0:00:11 > 0:00:16America, the land of the endless horizon.
0:00:16 > 0:00:18In the human imagination,
0:00:18 > 0:00:20it's always been a place of new beginnings
0:00:20 > 0:00:22and limitless opportunity.
0:00:22 > 0:00:27A frontier to be discovered, overcome and settled.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31And every step of that journey has been traced through art.
0:00:36 > 0:00:40The story of American art is as epic as the story of America itself.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48In this series, I'll follow the trail left by America's artists,
0:00:48 > 0:00:52from the clash between man and nature,
0:00:52 > 0:00:57to the clashes of different cultures and different ideas.
0:00:58 > 0:01:03I'll be exploring the many ways in which the modern world
0:01:03 > 0:01:05was shaped and structured here in America.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11Because this is about America as an idea,
0:01:11 > 0:01:15reproduced and sold through images.
0:01:15 > 0:01:19The images that helped to forge the American dream,
0:01:19 > 0:01:21yet also mirrored the truths beneath.
0:01:23 > 0:01:27And ultimately, it's the story of America's struggle
0:01:27 > 0:01:30to find a sense of identity and a sense of direction
0:01:30 > 0:01:33in the increasingly fragmented, uncertain
0:01:33 > 0:01:37and image-saturated world of the 21st century.
0:02:01 > 0:02:06People have lived in America for thousands of years,
0:02:06 > 0:02:10yet to the white Europeans who first came exploring in the 16th century,
0:02:10 > 0:02:13it seemed almost virgin territory,
0:02:13 > 0:02:15a barely-occupied wilderness
0:02:15 > 0:02:18that promised the chance of a better life.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25The first Englishmen who set foot on this stretch of coast
0:02:25 > 0:02:27were looking for a new Eden.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32And to promote that idea to others back home,
0:02:32 > 0:02:34they would use the power of art.
0:02:40 > 0:02:47In the summer of 1585, John White arrived here in Chesapeake Bay.
0:02:47 > 0:02:50He was the official artist on an expedition sponsored
0:02:50 > 0:02:55by none other than the enterprising Sir Walter Raleigh himself.
0:02:55 > 0:02:57Its aim was straightforward -
0:02:57 > 0:03:03observe the lie of the land, study the local flora and fauna,
0:03:03 > 0:03:07the natural resources, and then report back.
0:03:07 > 0:03:11Now, because the would-be colonisers didn't know quite what to expect,
0:03:11 > 0:03:15they went ashore in leather jerkins and full suits of armour.
0:03:15 > 0:03:17It was July! The heat was sweltering.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20What a bizarre sight they must have made,
0:03:20 > 0:03:23this whole troop of sweaty Elizabethans,
0:03:23 > 0:03:27clanking and clambering their way into the forests
0:03:27 > 0:03:28of what's now Virginia.
0:03:28 > 0:03:34In fact, the local people turned out to be friendly at first,
0:03:34 > 0:03:39and over the coming weeks John White made a whole series
0:03:39 > 0:03:41of breathtakingly vivid,
0:03:41 > 0:03:45deeply poignant watercolours of the Native American Indian.
0:03:50 > 0:03:54"Every man was attired in the strangest fashion,"
0:03:54 > 0:03:57wrote one of White's companions.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03"They dance, sing,
0:04:03 > 0:04:07"and use the strangest gestures that they can possibly devise."
0:04:09 > 0:04:13White's paintings captured the compelling exoticism of the people,
0:04:13 > 0:04:15the animals and the fruit,
0:04:15 > 0:04:19with a brilliant, wide-eyed sense of wonder.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32And you can see why White truly believed that he'd found himself
0:04:32 > 0:04:34in a kind of paradise on Earth.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44White used his pictures as advertisements
0:04:44 > 0:04:46and recruited more than 100 English settlers,
0:04:46 > 0:04:49including his own daughter and son-in-law,
0:04:49 > 0:04:51to create a colony here.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00But the reality of life turned out to be rather less idyllic
0:05:00 > 0:05:02than White's pictures.
0:05:02 > 0:05:05The ill-prepared settlers had brought no livestock.
0:05:05 > 0:05:10They planted their crops too late, and harvest failed.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13Most ominously, an attempt to go fishing
0:05:13 > 0:05:17turned into a violent skirmish with a local tribe.
0:05:19 > 0:05:24By late 1587, things had gone very, very badly wrong.
0:05:24 > 0:05:26The Indians had turned outright hostile,
0:05:26 > 0:05:30and the colony was fast running out of food and supplies.
0:05:30 > 0:05:36So White decided that he had to get back to England to bring help.
0:05:39 > 0:05:43When he did finally manage to get back to the site of the colony,
0:05:43 > 0:05:47more than two years had passed.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51And he found absolutely nothing here.
0:05:51 > 0:05:56No sign of his daughter, his son-in-law, his granddaughter.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59The whole colony had entirely disappeared,
0:05:59 > 0:06:02and no-one knows to this day just what happened to it.
0:06:08 > 0:06:13White's hopes of founding the first English colony in America
0:06:13 > 0:06:14were dashed forever.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20His beautiful images had turned out to be little more than empty promises.
0:06:34 > 0:06:36But others were not deterred.
0:06:36 > 0:06:42The prospect of a new continent with virgin land was simply irresistible.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45European explorers grabbed whatever they could
0:06:45 > 0:06:48in a ferocious scramble for territory.
0:06:50 > 0:06:54English traders established Virginia in 1607.
0:06:57 > 0:07:00Meanwhile the French, Spanish and Dutch
0:07:00 > 0:07:04all greedily claimed their own territories elsewhere.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12But the New World was also a magnet for breakaway religious groups,
0:07:12 > 0:07:15each hoping to build their own New Jerusalem.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20Like the English Pilgrims who arrived in 1620,
0:07:20 > 0:07:23and the Puritans, who soon followed.
0:07:23 > 0:07:27America in the 17th century was both a land of opportunity,
0:07:27 > 0:07:29and a place of refuge.
0:07:36 > 0:07:39In the heart of present-day Massachusetts
0:07:39 > 0:07:41is the Worcester Art Museum.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45Inside are two portraits by an unknown artist
0:07:45 > 0:07:48that bring us face to face with the kind of people
0:07:48 > 0:07:51who chose the New World over the Old.
0:07:54 > 0:07:59I'd like to introduce you to Mr and Mrs Freake.
0:07:59 > 0:08:01These are, we think,
0:08:01 > 0:08:06among the very first paintings of settlers in America,
0:08:06 > 0:08:10so when we look at them, we're looking at the very DNA
0:08:10 > 0:08:14both of modern American civilisation and of American art.
0:08:14 > 0:08:17So who were they?
0:08:17 > 0:08:22John Freake was a Puritan, an attorney and a merchant,
0:08:22 > 0:08:27who settled in Boston in 1658
0:08:27 > 0:08:29and, as his portrait shows us,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33he did very well for himself and he was rather proud of it.
0:08:33 > 0:08:36Look at this elaborate lace collar,
0:08:36 > 0:08:40and with his left hand, he flourishes the jewel
0:08:40 > 0:08:43that is the symbol of his prosperity.
0:08:43 > 0:08:49It's a picture that rather punctures the preconception of the Puritan
0:08:49 > 0:08:54as a joyless individual who's embarrassed by material prosperity.
0:08:54 > 0:08:56Puritans in America were nothing like that.
0:08:56 > 0:09:00If they did well, they saw it as a mark of God's providence.
0:09:00 > 0:09:02And that pleasure in doing well
0:09:02 > 0:09:05is something that still survives in America today.
0:09:05 > 0:09:08There's no need to be ashamed of having got on.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12If we move to Mrs Freake,
0:09:12 > 0:09:16which is actually my favourite of these two pictures,
0:09:16 > 0:09:18what a wonderfully vivid image it is.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22Like her husband, Mrs Freake is very proud of the fact
0:09:22 > 0:09:23that they've done well.
0:09:23 > 0:09:29She, too, has got a very elaborate lace collar,
0:09:29 > 0:09:33she's wearing her jewels, she's definitely in her Sunday best.
0:09:33 > 0:09:35But what is she most proud of?
0:09:35 > 0:09:39She's most proud of her little girl,
0:09:39 > 0:09:42and we know this from an X-ray,
0:09:42 > 0:09:44because X-rays show that, originally,
0:09:44 > 0:09:46she was depicted merely holding a book,
0:09:46 > 0:09:49but then she gave birth to her little girl,
0:09:49 > 0:09:50called the artist back in,
0:09:50 > 0:09:54and insisted that he depicted Mary on her lap.
0:09:55 > 0:09:59Now what does that child stand for, what's going on in this picture?
0:09:59 > 0:10:02Well, I think the child stands for the future.
0:10:02 > 0:10:06This child stands for the fact that these people
0:10:06 > 0:10:10and their descendents are here to stay.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20During the first few centuries of colonisation,
0:10:20 > 0:10:23American art was predominantly Protestant
0:10:23 > 0:10:25and inescapably provincial.
0:10:27 > 0:10:30It was the art of the second-rate portrait,
0:10:30 > 0:10:34the not-quite-van Dyck, the nearly-Gainsborough.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Although these are still poignant records of their sitters' status
0:10:38 > 0:10:40and ambitions.
0:10:41 > 0:10:44These are the people who brought to America their dreams
0:10:44 > 0:10:46of a spiritual utopia.
0:10:46 > 0:10:50But they also unwittingly brought something else -
0:10:50 > 0:10:52deadly diseases that would prove fatal
0:10:52 > 0:10:54to the local Indian population.
0:11:11 > 0:11:16Decimated by terrifying European illnesses like smallpox and measles,
0:11:16 > 0:11:20the Native Americans abandoned great swathes of land,
0:11:20 > 0:11:24which the new settlers quickly claimed as their own.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28An unintentional genocide through germs
0:11:28 > 0:11:32soon became colonial practice through the power of the gun.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35And so the frontier was rolled out.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44In California alone, there were once 200 distinct Indian groups,
0:11:44 > 0:11:48speaking more than 100 different languages.
0:11:50 > 0:11:53Now, so many of those cultures that had extended across the continent
0:11:53 > 0:11:57exist only as fragments in museums.
0:11:58 > 0:12:02They're the shattered pieces of a broken puzzle
0:12:02 > 0:12:04that can never be put back together.
0:12:09 > 0:12:13I think the very phrase "Native American culture"
0:12:13 > 0:12:14is inherently misleading
0:12:14 > 0:12:17because it suggests we're talking about one thing
0:12:17 > 0:12:20but we're not, we're talking about a hundred,
0:12:20 > 0:12:23a thousand different civilisations, cultures, societies,
0:12:23 > 0:12:26interlocking across a vast continent,
0:12:26 > 0:12:30each one with its own complicated, subtle history.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34Here, we're looking at the last remains
0:12:34 > 0:12:40of one of around 100 societies that lived in the Midwest,
0:12:40 > 0:12:42around the area of the Mississippi,
0:12:42 > 0:12:45at the time that we now call the Renaissance.
0:12:45 > 0:12:50What can we say about them on the basis of these relics?
0:12:50 > 0:12:54Well, they had a very sophisticated, settled society.
0:12:54 > 0:12:56They weren't nomads.
0:12:56 > 0:12:58They were proud and warlike.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01It's thought that this terracotta head
0:13:01 > 0:13:05represents a captive taken in battle.
0:13:06 > 0:13:08They had their own myths and legends,
0:13:08 > 0:13:12their own mythical creatures, in this case the frog.
0:13:12 > 0:13:17They seem to have regarded the frog as the image of a cosmic traveller,
0:13:17 > 0:13:22moving from one realm to another, from water to land.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25But the rest is really a mystery.
0:13:25 > 0:13:28Look at those maskettes, as they're called,
0:13:28 > 0:13:32these extraordinary, staring little faces
0:13:32 > 0:13:34with their elongated Pinocchio noses.
0:13:34 > 0:13:39Nobody knows what they represent. Nobody knows what they meant.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45And there's the thing, because when you destroy an entire civilisation,
0:13:45 > 0:13:47an entire set of civilisations,
0:13:47 > 0:13:52you also destroy the possibility of writing its history.
0:14:06 > 0:14:10The official history of colonised America
0:14:10 > 0:14:12would be a selectively-edited account
0:14:12 > 0:14:14that gloried in the building
0:14:14 > 0:14:17of gleaming new cities like Philadelphia
0:14:17 > 0:14:20but conveniently ignored the grim reality
0:14:20 > 0:14:23of how it was all actually done.
0:14:24 > 0:14:26One of the functions of art in America, then,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28was to be part of a cover-up,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33and the chief cover-up artist was a painter called Benjamin West.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40Benjamin West was America's first internationally-famous artist.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43He was born here in Pennsylvania, a Quaker,
0:14:43 > 0:14:46and he circulated the legend that when he was a child,
0:14:46 > 0:14:48Native American Indians taught him to paint,
0:14:48 > 0:14:50taught him how to grind pigments.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53But while he liked to play on his exotic origins,
0:14:53 > 0:14:56he was, in fact, a thoroughly modern American,
0:14:56 > 0:14:59a brilliant salesman of his own reputation,
0:14:59 > 0:15:03and he invented a new kind of storytelling art,
0:15:03 > 0:15:06one that would be profoundly useful to those
0:15:06 > 0:15:09who would forge the future of this nation.
0:15:15 > 0:15:17The Pennsylvania Academy
0:15:17 > 0:15:21is the oldest picture gallery in the United States.
0:15:21 > 0:15:26Within it is one of Benjamin West's most celebrated works,
0:15:26 > 0:15:28a fine example of his main invention,
0:15:28 > 0:15:30the modern history painting.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37Yet it's also a picture that pulses with the energy of a dark secret.
0:15:45 > 0:15:48Penn's Treaty With The Indians was created,
0:15:48 > 0:15:52quite literally, in order to frame history,
0:15:52 > 0:15:56in particular, the history of the settlement of Pennsylvania
0:15:56 > 0:15:59and the foundation of its capital city, Philadelphia,
0:15:59 > 0:16:06to frame those histories as dignified, orderly, just,
0:16:06 > 0:16:09compassionate and tolerant.
0:16:09 > 0:16:15On the left, we've got William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia,
0:16:15 > 0:16:19and he's presenting the Indians with a treaty.
0:16:19 > 0:16:21And on this side of the picture,
0:16:21 > 0:16:25he's depicted the Native American Indians as a group.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27West said the subject of his painting
0:16:27 > 0:16:31was the civilisation of the savage.
0:16:33 > 0:16:37How does he represent this notion that they're going to be civilised?
0:16:38 > 0:16:42Interestingly, he relegates the treaty to shadow,
0:16:42 > 0:16:46and what he casts into light
0:16:46 > 0:16:48is this bolt of white cloth,
0:16:48 > 0:16:51held by the generic figure of the trader.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57It's an image that exactly, exactly recalls
0:16:57 > 0:17:00the adoration of the shepherds at the birth of Christ.
0:17:03 > 0:17:07This is the sanitised version of American history,
0:17:07 > 0:17:09that the god of free trade
0:17:09 > 0:17:12transformed noble savages into civilised men,
0:17:12 > 0:17:15effortlessly absorbing them into the republic.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21The painting soon became THE classic image
0:17:21 > 0:17:24of the bloodless colonisation of America,
0:17:24 > 0:17:27but it's propaganda, a blatant lie.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34William Penn may indeed have looked kindly on the local tribes,
0:17:34 > 0:17:36but by the time this picture was commissioned,
0:17:36 > 0:17:39some 50 years after his death,
0:17:39 > 0:17:44the colonists and the Native Indians were locked in a bitter war.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49This was a war marked on the British side
0:17:49 > 0:17:52by all kinds of appalling skulduggery.
0:17:52 > 0:17:58On one occasion in 1763, during supposed negotiations for peace,
0:17:58 > 0:18:02the British representative handed to the Indians
0:18:02 > 0:18:08a pile of blankets that they'd taken from their own smallpox hospital.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11This was an early example of germ warfare
0:18:11 > 0:18:13and it proved horribly effective,
0:18:13 > 0:18:17and it certainly gives a really unpleasant twist,
0:18:17 > 0:18:21an ironic twist, to that bolt of white cloth
0:18:21 > 0:18:24in the centre of West's painting.
0:18:42 > 0:18:47Even as they trampled over the Indians in the name of progress,
0:18:47 > 0:18:51colonists in America felt that they themselves were being abused
0:18:51 > 0:18:55by their Imperial masters back in Britain.
0:18:56 > 0:18:59The 13 North American colonies
0:18:59 > 0:19:01traded with the rest of the British Empire
0:19:01 > 0:19:03through thriving ports like Boston.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08But they quickly became frustrated with the harsh terms of trade
0:19:08 > 0:19:10being imposed on them.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13The trouble began when the British
0:19:13 > 0:19:16put the squeeze on their American subjects,
0:19:16 > 0:19:20principally by raising tax on imported goods.
0:19:20 > 0:19:24In particular, they had a monopoly on the import of tea,
0:19:24 > 0:19:27for the privilege of purchasing which Americans were now forced
0:19:27 > 0:19:32to pay an increasingly exorbitant level of import duty.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35Things came to a head in 1773,
0:19:35 > 0:19:40when a group of some 60 Bostonians came down to the docks,
0:19:40 > 0:19:44seized an entire consignment of tea from a ship belonging to
0:19:44 > 0:19:48the British East India Company, and hurled it into the water.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51The Boston Tea Party, as it came to be known,
0:19:51 > 0:19:55was copied in other cities across the Eastern seaboard.
0:19:55 > 0:19:57The British response was ruthless.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01They passed a bill declaring the port of Boston itself closed.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04And as George Washington famously said,
0:20:04 > 0:20:07"The cause of Boston is now the cause of America."
0:20:07 > 0:20:10What had begun as an act of rebellion
0:20:10 > 0:20:12had become all-out revolution.
0:20:16 > 0:20:20The story was told in cheap, hand-coloured prints and engravings.
0:20:22 > 0:20:24The first battle between the British troops
0:20:24 > 0:20:29and the American revolutionaries took place at Lexington in 1775.
0:20:29 > 0:20:32Through six years of bloody conflict,
0:20:32 > 0:20:36the rebels, with the help of England's old enemy, the French,
0:20:36 > 0:20:38gradually gained the upper hand.
0:20:39 > 0:20:42In 1781, General George Washington
0:20:42 > 0:20:46secured the decisive American victory at Yorktown.
0:20:46 > 0:20:50A young, provincial nation had won its liberty.
0:20:55 > 0:20:58Now, America's founding fathers
0:20:58 > 0:21:01needed a capital worthy of the noble aspirations
0:21:01 > 0:21:03laid out in their Declaration of Independence.
0:21:08 > 0:21:12And so they chose to build a new Rome.
0:21:22 > 0:21:24The decision to make the neoclassical style
0:21:24 > 0:21:27THE style of government in Washington, in America,
0:21:27 > 0:21:29was loaded with significance.
0:21:29 > 0:21:33It said this new republic is a democracy.
0:21:33 > 0:21:39It's based on the principles of order, clarity, rationality, purity.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42But as well as expressing the supposed values
0:21:42 > 0:21:44of Ancient Greece and Rome,
0:21:44 > 0:21:47I think a building such as this also looks forward,
0:21:47 > 0:21:52because what's truly new about it is its enormous, monumental scale,
0:21:52 > 0:21:56and I think what that expresses is the founding fathers' sense
0:21:56 > 0:22:00of the scale of the task that lies ahead of them.
0:22:00 > 0:22:05The shaping of this vast continent into a single nation.
0:22:05 > 0:22:10And I also think its scale expresses a hope, a proud hope,
0:22:10 > 0:22:16that perhaps this new republic, this America, may turn out to be
0:22:16 > 0:22:20one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever known.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29As well as creating an architectural legacy,
0:22:29 > 0:22:31America's founding fathers
0:22:31 > 0:22:34wanted a pictorial tribute to the birth of their nation,
0:22:34 > 0:22:38to be installed inside the grandest of their new government buildings,
0:22:38 > 0:22:39the Capitol.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45They turned to an artist called John Trumbull,
0:22:45 > 0:22:50an adequate portrait painter who struggled to rise to this challenge.
0:22:52 > 0:22:57And what you see here is the familiar language of portraiture,
0:22:57 > 0:23:03applied rather uneasily and stiffly to grand historical narrative.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08Perhaps I should whisper it in these august precincts,
0:23:08 > 0:23:10but John Trumbull,
0:23:10 > 0:23:15whose principle works decorate the rotunda of the Capitol,
0:23:15 > 0:23:21was quite possibly the single most boring painter
0:23:21 > 0:23:24in the entire history of American art.
0:23:24 > 0:23:25What's he done here?
0:23:25 > 0:23:30He's taken one, two, three, four events
0:23:30 > 0:23:34at the centre of the American War of Independence
0:23:34 > 0:23:36and turned them into nothing more
0:23:36 > 0:23:41than a sequence of stultifyingly dull group portraits.
0:23:41 > 0:23:44The Declaration of Independence,
0:23:44 > 0:23:48depicted with all the panache and excitement of a school photograph.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51The surrender at the Battle of Saratoga,
0:23:51 > 0:23:56depicted as an encounter between two groups of utterly bored generals
0:23:56 > 0:23:58and their hangers-on.
0:23:58 > 0:24:03Trumbull was profoundly incapable of depicting action,
0:24:03 > 0:24:06so when he painted war, he didn't actually paint the battle,
0:24:06 > 0:24:07he painted the surrender.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10Here, we've got the surrender of Lord Cornwallis,
0:24:10 > 0:24:16depicted as an encounter between two rows of tin soldiers.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20And, finally, another school photograph,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23George Washington handing in his commission
0:24:23 > 0:24:27so that he can become President of America.
0:24:27 > 0:24:29But in a funny way,
0:24:29 > 0:24:33by presenting history as this succession of dull friezes,
0:24:33 > 0:24:37by making history so boring,
0:24:37 > 0:24:41Trumbull also made it seem inevitable.
0:24:41 > 0:24:45This was destined to happen,
0:24:45 > 0:24:49and that sense of inevitability was carried on by other artists
0:24:49 > 0:24:54who work in this space, notably Constantino Brumidi,
0:24:54 > 0:24:57who, in the 1860s - he was an Italian painter -
0:24:57 > 0:24:59in the 1860s, completed this space
0:24:59 > 0:25:02with this truly absurd Baroque flourish of a fresco
0:25:02 > 0:25:05depicting the apotheosis of Washington.
0:25:05 > 0:25:09There he is in his purple toga, being wafted up to heaven.
0:25:10 > 0:25:15It's a true deep-pan pizza of a picture.
0:25:17 > 0:25:24But in a strange way, I think it is an apt topping to this space.
0:25:29 > 0:25:31For much of the 19th century,
0:25:31 > 0:25:35American artists would divide into two camps -
0:25:35 > 0:25:39those who supported government and all it stood for,
0:25:39 > 0:25:42and those who questioned it.
0:25:48 > 0:25:51Washington policy favoured unlimited westward expansion,
0:25:51 > 0:25:56towards a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils.
0:26:04 > 0:26:06The myth of the conquest of the West
0:26:06 > 0:26:09is deeply engrained in America's national identity.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18And no painting depicts that myth more vividly
0:26:18 > 0:26:23than Emanuel Leutze's picture, Westward Ho, of 1865.
0:26:28 > 0:26:31Here are all the familiar elements of a thousand movies -
0:26:31 > 0:26:34the covered wagons,
0:26:34 > 0:26:36the plucky pioneers
0:26:36 > 0:26:40and, on the horizon, the Promised Land itself.
0:26:43 > 0:26:46But if you really want to see the pioneer spirit in art,
0:26:46 > 0:26:50you need to look elsewhere,
0:26:50 > 0:26:56to the work of a man who was himself a pioneer, John James Audubon.
0:26:56 > 0:26:59He celebrated the beauties of America's Promised Land,
0:26:59 > 0:27:03but also counted the cost of the push west.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08It's a heck of thing, isn't it?
0:27:08 > 0:27:11It's huge. It's the double-elephant folio.
0:27:11 > 0:27:15'Audubon's great work was an illustrated book,
0:27:15 > 0:27:18'which he began in 1827.
0:27:18 > 0:27:21'It's one of the masterpieces of world art,
0:27:21 > 0:27:24'The Birds Of America.'
0:27:24 > 0:27:27- I'm curious to know, what is the very first bird?- OK.
0:27:27 > 0:27:32I'm assuming it's going to be the American eagle.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35- Au contraire!- No?
0:27:35 > 0:27:40- Oh, my God, is that beautiful? Wow!- Wow!
0:27:40 > 0:27:42It's the turkey!
0:27:42 > 0:27:46Yeah. Audubon's first plate of Birds Of America
0:27:46 > 0:27:48was the wild turkey.
0:27:48 > 0:27:50It's a stunning big bird
0:27:50 > 0:27:54and of course, part of the reason for the double-elephant folio
0:27:54 > 0:27:57was so that he could do everything lifesize.
0:27:57 > 0:27:59That's beautifully detailed.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02You are yourself an artist as well as a scientist, aren't you,
0:28:02 > 0:28:05and a draughtsman?
0:28:05 > 0:28:09When you look at Audubon, what excites you?
0:28:09 > 0:28:13What makes him a great ornithological artist?
0:28:13 > 0:28:16Boy! Well, up until this time,
0:28:16 > 0:28:23birds were portrayed in a very static, scientific way...
0:28:23 > 0:28:26..without the vivaciousness
0:28:26 > 0:28:30of them actually alive in their natural habitat.
0:28:30 > 0:28:32That's what Audubon did.
0:28:32 > 0:28:35This bird, it looks like it's ready to walk right off the page.
0:28:35 > 0:28:38In fact it's going to, it's not even looking where it's going.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41(LAUGHS) I was going to say, it's got attitude.
0:28:41 > 0:28:43This turkey is so human.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46How many times have you walked through the woods
0:28:46 > 0:28:47or down the sidewalk
0:28:47 > 0:28:51or to the coffee shop and you've just been striding along
0:28:51 > 0:28:54and you're looking back over your shoulder
0:28:54 > 0:28:56to see who might be looking at you
0:28:56 > 0:28:58and who's recognised you?
0:28:58 > 0:29:01This is a sort of turkey on Broadway, checking somebody out.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04- Yes! - He's got a wonderful, beady eye!
0:29:05 > 0:29:07Can we look at some more, please?
0:29:07 > 0:29:12Sure, OK, We'll turn deeper into volume one.
0:29:12 > 0:29:14And thank you for assisting me.
0:29:14 > 0:29:17You tell me, I need to put my hand...?
0:29:17 > 0:29:22- Yes. And don't touch the image of course.- No, no. I won't.- That's it.
0:29:22 > 0:29:24And then, just let it...
0:29:25 > 0:29:28- ..fall.- Oh, what a contrast.
0:29:28 > 0:29:29Bewick's Wren.
0:29:32 > 0:29:34It's lovely, isn't it? What is that?
0:29:34 > 0:29:36Fragile, cautious little creature,
0:29:36 > 0:29:39looking around to see if anyone's watching.
0:29:39 > 0:29:44I like the way detail is just like, flipped up,
0:29:44 > 0:29:46the movement of it.
0:29:46 > 0:29:49He does look like he's ready to take off.
0:29:49 > 0:29:53He almost wants to have the bird like a wildlife filmmaker would,
0:29:53 > 0:29:55actually caught in life.
0:29:55 > 0:29:56Exactly.
0:29:56 > 0:30:00And you've just nailed it, really, because these birds are alive.
0:30:01 > 0:30:03That bird is alive. I mean...
0:30:04 > 0:30:06..you flip a page and you think,
0:30:06 > 0:30:09"God, can we contain it in the book?"
0:30:09 > 0:30:11Is it going to get away from us?
0:30:11 > 0:30:13(LAUGHS) Like that's going to fly away!
0:30:13 > 0:30:16We'd better flip the page before it gets away.
0:30:16 > 0:30:17Where are we going to go next?
0:30:21 > 0:30:24- Just concentrate for this bit. - Yes, OK, we're OK.
0:30:26 > 0:30:30- The Ruffed Grouse. - That's another spectacular one.
0:30:30 > 0:30:32I mean, I guess the big question is,
0:30:32 > 0:30:36what do you think was the driving ambition behind it all?
0:30:36 > 0:30:42Is it that he wants to record every single bird in America?
0:30:42 > 0:30:44That was his obsession.
0:30:44 > 0:30:47He travelled all over the United States, he went out west,
0:30:47 > 0:30:50he went all the way down south to Florida, Louisiana,
0:30:50 > 0:30:58he was an early, true, in the sense of the American...frontier,
0:30:58 > 0:31:04an adventurer, a frontiersman, an outdoorsman.
0:31:05 > 0:31:08His mission was to take trip after trip,
0:31:08 > 0:31:13to discover these birds and paint every damn one of them.
0:31:15 > 0:31:17Whoa, that is stunning.
0:31:18 > 0:31:20That is absolutely stunning.
0:31:21 > 0:31:23I love this one.
0:31:23 > 0:31:24He's looking right at you.
0:31:24 > 0:31:25Looking straight at me.
0:31:25 > 0:31:30It's the only parakeet that occurred in North America.
0:31:30 > 0:31:35This is an example of a bird that went extinct.
0:31:35 > 0:31:41Farmers viewed them as a pest and these did get shot in large numbers.
0:31:41 > 0:31:43And Audubon used this phrase, which is shocking,
0:31:43 > 0:31:47but he talked about the murderous white man
0:31:47 > 0:31:51and how everything was getting pushed westward.
0:31:51 > 0:31:57The birds, the mammals, nature itself, you know,
0:31:57 > 0:32:01our idea was we have to control it, we have to own it,
0:32:01 > 0:32:05we have to fight it into submission, we have to grow crops.
0:32:05 > 0:32:08So in his imagination the march,
0:32:08 > 0:32:12the onward march of civilisation west, also represents...
0:32:12 > 0:32:15It also represented a fleeing from the murderous white man.
0:32:18 > 0:32:19WHISTLING
0:32:21 > 0:32:24As settlers fanned out across the Continent,
0:32:24 > 0:32:27they transformed the land.
0:32:27 > 0:32:31To the south were great plantations made possible through the import
0:32:31 > 0:32:34of hundreds of thousands of African slaves.
0:32:36 > 0:32:40To the north sprang up industrialised cities and factories.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45And as the frontier pushed west towards the sea,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48so in its wake followed the machine
0:32:48 > 0:32:52that did most to change the face of 19th-century America,
0:32:52 > 0:32:54the train.
0:32:59 > 0:33:03The pace at which the railway network expanded in the US
0:33:03 > 0:33:05was truly staggering.
0:33:05 > 0:33:10Between 1828 and 1840, they laid some 3,300 miles of track here.
0:33:10 > 0:33:15That's twice as much track as existed in the whole of Europe.
0:33:15 > 0:33:17Of course, the railway companies billed this
0:33:17 > 0:33:19as the inevitable march of progress,
0:33:19 > 0:33:22but many other people regarded it with alarm,
0:33:22 > 0:33:26in particular, the writer Henry David Thoreau counted the human cost
0:33:26 > 0:33:31of constructing these networks of iron.
0:33:31 > 0:33:36He wrote, "We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us.
0:33:36 > 0:33:39"Did you ever think what these sleepers are
0:33:39 > 0:33:42"that underlie the railroad?
0:33:42 > 0:33:47"Each one is a man, an Irishman or a Yankee man.
0:33:47 > 0:33:49"The rails are laid on them
0:33:49 > 0:33:54"and they are covered with sand and the cars run smoothly over them.
0:33:54 > 0:33:57"They are sound sleepers, I assure you."
0:34:12 > 0:34:16The people who suffered most at the hands of the advancing white man
0:34:16 > 0:34:20were, of course, the Native Americans.
0:34:22 > 0:34:23By the 1820s,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26the last vestiges of the great Indian nations of the Northeast,
0:34:26 > 0:34:28the Iroquois and the Mohicans,
0:34:28 > 0:34:31had been corralled into remote reservations
0:34:31 > 0:34:33where they faced an uncertain future.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39Against this backdrop,
0:34:39 > 0:34:45a little-known artist-frontiersman began an ambitious project -
0:34:45 > 0:34:48to make a record of America's vanishing tribes,
0:34:48 > 0:34:51much as Audubon recorded the country's birds.
0:34:54 > 0:34:58The result was a series of more than 500 paintings,
0:34:58 > 0:35:00produced over a period of almost 40 years,
0:35:00 > 0:35:04of which these are just a few.
0:35:09 > 0:35:14George Catlin, the man who preserved these solemn,
0:35:14 > 0:35:17beautiful, melancholy faces,
0:35:17 > 0:35:20was himself one of the great characters
0:35:20 > 0:35:22of 19th-century American art.
0:35:22 > 0:35:25He was an entrepreneur as well as a painter and, in fact,
0:35:25 > 0:35:28he went on tour with these pictures,
0:35:28 > 0:35:32indeed with some Native American Indians as well.
0:35:32 > 0:35:33He went to Europe.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36He introduced them to the kings of France and Belgium,
0:35:36 > 0:35:39even to Queen Victoria herself.
0:35:39 > 0:35:41But it would be wrong to think of him
0:35:41 > 0:35:44as a mere opportunist, a showman.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47He wasn't like that. He cared about these people every bit as deeply
0:35:47 > 0:35:52as Audubon cared about the birds of America,
0:35:52 > 0:35:57because he fears they're a race on the point of extinction.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01That fact distresses him very deeply, because to Catlin,
0:36:01 > 0:36:05these are the noblest surviving people in the whole world.
0:36:05 > 0:36:11It might seem strange to us, but he sees them as the descendants
0:36:11 > 0:36:16of the Ancient Greeks, people of nobility, simplicity and purity.
0:36:19 > 0:36:22But purity and simplicity were no match for the forces
0:36:22 > 0:36:26of hard-headed expansionism and naked greed.
0:36:28 > 0:36:31To the decision-makers in government,
0:36:31 > 0:36:34the Indians were simply an impediment
0:36:34 > 0:36:37to the spread of American society.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42In 1830, President Andrew Jackson's administration
0:36:42 > 0:36:45passed the Indian Removal Act.
0:36:45 > 0:36:50It amounted to the ethnic cleansing of the eastern United States.
0:36:55 > 0:37:00Some American artists feared the vanishing of Indian culture
0:37:00 > 0:37:01was just the start.
0:37:01 > 0:37:06That soon, the American landscape itself would be obliterated.
0:37:12 > 0:37:17This is Kaaterskill Falls in upstate New York
0:37:17 > 0:37:20and it was a favourite subject of Thomas Cole,
0:37:20 > 0:37:24unquestionably the greatest American landscape painter
0:37:24 > 0:37:26of the 19th century.
0:37:28 > 0:37:33Cole was born in 1801 in Bolton in the north of England,
0:37:33 > 0:37:35a place of dark, satanic mills,
0:37:35 > 0:37:39and he'd trained as an engraver at a textile designers.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46His family emigrated to Ohio when Cole was 17,
0:37:46 > 0:37:50and from the moment he first began to explore
0:37:50 > 0:37:51the eastern United States,
0:37:51 > 0:37:56at the age of 22, he decided to devote his life to recording
0:37:56 > 0:37:59the epic wilderness he found around him,
0:37:59 > 0:38:02here in the Catskill Mountains.
0:38:18 > 0:38:21Thomas Cole loved this spot and he came here often.
0:38:21 > 0:38:23Making the pilgrimage to this place
0:38:23 > 0:38:28feels very much like travelling to the source of his imagination.
0:38:28 > 0:38:35This is wild, untamed, grand, sublime American nature, in the raw.
0:38:35 > 0:38:38Now the waterfall was a very important symbol to Cole.
0:38:38 > 0:38:41What it stood for was the purity of nature
0:38:41 > 0:38:45as opposed to the polluted waters of the rivers
0:38:45 > 0:38:48running through America's new rash of cities.
0:38:49 > 0:38:54I also think his eye was drawn to that grand rock formation,
0:38:54 > 0:38:58rather like a cathedral, which seems to lead the eye upwards,
0:38:58 > 0:39:01towards the sky, perhaps towards God.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26This vividly evocative painting of Kaaterskill Falls from 1826
0:39:26 > 0:39:28is perhaps Cole's finest.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33But it's also a picture full of disquiet.
0:39:34 > 0:39:37There are black skies overhead.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44And in the river below, the remains of a blasted tree.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49Cole was aware that the sublime beauty of American nature
0:39:49 > 0:39:51was under threat.
0:39:53 > 0:39:58And he has placed, on the edge of the falls, a lone Indian.
0:39:58 > 0:40:02He stands for everything that is fast disappearing.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05He is, to borrow a phrase from Cole's friend,
0:40:05 > 0:40:07the novelist James Fenimore Cooper,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10the last of the Mohicans.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20This is Thomas Cole's house at the edge of the Catskill mountains,
0:40:20 > 0:40:23just 100 miles north of New York City.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28From here, Cole watched the landscape being ravaged
0:40:28 > 0:40:32as "civilisation" began to encroach on what had once been wilderness.
0:40:36 > 0:40:39This view from the porch is an invention.
0:40:41 > 0:40:43By the time Cole painted it,
0:40:43 > 0:40:46the smoke from those distant homesteads
0:40:46 > 0:40:49had been blotted out by the steam from a railroad
0:40:49 > 0:40:52that ran close to Cole's house.
0:40:54 > 0:40:57Appalled by what he called the "iron tramp of progress",
0:40:57 > 0:41:00Thomas Cole conceived of a series of paintings
0:41:00 > 0:41:03that would be unlike anything he'd done before.
0:41:03 > 0:41:08One that would deliver a powerful message to modern America.
0:41:13 > 0:41:17Cole called his series The Course Of Empire.
0:41:17 > 0:41:19Five hugely ambitious paintings,
0:41:19 > 0:41:22preserved by the New York Historical Society,
0:41:22 > 0:41:27that appear to chart the rise and fall of Roman civilisation.
0:41:29 > 0:41:32But I think if you go through it frame by frame,
0:41:32 > 0:41:36looking at it in detail, I think what you realise is
0:41:36 > 0:41:37that Cole's real subject
0:41:37 > 0:41:40is not the decline and fall of Ancient Rome.
0:41:40 > 0:41:42What's really on his mind
0:41:42 > 0:41:46is the history and the destiny of America,
0:41:46 > 0:41:50and there are little clues to that in all of these pictures.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55The first scene shows a primitive world.
0:41:58 > 0:42:01There are hunters armed only with spears.
0:42:03 > 0:42:07And in the distance, a group of figures are dancing around a fire.
0:42:08 > 0:42:12But don't those tents look exactly like Native American wigwams?
0:42:16 > 0:42:19The next picture shows the same view,
0:42:19 > 0:42:22but now time has moved forward to an early civilisation.
0:42:22 > 0:42:27A woman is spinning, the beginnings of manufacture.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30A greybeard is scratching a symbol in the dirt.
0:42:30 > 0:42:33The origins of science.
0:42:33 > 0:42:38And in the distance, a Stonehenge-like structure,
0:42:38 > 0:42:40the birth of architecture.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45But does Cole see the advent of civilisation
0:42:45 > 0:42:49and human progress as an entirely good thing?
0:42:49 > 0:42:55Well, there's a strong sign that he doesn't, because this detail here,
0:42:55 > 0:42:59the stump of an axe-felled tree,
0:42:59 > 0:43:01was one of his great personal symbols.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04He included it in a lot of his pictures.
0:43:04 > 0:43:07And what it stands for is the rape of nature by man.
0:43:07 > 0:43:12It's his way of saying that progress comes at a great cost.
0:43:18 > 0:43:21I think the whole series is shot through the strong sense
0:43:21 > 0:43:25of Cole's own bitterness, anger, and irony
0:43:25 > 0:43:30because here, he's depicted the supposed zenith of civilisation,
0:43:30 > 0:43:33and yet he sees it, he conceives it,
0:43:33 > 0:43:38as a scene of decadence, corruption,
0:43:38 > 0:43:41empty triumphalism.
0:43:47 > 0:43:50At the head of a great procession sits an emperor.
0:43:50 > 0:43:54But he's a parody of the then-president, Andrew Jackson,
0:43:54 > 0:43:59who was satirised in the press as an American Caesar.
0:43:59 > 0:44:02The ruler of a "mobocracy",
0:44:02 > 0:44:05where everyone was chasing wealth and power.
0:44:05 > 0:44:08And look at the architecture,
0:44:08 > 0:44:13teeming with people, like a kind of infestation of humanity.
0:44:13 > 0:44:17Yes, it's Ancient Rome, but I think it's meant to be
0:44:17 > 0:44:19a conflation of the banks of New York
0:44:19 > 0:44:22and the government buildings of Washington,
0:44:22 > 0:44:27even a bizarre prophecy of...modern Las Vegas.
0:44:27 > 0:44:33This is a world that symbolises the greed
0:44:33 > 0:44:37that Cole saw eating away at the heart of America.
0:44:42 > 0:44:46Cole called the penultimate picture Destruction.
0:44:46 > 0:44:50Rome, it appears, is being overrun by barbarian hordes.
0:44:51 > 0:44:54There are scenes of chaos and terror,
0:44:54 > 0:44:56a cast of thousands,
0:44:56 > 0:45:01as a city of marble and stone is tragically laid waste.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05When I think of it in terms of what I believe
0:45:05 > 0:45:07this series is all about,
0:45:07 > 0:45:11an allegory of American civilisation,
0:45:11 > 0:45:16I see it as a flourishing fantasy, a kind of dream
0:45:16 > 0:45:23of America itself being swept clean of civilisation and all its ills.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26That the land will be made pure again.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29And if you come to the last picture of all...
0:45:30 > 0:45:32..Desolation, he called it,
0:45:32 > 0:45:35again, I think it's a painting
0:45:35 > 0:45:38that almost defeats your expectations
0:45:38 > 0:45:42because it's supposed to represent the aftermath of civilisation.
0:45:42 > 0:45:45You might think of it as a deeply melancholic image,
0:45:45 > 0:45:50but for Cole, I think, this is the true climax of the series.
0:45:50 > 0:45:53This is the moment he yearns for,
0:45:53 > 0:45:57the moment when civilisation will have disappeared
0:45:57 > 0:46:03and nature - nature - will once again have reclaimed this land.
0:46:03 > 0:46:05That's Cole's fantasy.
0:46:12 > 0:46:16Within a generation, America would in fact tear itself apart,
0:46:16 > 0:46:19although not in the way Cole had imagined.
0:46:29 > 0:46:32Slavery in the South,
0:46:32 > 0:46:35a long-festering wound at the heart of the American nation,
0:46:35 > 0:46:37would be the cause.
0:46:41 > 0:46:43Since independence,
0:46:43 > 0:46:45the increasingly industrialised states in the North
0:46:45 > 0:46:48had gradually abolished slavery.
0:46:48 > 0:46:50But the Southern states,
0:46:50 > 0:46:55with their labour-intensive cotton and tobacco plantations, would not.
0:47:05 > 0:47:09By 1860, the United States was, said President Abraham Lincoln,
0:47:09 > 0:47:12"a house divided".
0:47:13 > 0:47:16The following year, the division became total.
0:47:16 > 0:47:2011 Southern states formed the Confederacy
0:47:20 > 0:47:22and in April 1861,
0:47:22 > 0:47:25the first shots were fired in the American Civil War.
0:47:38 > 0:47:40It was the new medium of photography
0:47:40 > 0:47:45that produced the most compelling images of the Civil War.
0:47:53 > 0:47:56Most famous of the photographers was Mathew Brady
0:47:56 > 0:47:59who, together with his own team of cameramen,
0:47:59 > 0:48:02covered almost all the major events of the war.
0:48:07 > 0:48:12The Civil War claimed over 600,000 lives -
0:48:12 > 0:48:16greater than the American death toll of both World Wars combined.
0:48:17 > 0:48:19In 1865, the South surrendered.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23Officially, the country was at last united.
0:48:35 > 0:48:37But the lingering hurt and bitterness of war
0:48:37 > 0:48:41could still be glimpsed through American art.
0:48:42 > 0:48:46Though not an art you're likely to find in a gallery.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50This warehouse outside Philadelphia
0:48:50 > 0:48:54houses an impressive collection of antique American flags.
0:48:55 > 0:48:58So this is where we do all of our restoration.
0:48:58 > 0:49:04And we see ones here in various stages of mounting.
0:49:04 > 0:49:06Jeff Bridgman, who collects these flags,
0:49:06 > 0:49:08believes that if you know how to read them,
0:49:08 > 0:49:10you can follow the threads
0:49:10 > 0:49:13of America's long and complex struggle for identity.
0:49:16 > 0:49:19What's the basic symbolism of the American flag?
0:49:19 > 0:49:23Well, originally there were 13 stars
0:49:23 > 0:49:27in the form of a new constellation, and 13 stripes.
0:49:27 > 0:49:32And both of those counts reflect the number of original colonies.
0:49:32 > 0:49:36So the stars say that, instead of being separate colonies,
0:49:36 > 0:49:39- we are now a single constellation. - Yes,
0:49:39 > 0:49:44and when it said a new constellation, they never specified
0:49:44 > 0:49:47what that constellation was supposed to be.
0:49:47 > 0:49:49This is a great example here,
0:49:49 > 0:49:53where the stars are arranged in the form of one big star.
0:49:53 > 0:49:56So during the early years of American flag design,
0:49:56 > 0:49:59- you can kind of freeform it with the stars. Anything goes.- Yes.
0:49:59 > 0:50:02- It's a very American individualism. - It is, yeah.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05Have you got any other examples where you can look at a flag
0:50:05 > 0:50:07and it tells you about a moment in history?
0:50:07 > 0:50:11Yeah, particularly surrounding the Civil War. I have a good example here,
0:50:11 > 0:50:15where the maker has done something that Abraham Lincoln said
0:50:15 > 0:50:17specifically not to do,
0:50:17 > 0:50:21which was to remove the Southern states from the flag during the war.
0:50:21 > 0:50:24So you're saying Lincoln has explicitly instructed
0:50:24 > 0:50:27people in the North not to remove the Southern states,
0:50:27 > 0:50:31but some Northern patriot or other has done exactly that?
0:50:31 > 0:50:32Yes. Yeah.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36And this is what we call a Southern-exclusionary star count.
0:50:36 > 0:50:38The Green Mountain Boys
0:50:38 > 0:50:42was a nickname for the Vermont military unit,
0:50:42 > 0:50:44and they removed the Southern states.
0:50:44 > 0:50:48There's only 20 stars here. There ought to be 34, 35
0:50:48 > 0:50:52or if it was at the tail-end of the war, 36 stars.
0:50:52 > 0:50:57So this object, it seems that somebody is registering
0:50:57 > 0:51:00perhaps loss, certainly a degree of outrage...
0:51:00 > 0:51:02- Yes.- ..against the South.
0:51:02 > 0:51:06Maybe the woman that was most vocal about making this
0:51:06 > 0:51:09had lost a son to the South already
0:51:09 > 0:51:12and she has said, "No, those guys are out.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16"I'm not going to include those stars in the flag when I make it."
0:51:16 > 0:51:19- So this is done actually bang in the middle of the conflict?- Yes.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23This is actually the war itself in a flag.
0:51:23 > 0:51:26What about the other side of that political divide?
0:51:26 > 0:51:31Sure. This is a rather interesting flag,
0:51:31 > 0:51:34where the stars are configured
0:51:34 > 0:51:40in the Southern Cross, which is buried in the design of this flag
0:51:40 > 0:51:44and that was sort of a subtle way of displaying Southern sympathies.
0:51:44 > 0:51:50And they are doing that through that shape, which is...
0:51:50 > 0:51:52A display of the Southern Cross within the design.
0:51:52 > 0:51:56And when you say the Southern Cross, that's what you're talking about,
0:51:56 > 0:52:00so it's a way of getting that flag into this flag.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04- Hiding the Confederate battle flag within the Stars And Stripes. - Amazing.
0:52:04 > 0:52:08- When was this flag made? - This was made after the Civil War.
0:52:08 > 0:52:13So someone somewhere in the South wants to brandish against
0:52:13 > 0:52:17the victorious Northerners their sense of Southern independence.
0:52:17 > 0:52:19You may have beaten us but we still feel Southerners,
0:52:19 > 0:52:21- still don't feel part of you. - Precisely.
0:52:21 > 0:52:23I think it's fascinating.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26The violence of the conflict still seems to be imbedded in it,
0:52:26 > 0:52:29as if the shells are still going off in the sky somehow.
0:52:29 > 0:52:31It's got a kind of violence about it. A defiance.
0:52:31 > 0:52:32Yeah. Yeah.
0:52:32 > 0:52:34It's almost like the rebel yell.
0:52:43 > 0:52:45Yet the scars of war DID heal.
0:52:45 > 0:52:49The states were now not only united, but growing ever more rapidly.
0:52:52 > 0:52:56Successive waves of industrialists and prospectors
0:52:56 > 0:53:00eagerly exploited the country's wealth of natural resources.
0:53:05 > 0:53:11In 1869, construction of the first transcontinental railway was completed,
0:53:11 > 0:53:14opening the way for the commercial unification of America.
0:53:18 > 0:53:19Within 20 years,
0:53:19 > 0:53:23the Western frontier had reached its furthest possible point -
0:53:23 > 0:53:29the Pacific Ocean - and was declared officially closed.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33This was the moment when the West was finally won.
0:53:33 > 0:53:38The first chapter in the history of modern America was coming to an end.
0:53:43 > 0:53:47Until now, artists such as Audubon, Catlin and Cole,
0:53:47 > 0:53:50those who had protested against the implacable expansion
0:53:50 > 0:53:53of industrial, urban America,
0:53:53 > 0:53:55were unheeded voices in the wilderness.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01Yet American art did have the power to stop
0:54:01 > 0:54:03the juggernaut in its tracks.
0:54:03 > 0:54:07Or at least to give those driving it pause for thought.
0:54:10 > 0:54:12In the summer of 1871,
0:54:12 > 0:54:15a government-funded geological expedition
0:54:15 > 0:54:18set off into the Yellowstone region of the northwest United States.
0:54:22 > 0:54:26The group included a photographer, William Henry Jackson,
0:54:26 > 0:54:29and a young landscape painter, Thomas Moran.
0:54:33 > 0:54:35The point of the expedition was to survey the land
0:54:35 > 0:54:38for potential commercial development.
0:54:40 > 0:54:44But Jackson's photographs and Moran's watercolours
0:54:44 > 0:54:46had an entirely unexpected outcome.
0:54:47 > 0:54:50Congressmen in Washington were so impressed by the spectacular images
0:54:50 > 0:54:55that they passed a bill designating the Yellowstone region
0:54:55 > 0:54:57America's first National Park.
0:54:59 > 0:55:03This particular corner of America, at least,
0:55:03 > 0:55:06would be preserved unspoilt for future generations.
0:55:10 > 0:55:14Thomas Moran's painting of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
0:55:14 > 0:55:18is one of the most exultantly monumental depictions
0:55:18 > 0:55:23of vast, sublime, wild American nature,
0:55:23 > 0:55:26and yet I think it also marks the moment
0:55:26 > 0:55:31when the wilderness has ceased to seem truly wild,
0:55:31 > 0:55:34the moment when Americans feel
0:55:34 > 0:55:39they have finally become the landlords of their own vast country.
0:55:41 > 0:55:46Look at the way the artist has framed and contained the scene,
0:55:46 > 0:55:51look at the way he's turned it into a picturesque view.
0:55:52 > 0:55:59He's even given us a kind of platform on which safely to stand
0:55:59 > 0:56:02as we contemplate this vast panorama.
0:56:02 > 0:56:08I can almost imagine a modern tourist bus park on this spot,
0:56:08 > 0:56:12disgorging people out to enjoy the landscape.
0:56:13 > 0:56:17And when I look at this, I think what a huge distance we've travelled
0:56:17 > 0:56:19in the American attitude to nature.
0:56:19 > 0:56:24Think all the way back to John White, Shakespeare's contemporary,
0:56:24 > 0:56:29arriving in America and finding it a hostile, dangerous,
0:56:29 > 0:56:37unsettling place, peopled by Calibans, an island full of noises.
0:56:37 > 0:56:42That sense of a vast, mysterious, dangerous place
0:56:42 > 0:56:45has completely evaporated in this picture.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49All the elements of what once seemed so dangerous are there.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52The torrential waterfall, the raging torrent...
0:56:55 > 0:56:59..but they're just elements in a beautiful view.
0:56:59 > 0:57:04There's the Indian. He's no longer a foe but he's a friendly guide.
0:57:04 > 0:57:09And in its representation of a wilderness made tame,
0:57:09 > 0:57:11I think Moran's picture is also
0:57:11 > 0:57:14a distillation of the fundamental paradox
0:57:14 > 0:57:18that lies behind the creation of the Yellowstone as a National Park,
0:57:18 > 0:57:21because, after all, once a fragment of wilderness
0:57:21 > 0:57:23has been designated a park,
0:57:23 > 0:57:27it can't truly be said to be wilderness any longer.
0:57:27 > 0:57:33And I wonder if Moran didn't include a small note of unease
0:57:33 > 0:57:35in the form of this detail,
0:57:35 > 0:57:38this slightly troubling detail in the foreground -
0:57:38 > 0:57:42it's the carcass of a deer, placed just above his signature.
0:57:44 > 0:57:48It reminds me of Thomas Cole's axe-felled tree stump,
0:57:48 > 0:57:54it's evidence of the handiwork of man, it's the emblem of a death.
0:57:54 > 0:57:57It's an intriguing memento mori
0:57:57 > 0:58:00and perhaps an emblem of Moran's own awareness
0:58:00 > 0:58:02that the birth of the park
0:58:02 > 0:58:07also marked the death of truly wild nature.
0:58:28 > 0:58:30Subtitles by Red Bee Media
0:58:30 > 0:58:33E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk