0:00:11 > 0:00:14This scene is a window onto
0:00:14 > 0:00:17a secret world which I created.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29In a sense, I've always led a double life...
0:00:31 > 0:00:35..because publicly I'm known as a scientist who studies
0:00:35 > 0:00:37animal behaviour and human behaviour.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45I wanted to have a look at the way in which man, the primeval hunter,
0:00:45 > 0:00:49become transformed into man, the modern city dweller.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52What had happened to all those ancient, primitive urges?
0:00:52 > 0:00:54FADES INTO ECHO: The need for spaces, for territories...
0:00:54 > 0:00:57But in private, at the same time,
0:00:57 > 0:01:00I've been developing this surrealist world of paintings.
0:01:03 > 0:01:08I started in 1944 to make my very first surrealist drawings
0:01:08 > 0:01:10when I was still at school.
0:01:12 > 0:01:17I exhibited later on with the great Spanish surrealist Joan Miro.
0:01:17 > 0:01:19I became friends with the sculptor Henry Moore
0:01:19 > 0:01:21and the painter Francis Bacon.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26There is something inside me that wants to go on exploring
0:01:26 > 0:01:28this private world that I've created.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33It's completely obsessive and I can't stop.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03I have three rooms in which I do most of my work.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05One room is dedicated to art and other artists.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08It's full of my own work, art books and monographs...
0:02:09 > 0:02:11..and strange objects -
0:02:11 > 0:02:13things that I've collected from other cultures that
0:02:13 > 0:02:15have some special meaning for me.
0:02:19 > 0:02:22There's another room that I use for the messier work.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25It's the sort of workshop rather than a studio.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32Then there's a room which is dedicated to my life as a zoologist
0:02:32 > 0:02:33and a student of human behaviour,
0:02:33 > 0:02:37but this room too is full of objects that I've come across over the years
0:02:37 > 0:02:40which fascinate me and which I've collected and kept.
0:02:45 > 0:02:50My daily routine, if I'm painting, is strange,
0:02:50 > 0:02:53because I am a nocturnal animal.
0:02:53 > 0:02:54I work at night.
0:03:03 > 0:03:06I come down to my studio at ten o'clock.
0:03:09 > 0:03:14My brain seems to work at its best between 10pm and 4am.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19'And that six-hour period, because it's late at night,
0:03:19 > 0:03:22'I don't get telephone calls, I'm uninterrupted.'
0:03:23 > 0:03:26The whole world is sort of quiet
0:03:26 > 0:03:30and I can disappear more easily into my...
0:03:30 > 0:03:32into my secret world.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53Part of my life has been involved in developing a world of biomorphs.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58An alien world, a parallel world to our own,
0:03:58 > 0:04:01with its own rules and regulations which I don't understand.
0:04:20 > 0:04:25Sometimes it helps me to do just a very rough sketch,
0:04:25 > 0:04:30which will help me to work out the relationship between the biomorphs.
0:04:38 > 0:04:43What I'm doing is just working out the relationship between
0:04:43 > 0:04:47a reclining figure and a standing figure.
0:04:50 > 0:04:52Is this one dominant or is this the dominant one?
0:04:52 > 0:04:55Is this the one reclining like a Roman emperor,
0:04:55 > 0:05:00with this as a sentinel, or is this an important stranger arriving?
0:05:00 > 0:05:02What's the relationship between the two?
0:05:02 > 0:05:05And the ambiguity of that relationship is what makes, to me,
0:05:05 > 0:05:09makes the painting interesting and keeps the interest in it going.
0:05:19 > 0:05:23So, now I can dispense with that,
0:05:23 > 0:05:25because it wasn't done to keep,
0:05:25 > 0:05:27it was done just as a guide.
0:05:33 > 0:05:35The essential thing about surrealist painting is
0:05:35 > 0:05:38it always contains a mystery of some sort.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40You never quite know what's going on.
0:05:41 > 0:05:45You produce mysterious images
0:05:45 > 0:05:48by allowing yourself to paint
0:05:48 > 0:05:51without conscious intervention.
0:05:51 > 0:05:53That is, without rational analysis.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55I often wonder how I got started as a surrealist artist.
0:06:55 > 0:06:59I've looked back at my childhood and tried to figure out how it began.
0:07:04 > 0:07:09One important moment was when I went into the attic in the family house,
0:07:09 > 0:07:14and in a trunk in the corner I discovered a brass microscope which
0:07:14 > 0:07:18had belonged to my great-grandfather who was a Victorian naturalist.
