52:02so you know we're being told about extreme limitation.
0:52:02 > 0:52:05Two squares surrounded by white.
0:52:05 > 0:52:09There is a set of mathematical relationships there where
0:52:09 > 0:52:14shapes and spaces are made to seem visually equivalent.
0:52:14 > 0:52:19So the black shape is the same as the white space underneath it.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22The white space to the right of the red shape is somewhat
0:52:22 > 0:52:24the same as the red shape.
0:52:24 > 0:52:27There is a sense throughout of - this is this, this is this,
0:52:27 > 0:52:29this is the same as this.
0:52:30 > 0:52:35Movement implied by something very, very small.
0:52:35 > 0:52:39You'd think you couldn't get much more reduced than that.
0:52:39 > 0:52:42But this painting was done very shortly after he created
0:52:42 > 0:52:45a work called the Black Square.
0:52:45 > 0:52:49The most famous abstract painting in history.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05He redid the original several times
0:53:05 > 0:53:08because its surface cracked.
0:53:08 > 0:53:12This 1923 version is a delight of
0:53:12 > 0:53:17velvety-rich, granulated brushy blackness.
0:53:17 > 0:53:22The creation of something out of nothing, a painted something.
0:53:28 > 0:53:32There's something absurd about it, as if with Suprematism there's
0:53:32 > 0:53:40a rightness of shapes, but insanity about how he got to that rightness.
0:53:41 > 0:53:47He said the logical consequence of no-one ever being able to put
0:53:47 > 0:53:52back together all the fragmented bits of reality in Cubism, is that
0:53:52 > 0:53:56art should take the next step and abandon logic, embrace its absence.
0:53:59 > 0:54:03Malevich was offered a word for no-logic creativity
0:54:03 > 0:54:07by the poets he knew, the word was "zaum".
0:54:07 > 0:54:10The poets wrote manifestos for a changed
0:54:10 > 0:54:17future in which the food shortages would be solved by transforming soil
0:54:17 > 0:54:22into bread, horses would be free and there'd be equal rights for cows.
0:54:25 > 0:54:28Where you might make out a table with a violin on it
0:54:28 > 0:54:31in a Picasso Cubist painting,
0:54:31 > 0:54:35a Malevich Cubist painting would have a violin with a cow on it.
0:54:40 > 0:54:43His friends called themselves Futurists.
0:54:43 > 0:54:47He put on an opera with them in 1913.
0:54:47 > 0:54:50He provided sketches for costumes and sets
0:54:50 > 0:54:55and two years later he elaborated this sketch into the black square.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04He painted it in a kind of ecstasy,
0:55:04 > 0:55:09he couldn't sleep or eat he was so jangled, it all seemed clear.
0:55:09 > 0:55:12He wrote that the black square equals feeling,
0:55:12 > 0:55:16the white field equals the void beyond feeling.
0:55:21 > 0:55:27Supreme in the word Suprematism - the name that Malevich gave
0:55:27 > 0:55:32to his geometric style - means supreme over reality.
0:55:32 > 0:55:37He said that the objects that make up this world are not reality.
0:55:37 > 0:55:40They might call forth feeling,
0:55:40 > 0:55:45but feeling separated from reality is the only true reality.
0:55:48 > 0:55:52He means the objects out there that we assume to make up
0:55:52 > 0:55:55objective reality don't really.
0:55:55 > 0:56:00In fact, it's only by abstracting objects that we can get to reality.
0:56:04 > 0:56:09This has a long title but part of it is the term "fourth dimension".
0:56:09 > 0:56:11It was fascinating to artists.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15Time warped by space or the other way round.
0:56:18 > 0:56:24Ordinary existence warps into higher existence in the fourth dimension.
0:56:24 > 0:56:29That was the claim of the Russian Theosophist P.D. Ouspensky.
0:56:29 > 0:56:33Malevich absorbed the Theosophical lesson like
0:56:33 > 0:56:37so many abstract artist then and built it into his paintings,
0:56:37 > 0:56:41abstraction soaring into the beyond.
0:56:48 > 0:56:53He explained to his students, "we've come to the rejection of reason,
0:56:53 > 0:56:56"but only because there's a new form of reason now."