0:07:21 > 0:07:23And also an extraordinary book...
0:07:23 > 0:07:24HE LAUGHS
0:07:24 > 0:07:29..called the Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts Begun.
0:07:29 > 0:07:32I thought, "How marvellous to write a book about something you've just begun."
0:07:32 > 0:07:34It's by Nehemiah Grew.
0:07:34 > 0:07:36They don't make names like that any more.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40And in it I found the most amazing illustrations.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46I looked at these illustrations and I thought,
0:07:46 > 0:07:50"These intestines have the most beautiful shapes."
0:07:56 > 0:08:01And I turned the pages and became fascinated by those shapes.
0:08:18 > 0:08:21My childhood was marred first by the Depression when there was no money
0:08:21 > 0:08:23and then by the Second World War.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28And I took a pretty dim view of grown-ups, because it seemed to me
0:08:28 > 0:08:30all they wanted to do was to kill one another.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37My father, who fought in World War I,
0:08:37 > 0:08:39came back from the war in such a bad way,
0:08:39 > 0:08:41I think he only had half of one lung left.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49I watched him die all through my childhood and he died in 1942
0:08:49 > 0:08:52at the height of the Second World War, when I was only 14.
0:08:58 > 0:08:59I couldn't believe it at first.
0:08:59 > 0:09:03I wouldn't accept it. I thought he'd been sent to a sanitarium somewhere and they weren't telling me.
0:09:07 > 0:09:10And I think this created a deep-seated anger in me.
0:09:14 > 0:09:19I think I retained a hatred of the establishment as a result of that.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24CLOCK TICKS
0:09:29 > 0:09:33There was one terrible moment during the war
0:09:33 > 0:09:35when, visually, I had a shock.
0:09:39 > 0:09:43A school friend of mine was the son of a local undertaker...
0:09:45 > 0:09:49..and he took me one day into the mortuary, where there were
0:09:49 > 0:09:53all the bodies of soldiers who'd been blown to pieces in the war.
0:09:55 > 0:09:57And there were all these entrails
0:09:57 > 0:10:00and I was struck by how beautiful they were.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13It left a very powerful visual impact...
0:10:15 > 0:10:19..so that the shapes of internal organs
0:10:19 > 0:10:21became important to me.
0:10:26 > 0:10:28Now, I didn't rationalise it,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31but when I look at some of my biomorphs,
0:10:31 > 0:10:33I realise that that influence is still there.
0:10:36 > 0:10:40I really thought human beings, as adults, were crazy.
0:10:40 > 0:10:43I mean, "Why on earth did they want to kill one another?"
0:10:43 > 0:10:46And, you know, the child's brain just couldn't accept this,
0:10:46 > 0:10:48and I needed some sort of rebellion.
0:10:49 > 0:10:52But I couldn't be a destructive rebel,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54because I'd had a loving family,
0:10:54 > 0:10:56so I had to become a creative rebel.
0:10:57 > 0:11:00And I rebelled against anything traditional,
0:11:00 > 0:11:03because tradition was related to the establishment,
0:11:03 > 0:11:04which was related to this...
0:11:06 > 0:11:08..killing that was going on all around me.
0:11:18 > 0:11:23In the school library I found a book which had an essay by Max Ernst,
0:11:23 > 0:11:25an important surrealist,
0:11:25 > 0:11:29and my Christmas present that year was a box of oil paints
0:11:29 > 0:11:31and I did my first oil paint...
0:11:32 > 0:11:34..just before the end of 1945.
0:11:41 > 0:11:44Because I work at night, I spend a lot of my time alone.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50But I'm an only child, so it's not a problem for me.
0:11:53 > 0:11:54I've never been lonely.
0:11:56 > 0:11:57I enjoy solitude.
0:12:02 > 0:12:07When I'm working here very late at night, I'm...as it were,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11I'm dreaming on canvas, while other people are dreaming in their beds.
0:12:32 > 0:12:33DOG BARKS
0:12:51 > 0:12:52DESMOND SETS STICK DOWN
0:12:54 > 0:12:55HE SIGHS
0:13:04 > 0:13:07I suddenly had this idea that
0:13:07 > 0:13:10this one needed this small detail,
0:13:10 > 0:13:15and I had to get the balance between the two red spheres exactly right
0:13:15 > 0:13:18so that the one on the left is slightly lighter than the one on the right.
0:13:30 > 0:13:33This double life has been going on now for about 70 years
0:13:33 > 0:13:35and ever since I was a teenager.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42Far from conflicting,
0:13:42 > 0:13:46having these two sides to my life actually works very well,
0:13:46 > 0:13:49because each one is an escape from the other.
0:13:59 > 0:14:02I was a strange teenager. HE LAUGHS
0:14:02 > 0:14:04I painted my bedroom black.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07When I say black, I mean everything - ceiling, walls, doors,
0:14:07 > 0:14:09everything was painted black.
0:14:09 > 0:14:13And then I painted brightly coloured images on the black.
0:14:15 > 0:14:17And I did this to intensify my dreaming.
0:14:20 > 0:14:22And one of them I did is
0:14:22 > 0:14:24a huge letter to a surrealist friend of mine,
0:14:24 > 0:14:26which describes my dream in great details,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28and it was an interesting dream,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33because in the dream I see a strange creature in the tree above the glass
0:14:33 > 0:14:39roof of my studio, and I go out and I lie on the grass beneath the tree
0:14:39 > 0:14:42and I look up at this strange, weird creature...
0:14:43 > 0:14:46..and it falls out of the tree on top of me...
0:14:47 > 0:14:49..and completely covers me.
0:14:50 > 0:14:55And I close my eyes to protect myself, and then,
0:14:55 > 0:14:58as I open my eyes,
0:14:58 > 0:15:01I can feel the wind in my feathers,
0:15:01 > 0:15:06and my claws on the branch are gripping it very tightly,
0:15:06 > 0:15:11and I look down and I see this young man come out of his studio
0:15:11 > 0:15:14and lie on the grass beneath me and look up at me.
0:15:34 > 0:15:39In 1947, I painted a picture called Entry To A Landscape.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43And this was the start of my biomorphic world.
0:15:51 > 0:15:56There were two dark walls, and hanging pinned to the walls were
0:15:56 > 0:15:59some horrible dead entrails.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01That was the world I was living in.
0:16:04 > 0:16:06And, through the crack,
0:16:06 > 0:16:12I could see this beautiful blue sky and strange things moving about.
0:16:12 > 0:16:14And that was the world I wanted to get into.
0:16:18 > 0:16:20And I'm still exploring that world now...
0:16:21 > 0:16:23..in the 21st century.
0:16:35 > 0:16:39'A lot of the biomorphs have a sort of quality of being
0:16:39 > 0:16:41'internal organs made external.
0:16:44 > 0:16:47'It's an interesting question to ask - what are my biomorphs made of?
0:16:47 > 0:16:50'Are they made of flesh, or blood, or bone?
0:16:50 > 0:16:52'And...they're none of these things.
0:16:52 > 0:16:53'They're their own material.'
0:17:04 > 0:17:06Their habitat is canvas.
0:17:06 > 0:17:08They evolve on the canvas.
0:17:12 > 0:17:15Therefore, they have their own material.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18They are flesh, but they're not flesh.
0:17:20 > 0:17:22They have bones, but they're not bones.
0:17:23 > 0:17:25They belong in a different dimension.
0:17:34 > 0:17:39I did warn you that this is very slow work,
0:17:39 > 0:17:40because I'm still...
0:17:42 > 0:17:48..demanding that I am fairly meticulous
0:17:48 > 0:17:51with the details of my biomorphs.
0:17:52 > 0:17:58And, in order to keep my hand steady, I use this stick.
0:17:58 > 0:18:03It's, erm, it just makes the hand that much steadier.
0:18:03 > 0:18:04I could do it without, but...
0:18:06 > 0:18:08..why not use an aid if you can?
0:18:10 > 0:18:12Now, let's see. That's...
0:18:12 > 0:18:14Yeah, that's about right.
0:18:19 > 0:18:21This is the only time in 70 years of painting
0:18:21 > 0:18:23that anybody's ever seen me paint.
0:18:24 > 0:18:28I've never painted in anybody's presence before.
0:18:28 > 0:18:30This is very strange.
0:18:30 > 0:18:31HE GRUNTS
0:18:45 > 0:18:49When World War II ended, I was conscripted into the Army,
0:18:49 > 0:18:51because conscription continued after the war.
0:18:54 > 0:18:56Then when I came out of the Army, I had to decide what to do.
0:18:56 > 0:19:02And since the kind of painting I was doing was hated universally,
0:19:02 > 0:19:04when I had my first exhibition in 1948
0:19:04 > 0:19:06there were angry letters to the local press
0:19:06 > 0:19:09saying that all these filthy works should be burned in a furnace.
0:19:12 > 0:19:13And, of course, nothing was sold,
0:19:13 > 0:19:15so I had to decide what to do.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24And I thought, "The only thing I can do is to follow my other passion,
0:19:24 > 0:19:26"studying animal behaviour."
0:19:27 > 0:19:30So, I went off and did a degree in zoology
0:19:30 > 0:19:33and became a professional zoologist, but never stopped painting.
0:19:37 > 0:19:41When I arrived at Birmingham University,
0:19:41 > 0:19:43I was very lucky because I discovered that
0:19:43 > 0:19:46there was a surrealist group active in Birmingham at the time.
0:19:47 > 0:19:51And we still had all those marvellous surrealist meetings
0:19:51 > 0:19:53at which we all argued furiously.
0:19:56 > 0:19:58The surrealist movement was very strange.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02It was supposed to be irrational, drawn from the world of dreams,
0:20:02 > 0:20:06but it was also rigidly bound by rules that had been formulated
0:20:06 > 0:20:10years before by the so-called Pope of Surrealism, Andre Breton.
0:20:12 > 0:20:14So, of course there were endless arguments.
0:20:14 > 0:20:18We argued about politics and we argued about techniques.
0:20:18 > 0:20:23We argued about who was truly surrealist and who wasn't.
0:20:23 > 0:20:29And in 1950 when I was - what? 22, I decided to make a surrealist film.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34MUSIC: Scythian Suite, Op 20 by Sergei Prokofiev
0:20:38 > 0:20:41I'd seen Chien Andalou,
0:20:41 > 0:20:45the famous Salvador Dali film that he made with Bunuel,
0:20:45 > 0:20:49and I was deeply impressed by the irrational images
0:20:49 > 0:20:53and I thought, "I'll make my own Chien Andalou," and I did.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57The young man and the young woman
0:20:57 > 0:21:00are of course played by myself and my wife Ramona.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06The film starts out out in the countryside
0:21:06 > 0:21:08and then she's running from him
0:21:08 > 0:21:11and he chases after her, and as he chases after her,
0:21:11 > 0:21:13so we see their thoughts.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21And in his thoughts he enters a strange room
0:21:21 > 0:21:25in which all kinds of weird things happen to him.
0:21:29 > 0:21:32And now we go inside the mind of the girl.
0:21:32 > 0:21:34We see her private world
0:21:34 > 0:21:37and she receives strange messages on a telephone.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39And one of the instructions is
0:21:39 > 0:21:43to place two ripe plums in the eye sockets of the skull of a horse...
0:21:45 > 0:21:46..as you do. HE LAUGHS
0:21:50 > 0:21:53This was the sort of imagery that I was playing with
0:21:53 > 0:21:55and I was having great fun doing it.
0:22:12 > 0:22:15The mechanics of painting is quite boring
0:22:15 > 0:22:19and when you have the idea of the image,
0:22:19 > 0:22:22you've then got to actually execute it
0:22:22 > 0:22:28and it involves many hours of just tiny adjustments
0:22:28 > 0:22:31to get the shape exactly the way you want it.
0:22:33 > 0:22:35A friend of mine went into a room
0:22:35 > 0:22:39where Magritte was painting a picture, and as he entered the room
0:22:39 > 0:22:40he heard Magritte saying,
0:22:40 > 0:22:44"Boring, boring, boring!
0:22:44 > 0:22:46"What on earth are you doing?"
0:22:46 > 0:22:50And, of course, Magritte's surrealism consisted of a...
0:22:52 > 0:22:55..a bizarre idea, which he would have,
0:22:55 > 0:22:57but then once he'd had that bizarre idea,
0:22:57 > 0:23:01like having a human figure with an apple where a face should be,
0:23:01 > 0:23:05for example, then he was faced with a long and, to him, very boring process
0:23:05 > 0:23:08of actually painting it. HE LAUGHS
0:23:08 > 0:23:14And I've always said if ever I got bored with the meticulous side of
0:23:14 > 0:23:16producing these pictures, I would stop...
0:23:18 > 0:23:20..and not paint any more.
0:23:20 > 0:23:21It hasn't happened yet.
0:23:24 > 0:23:25No, that's not right.
0:23:25 > 0:23:27HE LAUGHS
0:23:32 > 0:23:37All of this time, as I studied zoology, I continued my secret surrealist life.
0:23:37 > 0:23:41In 1950 I had my second exhibition showing in the same London gallery
0:23:41 > 0:23:44as the Spanish surrealist Joan Miro.
0:23:46 > 0:23:50But he sold none of his paintings and I only sold two of mine.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54Mine were much cheaper than his, of course.
0:23:56 > 0:23:58The third and final exhibition occurred two years later
0:23:58 > 0:24:00at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,
0:24:00 > 0:24:02and after that, with nothing selling,
0:24:02 > 0:24:06I finally gave up trying to paint for anybody other than myself.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15I don't suppose anybody else would appreciate the subtle differences
0:24:15 > 0:24:18that I'm worried about, but I have to get it right for myself,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21cos I paint for myself.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33'As the '50s passed, my career as a zoologist took off.
0:24:33 > 0:24:35'I worked at London Zoo,'
0:24:35 > 0:24:39where I conducted experiments with a chimpanzee called Congo.
0:24:40 > 0:24:44I wanted to show that the artistic impulse wasn't just a human one.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48The experiments attracted a huge amount of interest.
0:24:49 > 0:24:53And we held an exhibition of Congo's work in London at the ICA.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57My old friend Joan Miro came to visit me at the zoo.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01He wanted one of Congo's paintings and he told me that Picasso was also
0:25:01 > 0:25:03fascinated by Congo's work, and then
0:25:03 > 0:25:08when a journalist told him Congo's paintings couldn't possibly be art,
0:25:08 > 0:25:09Picasso bit him.
0:25:10 > 0:25:12That's surrealism for you.
0:25:24 > 0:25:27All this trouble over a little blob. HE LAUGHS
0:25:40 > 0:25:41I never stopped painting.
0:25:41 > 0:25:43I always made sure that I had a studio.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48And then in the '60s I wrote a bestselling book
0:25:48 > 0:25:52and found myself, for the first time in my life, with lots of money.
0:25:52 > 0:25:56So, I took several years off and devoted myself to painting.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02In the 1970s,
0:26:02 > 0:26:06I had enough time to be able to
0:26:06 > 0:26:08do some very complicated
0:26:08 > 0:26:09biomorphic landscapes.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15These have remained my favourite works, I think, from my entire
0:26:15 > 0:26:1770 years of painting.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22The biomorphs have become extremely complicated.
0:26:25 > 0:26:29I was exploring them rather like a Victorian naturalist
0:26:29 > 0:26:30going to some unknown island.
0:26:37 > 0:26:39I have no illusions.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42I think of myself as a minor surrealist, but a serious one.
0:26:46 > 0:26:49Recently, in a book devoted to human artistic activity,
0:26:49 > 0:26:51I wrote a chapter on the history of surrealism.
0:26:52 > 0:26:54'But, of course, I left myself out.
0:27:01 > 0:27:05'But the final irony is that as one of the last living true surrealists,
0:27:05 > 0:27:07'I've become collectable.'
0:27:08 > 0:27:13I have pictures in the Tate and in private collections here in Britain
0:27:13 > 0:27:15and in museums all over the world.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26Perhaps my favourite recent work is a picture called The Gathering.
0:27:29 > 0:27:32It hangs in a private house in Palma, Majorca,
0:27:32 > 0:27:34in a house that has medieval roots.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38MUSIC: Violin Sonata No 3 in C Major by Johann Sebastian Bach
0:27:43 > 0:27:45The owners revealed it to their friends
0:27:45 > 0:27:47with a violinist playing Bach sonatas.
0:27:54 > 0:27:57It's a triptych, the largest work I've ever painted, and on its
0:27:57 > 0:28:01three panels are gathered together the biomorphs that have populated my
0:28:01 > 0:28:05surrealist canvases ever since 1947.
0:28:10 > 0:28:11They've come together once again
0:28:11 > 0:28:15for some sort of irrational, unreasonable, dreamlike ceremony.
0:28:18 > 0:28:20And even I don't know what it means.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24Because, of course, this is all coming from my unconscious, and...
0:28:24 > 0:28:26and it's dark inside my head.
0:28:31 > 0:28:33What do any of my paintings mean?
0:28:33 > 0:28:36What sort of secret world have I created?
0:28:44 > 0:28:47'It's almost as though the biomorphs paint themselves
0:28:47 > 0:28:49'and I'm simply the observer.'
0:28:53 > 0:28:56Time, I think, to call it a night.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59But I'll be back tomorrow.