0:56:57 > 0:57:01Some of Malevich's students would become the new Russian
0:57:01 > 0:57:04avant-garde that would make him seem old-fashioned.
0:57:04 > 0:57:06They were called Constructivists.
0:57:08 > 0:57:10One of them was Liubov Popova.
0:57:10 > 0:57:16This is a design by her for the cover of a magazine from 1922.
0:57:16 > 0:57:21The fact that it is abstraction turned to a functional use
0:57:21 > 0:57:23tells you about the turn taken in the early '20s
0:57:23 > 0:57:25by abstract art in Russia.
0:57:31 > 0:57:35Clarity, powerful, look-at-ability,
0:57:35 > 0:57:38but it's not about contemplating the ineffable.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42It's about making a magazine attractive and looking at new
0:57:42 > 0:57:47things, because it's a magazine of new kino, new cinema.
0:57:47 > 0:57:53To appreciate that as a jump just as radical as abstraction being
0:57:53 > 0:57:55invented in the first place,
0:57:55 > 0:57:58you have to look once again at what abstraction is.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06Abstraction strips everything down to form.
0:58:06 > 0:58:11But form can be radically different from instants to instants.
0:58:11 > 0:58:14Even though it looks like it's just more form.
0:58:17 > 0:58:23This painting by Popova from 1917 was influenced by Malevich's
0:58:23 > 0:58:25teaching. The difference between it
0:58:25 > 0:58:29and her magazine cover from a few years later when she'd become
0:58:29 > 0:58:34a Constructivist is that form isn't a feeling for the Constructivists.
0:58:34 > 0:58:36Form is useful.
0:58:44 > 0:58:50There'd been world war and civil war. Now there was extreme poverty,
0:58:50 > 0:58:55violence, hunger, a breakdown of communication and transport.
0:58:55 > 0:58:59And out of all that not just a new society had to be built,
0:58:59 > 0:59:03but a type that had never existed before on Earth.
0:59:07 > 0:59:11The Constructivists identified the factories as the centre
0:59:11 > 0:59:15of production. Art should move there.
0:59:15 > 0:59:17They even changed the name of art to production.
0:59:22 > 0:59:27This is a Productivist sculpture by one of Popova's colleagues,
0:59:27 > 0:59:30Vladimir Stenberg.
0:59:30 > 0:59:34This form could be a prototype for what a socialist society
0:59:34 > 0:59:39would actually look and feel and be like, as opposed to how such
0:59:39 > 0:59:43a society had been theorised and dreamed of before the revolution.
0:59:52 > 0:59:57Popova's shapes and spaces were for definite things.
0:59:57 > 1:00:01These ones were for a banner for a revolutionary poets' club.
1:00:03 > 1:00:07This was the cover of a catalogue for a Constructivist exhibition.
1:00:12 > 1:00:16The controllers of the new revolutionary state were sceptical.
1:00:16 > 1:00:21And eventually they did crush Constructivism and Productionism.
1:00:21 > 1:00:24Well, "how are you really going to connect art to politics?",
1:00:24 > 1:00:27Lenin said to the Constructivists when he visited them
1:00:27 > 1:00:31in the new art schools his government set up
1:00:31 > 1:00:34and paid for, when there was very little money for anything.
1:00:46 > 1:00:52Popova taught Constructivists and she exhibited with them. They saw
1:00:52 > 1:00:56no reason to drop abstract form just because no-one could understand it.
1:00:58 > 1:01:03She died at 35 from scarlet fever after only a few months of success
1:01:03 > 1:01:07in the factories with clothing designs based on geometric form.
1:01:14 > 1:01:15And the whole
1:01:15 > 1:01:17Constructivist/Productionist movement
1:01:17 > 1:01:22was destroyed by Politburo decrees about form.
1:01:22 > 1:01:26Abstraction relating to reality was out.
1:01:27 > 1:01:33Reality had to be conveyed from now on by picturing instead.
1:01:33 > 1:01:35By propaganda.
1:01:58 > 1:02:00Constructivism failed,
1:02:00 > 1:02:05abstract form would never again automatically mean Left politics.
1:02:08 > 1:02:11It turns out when you make something,
1:02:11 > 1:02:14you can't necessarily control its meaning.
1:02:20 > 1:02:25Abstraction in Europe went quiet in the 1930s with
1:02:25 > 1:02:31the rise of fascism in the West and totalitarian communism in Russia.
1:02:38 > 1:02:43The end of the Second World War in 1945 saw
1:02:43 > 1:02:47a revival of abstraction in lonely studios in New York.
1:02:51 > 1:02:55Changing the world by cosmic visions, by spirituality,
1:02:55 > 1:03:01or art giving a concrete form to socialism were not
1:03:01 > 1:03:04the ideas context for abstraction any more.
1:03:04 > 1:03:08Being an individual, being an outsider,
1:03:08 > 1:03:12making those on the inside, the conformists,
1:03:12 > 1:03:15see what freedom could be. These were the new ideas.
1:03:21 > 1:03:25Many people think the rule of this artist is no rules at all.
1:03:28 > 1:03:33In fact, you're seeing a rigidly architectural structure
1:03:33 > 1:03:38achieved by nothing but free, loose flowing open marks.
1:03:38 > 1:03:41It's an amazing balancing act, once you start to see it
1:03:41 > 1:03:45and it shows that the standard criticism of Jackson Pollock,
1:03:45 > 1:03:48that anyone could do it, is unfair.
1:03:51 > 1:03:56Paint, very liquefied. Only black, no other colour,
1:03:56 > 1:04:02thrown onto the canvas, and very briefly titled, Number 32.
1:04:02 > 1:04:08The painting was done one day in 1950, with the canvas
1:04:08 > 1:04:13rolled out on the wooden floorboards in his studio in New York,
1:04:13 > 1:04:16in a rural part of the state a few hours' drive from the city.
1:04:18 > 1:04:22Ten years before he'd been in therapy with a Jungian
1:04:22 > 1:04:25analyst, trying to deal with the alcoholism that defined
1:04:25 > 1:04:29Pollock's life as much as being an artist defined it.
1:04:30 > 1:04:33He brought his drawings to the sessions.
1:04:33 > 1:04:37Later their lines and spaces would be exploded
1:04:37 > 1:04:40to become paintings on a vast architectural scale.
1:04:51 > 1:04:54He said he was painting the aims of the age,
1:04:54 > 1:04:59and he didn't need to paint nature because he was nature.
1:05:10 > 1:05:12It looks pretty free.
1:05:12 > 1:05:15There's something outrageously free about an artist throwing paint
1:05:15 > 1:05:17and stepping on the painting.
1:05:19 > 1:05:22But freedom is a meaning he wants to get across.
1:05:22 > 1:05:25It comes from the climate of the times.
1:05:25 > 1:05:29It's not the visual end result that his outlandish process
1:05:29 > 1:05:31will actually create.
1:05:37 > 1:05:38However he gets there,
1:05:38 > 1:05:42he ends up with a tightly controlled rhythmic structure.
1:05:53 > 1:05:59The canvas is regularly and rhythmically occupied.
1:05:59 > 1:06:03Imagine the lighter lines without the heavier blobs.
1:06:03 > 1:06:07Never mind how they're created, they contribute to the visual
1:06:07 > 1:06:11complexity, it would be a very different effect.
1:06:13 > 1:06:14The web of lines
1:06:14 > 1:06:18and angles goes out to meet the outer edges of the painting,
1:06:18 > 1:06:23pulling back, flowing out all round those edges, so what happens on the
1:06:23 > 1:06:29perimeter is a controlled version of what's happening in the centre.
1:06:29 > 1:06:33You read the meaning through what is impossible to miss -
1:06:33 > 1:06:35the materials and how they're treated.
1:06:37 > 1:06:40You're forced to see that the paint is paint, with its dried
1:06:40 > 1:06:45lumpy bits and delicate stained bits, its range of textures,
1:06:45 > 1:06:49reflective paint contrasted with paint that has been absorbed
1:06:49 > 1:06:53by the canvas. Those textures are the things he's composing.
1:06:53 > 1:06:57Their differences are what he makes a visual symphony out of.
1:07:07 > 1:07:11An artist today in Deptford making something harmonious.
1:07:11 > 1:07:16Paul Tonkin. Like Jackson Pollock, his rule is that harmony can
1:07:16 > 1:07:19come from a surprisingly wild process.
1:07:20 > 1:07:25This is just...what I do really. I just make these...
1:07:26 > 1:07:30It's just a question of covering it with paint, basically!
1:07:30 > 1:07:35But I like making these curvy shapes.
1:07:35 > 1:07:39I suppose someone looking at it now might think, "Oh, landscape,
1:07:39 > 1:07:43"hills, lakes." Is anything like that in your mind?
1:07:43 > 1:07:46No, I'm just trying to get the stuff on there.
1:07:46 > 1:07:49But, yeah, I can see what you mean! Of course.
1:07:50 > 1:07:54It could look like the Loch Ness monster as well, couldn't it?
1:07:54 > 1:08:02Except if something starts looking too much like something very
1:08:02 > 1:08:06- specific, then I might... - Alter it?- ..try and change it.
1:08:06 > 1:08:08Yes, yes, yes.
1:08:08 > 1:08:09Where shall I put the red?
1:08:10 > 1:08:13How did you know where to put the blue and the yellow?
1:08:13 > 1:08:17That's a good point, but now it's getting more complicated, you see.
1:08:17 > 1:08:21But I'm treating it like a painting, which I do, you see, and it's not.
1:08:21 > 1:08:25So we're looking at the creation of an under-painting
1:08:25 > 1:08:28and this is part of a stage that you always go through.
1:08:28 > 1:08:31It's the first stage, yeah.
1:08:31 > 1:08:34And the under-painting has a certain life of its own
1:08:34 > 1:08:38- and a certain rhythm.- Yes. - But it isn't the painting as such.
1:08:38 > 1:08:40Well, when it's dry I'll look at it
1:08:40 > 1:08:47and cut it into rectangles of different sizes
1:08:47 > 1:08:50and then pin them to the floor
1:08:50 > 1:08:53and then work on top of them.
1:08:53 > 1:08:57And will those different rectangles be a separate painting?
1:08:57 > 1:08:59Yes.
1:08:59 > 1:09:02It's got a fantastic energetic movement.
1:09:02 > 1:09:06Yeah, well, that's the thing, that's what I want to get -
1:09:06 > 1:09:07the movement and...
1:09:09 > 1:09:12..but then I'm going to mess it up, you see.
1:09:12 > 1:09:14That's the fun bit.
1:09:17 > 1:09:18Oh, shit.
1:09:18 > 1:09:21THEY LAUGH
1:09:21 > 1:09:24I don't usually waste quite as much paint as that!
1:09:24 > 1:09:25That was fantastic.
1:09:25 > 1:09:27Yeah, but it wasn't kind of what I wanted.
1:09:27 > 1:09:31And it looks great as well, but I'm going to move back.
1:09:31 > 1:09:33- You'd better move back, Matthew. - Yeah.
1:09:33 > 1:09:35You better get out of the way, man,
1:09:35 > 1:09:37because I'm chucking the stuff around.
1:09:37 > 1:09:39It's fantastic.
1:09:41 > 1:09:45But it's like destroying and creating at the same time.
1:09:45 > 1:09:49Yeah. It's amazing how beautiful those veils of colour can be.
1:09:49 > 1:09:51Yeah, well, it is, but unfortunately
1:09:51 > 1:09:54when it dries out, it doesn't stay like that.
1:09:54 > 1:09:56It doesn't... It's not...
1:09:58 > 1:10:01HE LAUGHS It's going...
1:10:01 > 1:10:02It's going everywhere!
1:10:05 > 1:10:08That's quite good, yeah.
1:10:10 > 1:10:14Where do you think the precision is in what you do?
1:10:14 > 1:10:16Well, it gets more precise.
1:10:16 > 1:10:20I'd have to show you the later stages
1:10:20 > 1:10:25to show that it gets very, very precise near the end.
1:10:26 > 1:10:28It's to do with the drawing, I suppose.
1:10:28 > 1:10:32And, to me, drawing is movement
1:10:32 > 1:10:36and colour is the most important thing
1:10:36 > 1:10:39and trying to get colours working together.
1:10:39 > 1:10:45So that they actually combine to make something that, actually,
1:10:45 > 1:10:48when you come into the studio,
1:10:48 > 1:10:52and you've seen that painting, having had a night's sleep,
1:10:52 > 1:10:56and you're coming in again to see it fresh the next morning,
1:10:56 > 1:11:00it will actually make a statement back to you,
1:11:00 > 1:11:03and then you feel actually this is now a painting.
1:11:03 > 1:11:05It's actually telling me something.
1:11:12 > 1:11:17The next artist is the other side of the same coin of freedom
1:11:17 > 1:11:19that is controlled in some way.
1:11:19 > 1:11:24With Dan Parfitt, I think his rule is to have totally controlled,
1:11:24 > 1:11:28calculated stages that result in a look of flowing freedom.
1:11:33 > 1:11:35I've got a plan, I like a plan.
1:11:35 > 1:11:39The improvisation happens in the drawing.
1:11:39 > 1:11:43The previous stages to the one we're looking at right now.
1:11:43 > 1:11:47And that's a print out of one of your drawings?
1:11:47 > 1:11:52Yeah, here is where it gets scaled up onto a large scale canvas.
1:12:01 > 1:12:05So these little drawings are like scores.
1:12:06 > 1:12:08The drawings that you work from.
1:12:08 > 1:12:12Yeah, well, this little print out is like a score that I'm
1:12:12 > 1:12:15performing, like if I were a musician performing.
1:12:15 > 1:12:18So it gives me the structure,
1:12:18 > 1:12:21but these marks have got to be made in real-time.
1:12:21 > 1:12:27It doesn't really matter if there's a bit of...
1:12:27 > 1:12:30splashing because we're just going for the...
1:12:33 > 1:12:38..trying to make the mark as expressive as possible,
1:12:38 > 1:12:40really get a sense of its speed,
1:12:40 > 1:12:43its proper real-time quickness.
1:12:43 > 1:12:45This is the fastest stage of the whole painting.
1:12:45 > 1:12:49This is the fastest stage, maybe the funnest stage as well.
1:12:51 > 1:12:54Because out of nothing comes something. Suddenly, there's
1:12:54 > 1:12:58a whole bunch of black marks that begin to indicate something.
1:12:58 > 1:13:02I mean, even though my work is very non-representational,
1:13:02 > 1:13:04nevertheless it should be evocative.
1:13:04 > 1:13:08I suggest a sort of natural world without at all depicting
1:13:08 > 1:13:10anything in particular.
1:13:10 > 1:13:14Well, yes, it does want to feel like part of our natural world.
1:13:14 > 1:13:19But maybe an imagined correlation of it.
1:13:19 > 1:13:25Somehow. How we pull it inside of ourselves and build little models.
1:13:25 > 1:13:30So it's an introvert experience of an extrovert world.
1:13:30 > 1:13:34Very good. So things come and go in this process?
1:13:34 > 1:13:35They really do, yes.
1:13:35 > 1:13:37To begin with there's what looks like an armour chair,
1:13:37 > 1:13:39Once that's done,
1:13:39 > 1:13:41there will never be anything else like that, it comes and goes.
1:13:41 > 1:13:45No, it won't look like this and, in fact, much of this painting
1:13:45 > 1:13:49I'm doing right now is redundant or will become redundant.
1:13:49 > 1:13:53Much of it will be obscured.
1:13:53 > 1:13:56OK, that's enough of that one.
1:13:56 > 1:13:57So this has got to dry now?
1:13:57 > 1:14:00This has got to dry, yeah, we can't have any drips
1:14:00 > 1:14:02- because a drip would indicate gravity.- Yeah.
1:14:02 > 1:14:05So really we want this to be floating.
1:14:05 > 1:14:09Like all these things, I want them to feel like a bunch of stuff
1:14:09 > 1:14:12- thrown up in the air and then you've taken a photograph of it.- I see.
1:14:12 > 1:14:15As it just reaches its zenith.
1:14:44 > 1:14:48In abstract art, since Jackson Pollock, there is often a sense
1:14:48 > 1:14:52that meaning might be as simple as just the way paint is put on.
1:14:53 > 1:14:57Paint can be applied any way, sometimes frankly and flatly,
1:14:57 > 1:15:01as if the surface didn't mean anything or, which is what
1:15:01 > 1:15:05these paintings by Mark Rothko are doing,
1:15:05 > 1:15:09so a sort of breathing surface is the main theme, the main
1:15:09 > 1:15:13effect by which the painting is able to convey its message.
1:15:32 > 1:15:35Rothko was a New Yorker whose family immigrated from Russia
1:15:35 > 1:15:37when he was a child.
1:15:40 > 1:15:43Until middle-age he was unsuccessful and poor.
1:15:43 > 1:15:46He sympathised with the revolutionary,
1:15:46 > 1:15:49political movements in the USA in those times.
1:15:54 > 1:15:58He lived an isolated existence. He was unstable and so
1:15:58 > 1:16:03when success came in the 1950s, its suddenness was overwhelming.
1:16:05 > 1:16:07The paintings we were just looking at were done by him
1:16:07 > 1:16:12in the late '50s as a commission for the new Seagram building
1:16:12 > 1:16:18for the exclusive restaurant on the top floor called the Four Seasons.
1:16:18 > 1:16:22But having painted them, he became furious at the idea of
1:16:22 > 1:16:26"rich bastards", as he called them, eating in front of his work.
1:16:29 > 1:16:32Ten years later he gave the paintings away free to what
1:16:32 > 1:16:35was then the Tate Gallery.
1:16:35 > 1:16:38He was fanatic about how they should be displayed. The lighting
1:16:38 > 1:16:42and spacing, even today, is exactly as Rothko wanted.
1:16:46 > 1:16:51By grim coincidence, he died on the day they arrived in Britain.
1:16:53 > 1:16:55Rothko committed suicide
1:16:55 > 1:16:59and his paintings don't depict anything so it's only natural in
1:16:59 > 1:17:05a way that we should wish that death might be what they're communicating.
1:17:05 > 1:17:08I don't personally think that.
1:17:08 > 1:17:12That's a human tragedy, but the meaning
1:17:12 > 1:17:17of the paintings is different to that profound visual lift.
1:17:18 > 1:17:22That's the same meaning that a cathedral has,
1:17:22 > 1:17:25or the inside of an Egyptian tomb, or a Greek temple.
1:17:25 > 1:17:28Death is part of those things as well,
1:17:28 > 1:17:32but in such a universal sense that it's as if the marvel
1:17:32 > 1:17:36of the whole of existence, not just its termination point,
1:17:36 > 1:17:39is being celebrated.
1:17:39 > 1:17:42Death as part of some kind of gigantic cosmic unity.
1:17:44 > 1:17:49Rather than getting carried away with what's become over the years a
1:17:49 > 1:17:54sort of rhetoric of heavy-breathing emotion, let's try instead
1:17:54 > 1:17:59to understand what these paintings actually are and how they work.
1:18:08 > 1:18:10That sense of a surface that is active
1:18:10 > 1:18:13and expressive gets more and more insistent as you look.
1:18:16 > 1:18:20The grey is applied lightly like a mist, diffused,
1:18:20 > 1:18:26so the surface becomes cloudy not sheer, animated not still or inert.
1:18:31 > 1:18:35The painting as a whole is created in terms of misty breakups
1:18:35 > 1:18:38and stuttering breakups,
1:18:38 > 1:18:41and then passages that are all about merging and flowing.
1:18:47 > 1:18:52So if the feeling is, "Well, it's all dark" or "It's all red",
1:18:52 > 1:18:57the experience of darkness and redness is a nuanced one.
1:19:02 > 1:19:07A simple colour theme of blackish red is elaborated
1:19:07 > 1:19:11and celebrated so that the whole of existence is celebrated.
1:19:14 > 1:19:17The room is a sort of Pharaoh's tomb.
1:19:17 > 1:19:22In his control-freakery he's a megalomaniac like the pharaohs.
1:19:22 > 1:19:27He's the pharaoh and the pharaoh decorator in a Rothko
1:19:27 > 1:19:31centric-universe. He's the architect, the painter,
1:19:31 > 1:19:32and the philosopher priest.
1:19:36 > 1:19:38All that pretentiousness would be off-putting
1:19:38 > 1:19:41if it weren't for the rule of painterly
1:19:41 > 1:19:45transformation that is the true interest of this abstract art.
1:19:45 > 1:19:49The quality of surprise in the treatment of a surface
1:19:49 > 1:19:54so that looming darkness is alive with energy.
1:19:57 > 1:20:01The rule that colours placed next to each other will always
1:20:01 > 1:20:04suggest depth, different positions in space,
1:20:04 > 1:20:08was exciting to artists like Paul Klee and Mark Rothko,
1:20:08 > 1:20:13and has been followed by Albert Irvin, who's now 92, for 50 years.
1:20:22 > 1:20:24Put it down in front of those tins.
1:20:24 > 1:20:26Yeah, that's it.
1:20:26 > 1:20:30And drop it onto its back, too.
1:20:30 > 1:20:33OK, and put those under.
1:20:33 > 1:20:37Oh, God, it's nice to have somebody helping.
1:20:37 > 1:20:39- I'd better come and be your assistant.- It's a real luxury.
1:20:46 > 1:20:48They're abstract paintings
1:20:48 > 1:20:53but they are informed by my movement through the world.
1:20:55 > 1:20:59Those marks seem sort of structural and they have their own life...
1:20:59 > 1:21:01- Yes.- ..as events.
1:21:01 > 1:21:03Structural in terms of the whole unity
1:21:03 > 1:21:05and they have their own personality.
1:21:05 > 1:21:11Yes, I'd like to think so.
1:21:11 > 1:21:16You know, in so far as painting is a language, I think the brush
1:21:16 > 1:21:18marks are the verbs.
1:21:19 > 1:21:23Although you can probably analyse that out of extinction
1:21:23 > 1:21:25if you wanted to.
1:21:25 > 1:21:27No, I think painting as a language is a good idea,
1:21:27 > 1:21:31and the brush marks as verbs is a good idea.
1:21:31 > 1:21:35There are things behind things, you know?
1:21:35 > 1:21:38Like in the space of this studio now,
1:21:38 > 1:21:42if I look across the room,
1:21:42 > 1:21:45you're standing in front
1:21:45 > 1:21:50of the wall, so it's those sorts of perceptions.
1:21:50 > 1:21:53I understand completely what you are saying
1:21:53 > 1:21:56- but it's as if reality itself is layered.- Yeah.
1:21:56 > 1:22:00And that's the kind of thing you are looking for in the painting?
1:22:00 > 1:22:02- Yes.- But you're doing it through colour?
1:22:02 > 1:22:04- Yes. - Through a rather pure colour.
1:22:04 > 1:22:08When I first started painting abstract paintings
1:22:08 > 1:22:10I usually use very sombre colours.
1:22:10 > 1:22:17I had the idea that an important painting
1:22:17 > 1:22:20had to be dark, earth colours.
1:22:24 > 1:22:27- The horrible thing is washing all these brushes.- I bet.
1:22:37 > 1:22:41The visual impressiveness of abstract art from the 1950s
1:22:41 > 1:22:45and 1910s is carried on by abstract art now,
1:22:45 > 1:22:49but often not with the old sense of abstract purity.
1:22:53 > 1:22:56Here's an abstract art that's full of glinting
1:22:56 > 1:23:01reflections by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui.
1:23:04 > 1:23:09Unlike artists who work on a flat canvas and create patterns,
1:23:09 > 1:23:14the visual complexity of which must be structured into the object,
1:23:14 > 1:23:20El Anatsui allows his work to behave like textiles and the shadow
1:23:20 > 1:23:24and light created by the drapery creates an additional
1:23:24 > 1:23:28focus for what you're looking at and is part of the thought
1:23:28 > 1:23:30process involved in the making.
1:23:40 > 1:23:43It's a lesson in setting up meaning.
1:23:43 > 1:23:46Meaning of a simpler less philosophical kind that the
1:23:46 > 1:23:51early abstract artists went in for - he offers a jigsaw of meanings
1:23:51 > 1:23:54that are abstract but easily readable.
1:23:56 > 1:24:01Its structure imitates a traditional Ghanaian fabric called Kente
1:24:01 > 1:24:06cloth, woven for centuries by labour intensive processes so the
1:24:06 > 1:24:11visual effect is very rich. Kente cloth is a source of national pride.
1:24:17 > 1:24:21If history is in the picture then the history of colonialism
1:24:21 > 1:24:25must be in there too with all its human wretchedness.
1:24:25 > 1:24:30And the materials El Anatsui uses suggest waste and squalor.
1:24:39 > 1:24:43A work of abstract art made of bottleneck wrappers.
1:24:43 > 1:24:46The bits of metal foil that go round the neck of a whiskey bottle
1:24:46 > 1:24:48or a gin bottle.
1:24:48 > 1:24:51Rubbish, really, scavenged from the street.
1:24:51 > 1:24:55He makes it look like gold but it's old bits of foil.
1:24:55 > 1:24:58It's rubbish that reads as gold.
1:24:58 > 1:25:01There's an ambiguity or double meaning.
1:25:01 > 1:25:05Baseness that can be transformed into gold, with gold
1:25:05 > 1:25:10as the good thing, but also baseness might be indistinguishable
1:25:10 > 1:25:13from or interchangeable with gold.
1:25:13 > 1:25:18So gold's shimmer, its attractiveness, is untrustworthy.
1:25:24 > 1:25:27It always depends where you stand in relation to it as to
1:25:27 > 1:25:29whether or not gold DOES shimmer.
1:25:29 > 1:25:35So maybe the impression of gold here is a metaphor for delusion?
1:25:35 > 1:25:39The pioneer abstract artists 100 years ago thought
1:25:39 > 1:25:42abstract values were the path to truth.
1:25:42 > 1:25:47They took out any meanings to do with history, society, nationhood.
1:25:47 > 1:25:51Those are the meanings El Anatsui built in.
1:25:52 > 1:25:56He presents you with a powerful visual blast,
1:25:56 > 1:25:59accompanied by questions about what power might mean.
1:26:12 > 1:26:14Today all art competes in market
1:26:14 > 1:26:17and purely abstract art is relatively rare.
1:26:19 > 1:26:23Abstract art that has clues about easily gettable meaning
1:26:23 > 1:26:24is preferred.
1:26:24 > 1:26:2829 million, 30 million, 31 million.
1:26:28 > 1:26:31Abstract art of the past gets huge prices today.
1:26:31 > 1:26:3477 million and selling.
1:26:34 > 1:26:36That much for a Rothko.
1:26:38 > 1:26:41Not because he's subtle about red and black,
1:26:41 > 1:26:46but because his high status name is synonymous with fabulous success.
1:26:50 > 1:26:52Money is never really the point.
1:26:54 > 1:26:58Rothko's predecessor, Hilma Af Klint, said,
1:26:58 > 1:27:02"W is material, U is spiritual."
1:27:02 > 1:27:07She really did believe what she was doing could alter the world.
1:27:07 > 1:27:11If there's a rule of early abstract art as a whole it is that it
1:27:11 > 1:27:13was incredibly optimistic.
1:27:13 > 1:27:17So the rule of optimism passing on is the rule I'm now going to
1:27:17 > 1:27:22sign off with, with a work by an artist who was born the same
1:27:22 > 1:27:25year that Hilma Af Klint went up to the spirits in the sky.
1:27:36 > 1:27:41Here's a kind of abstract art that's unequivocally visually amazing
1:27:41 > 1:27:46but opened ended as to whom that amazement is for
1:27:46 > 1:27:48and where it's coming from.
1:27:48 > 1:27:51It's partly sinister because it's about wealth and we live in a
1:27:51 > 1:27:56time where wealth is sinister and it's partly optimistic because
1:27:56 > 1:28:02wealth is referred to by rubbish, old bits of thrown away metal foil.
1:28:02 > 1:28:07So wealth's mystic is removed, its intimation is removed,
1:28:07 > 1:28:09we can see through it.
1:28:09 > 1:28:11But we're still getting the pleasure
1:28:11 > 1:28:15and with that pleasure, a sense of a different kind of wealth,
1:28:15 > 1:28:21the wealth of ideas as art processes contradictions.
1:28:42 > 1:28:45Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd