0:00:02 > 0:00:09This programme contains some strong language
0:00:14 > 0:00:18Las Vegas. It isn't just a city.
0:00:18 > 0:00:23It's the world's largest, brightest, brashest neon work of art.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30I also think it's a perfect symbol
0:00:30 > 0:00:33of what America's been for so much of the modern age.
0:00:33 > 0:00:38It stands for its irrepressible, unsleeping,
0:00:38 > 0:00:40can-do spirit of optimism.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44This astonishing something created out of nothing.
0:00:44 > 0:00:47An Emerald City rising where 100 years ago,
0:00:47 > 0:00:49there was just desert.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58Like the rest of America, Vegas was built on an ideal,
0:00:58 > 0:01:04a place where anyone can turn fantasy into reality.
0:01:04 > 0:01:06Where anyone can get rich.
0:01:06 > 0:01:09Where anyone can become President.
0:01:09 > 0:01:12Free market, free society, that was the dream.
0:01:24 > 0:01:26But is it all a mirage?
0:01:26 > 0:01:29In the new world of the 21st century,
0:01:29 > 0:01:31America seems like a country in crisis,
0:01:31 > 0:01:33a nation that's lost its swagger,
0:01:33 > 0:01:36and along with that the belief that ITS values, life, liberty,
0:01:36 > 0:01:38the pursuit of happiness,
0:01:38 > 0:01:42should be THE core values of the civilised world.
0:01:42 > 0:01:47It's become a more plural society, but also a more anxious one.
0:01:47 > 0:01:51And I think if you want to truly understand the vast changes
0:01:51 > 0:01:55that have transformed America's ways of seeing and thinking,
0:01:55 > 0:01:57there's no better way to do that
0:01:57 > 0:02:01than by exploring the story of American art.
0:02:26 > 0:02:28In the years after World War II, suburban America
0:02:28 > 0:02:32became the battleground for the soul of the nation.
0:02:32 > 0:02:37An unprecedented economic boom enabled ordinary Americans
0:02:37 > 0:02:39to enjoy all the pleasures of modern life.
0:02:39 > 0:02:45Motorcars, fridges, freezers, television sets.
0:02:46 > 0:02:50But this sense of security was bought at a price.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57The invention of the atom bomb brought about a new world order.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00From now on, the USA and the Soviet Union
0:03:00 > 0:03:03would be locked in a rival nuclear stalemate,
0:03:03 > 0:03:06each defining itself as hero nation
0:03:06 > 0:03:09with a mission to vanquish the enemy.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12And with the most deadly of all weapons available to the Russians,
0:03:12 > 0:03:17no people in the world can feel secure against this aggression.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23We believe in freedom.
0:03:23 > 0:03:29Freedom, born of the conviction that every person is a child of God,
0:03:29 > 0:03:32and is therefore of supreme worth.
0:03:32 > 0:03:37We want freedom for ourselves, for everyone.
0:03:46 > 0:03:49In Russia, the state owned everything.
0:03:49 > 0:03:55The American way was about private home ownership and free enterprise.
0:03:55 > 0:03:59In the late '40s, the US government encouraged entrepreneur builders
0:03:59 > 0:04:04like William J Levitt, to create affordable homes for the masses.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11Levittown, in Long Island, New York, is a perfect example
0:04:11 > 0:04:15of the new American suburbs that went up in the 1940s and 1950s.
0:04:15 > 0:04:2117,500 houses constructed in just four years.
0:04:21 > 0:04:23Built from cheap affordable materials,
0:04:23 > 0:04:27and assembled using a version of the same production-line process
0:04:27 > 0:04:31that Henry Ford had applied to the mass manufacture of automobiles.
0:04:31 > 0:04:35These simple, box-like structures
0:04:35 > 0:04:38were the homes of a new form of the American Dream.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52But if Levittown's cookie-cutter houses all looked the same,
0:04:52 > 0:04:55then so did the faces.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00Levittown rules explicitly barred any residents
0:05:00 > 0:05:02who were not of the Caucasian race.
0:05:04 > 0:05:06The dream might be for you
0:05:06 > 0:05:10if you were a white Anglo-Saxon patriot, preferably male.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14But of course, beneath the surface,
0:05:14 > 0:05:18America was teeming with desperate housewives,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20blacks, Hispanics, and many others
0:05:20 > 0:05:25whose fears and frustrations remained completely obscured.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33In 1954, small-town Southern boy, Jasper Johns,
0:05:33 > 0:05:35settled in New York city,
0:05:35 > 0:05:40and began to paint the ultimate symbol of American-ness.
0:05:40 > 0:05:42The Stars and Stripes.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46He painted subtle variations on it,
0:05:46 > 0:05:50but always fetishising the same familiar image.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58At the time, most American artists were painting
0:05:58 > 0:06:01intellectual abstractions.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04Johns' flags seemed refreshingly new and direct.
0:06:04 > 0:06:06But what were they?
0:06:07 > 0:06:10Outpourings of patriotic fervour?
0:06:10 > 0:06:12A different kind of abstraction?
0:06:12 > 0:06:14Or something else?
0:06:14 > 0:06:17The Metropolitan Museum in New York houses my favourite
0:06:17 > 0:06:22of Johns' flags, painted not in the usual red white and blue,
0:06:22 > 0:06:25but simply white and on a vast scale.
0:06:29 > 0:06:32When Johns first presented his flag pictures
0:06:32 > 0:06:34to the American public in the 1950s,
0:06:34 > 0:06:39he was extremely reticent about their meanings.
0:06:39 > 0:06:44He said, "I simply paint things the mind already knows."
0:06:44 > 0:06:49The implication being that the flag was almost a non-subject,
0:06:49 > 0:06:51it was such a universally recognisable symbol
0:06:51 > 0:06:54that what meaning could it possibly possess?
0:06:54 > 0:06:58These were purely formal paintings.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01What a load of nonsense.
0:07:01 > 0:07:06These are angry, passionate pictures,
0:07:06 > 0:07:10they are Johns' way of saying, of expressing
0:07:10 > 0:07:15what he felt was wrong with American society in the 1950s.
0:07:15 > 0:07:16Contentless?
0:07:16 > 0:07:18Hardly.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22Look at what this picture is made of.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25It's made of a collage of newsprint,
0:07:25 > 0:07:29a babble of muffled American voices,
0:07:29 > 0:07:37muffled by this thick heavy layer of encaustic beeswax oil-paint.
0:07:39 > 0:07:40The picture is a metaphor.
0:07:40 > 0:07:45The picture is a metaphor for Johns' perception that America is a place
0:07:45 > 0:07:48where you're supposed to have freedom of speech,
0:07:48 > 0:07:50you're supposed to have freedom of behaviour
0:07:50 > 0:07:54but actually, you don't.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58This is a picture of America, as it were, buried beneath
0:07:58 > 0:08:03the thick, heavy snow of a cold
0:08:03 > 0:08:06and illiberal idea
0:08:06 > 0:08:09of patriotic duty.
0:08:14 > 0:08:18Johns had good reason to be anxious about the moral status quo.
0:08:20 > 0:08:22He was living in a homosexual relationship
0:08:22 > 0:08:24with artist Robert Rauschenberg,
0:08:24 > 0:08:26which was not only illegal,
0:08:26 > 0:08:29but in an age of McCarthyite witch-hunts,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33it could also get you branded as a dangerous commie subversive.
0:08:42 > 0:08:45To be a fine, upstanding member of American society,
0:08:45 > 0:08:48you had to embrace all its values,
0:08:48 > 0:08:52above all, the freedom to shop.
0:08:59 > 0:09:04This was the moment when advertising came of age,
0:09:04 > 0:09:06when ad men learnt how to stop lecturing,
0:09:06 > 0:09:10and instead practise the dark arts of seduction.
0:09:12 > 0:09:14They exploited hyperreal colours
0:09:14 > 0:09:17and graphic brand logos to repeat the mantra,
0:09:17 > 0:09:21"You can never have too much".
0:09:31 > 0:09:33By the early '60s,
0:09:33 > 0:09:35a new generation of artists
0:09:35 > 0:09:38was confronting the strangeness of consumer society.
0:09:38 > 0:09:41Jasper Johns and his flags had already begun
0:09:41 > 0:09:45to dig beneath the surface of America's brave new world.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48Those who followed called themselves pop artists,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51their subject being popular culture.
0:09:51 > 0:09:53Their work seemed just as enticing
0:09:53 > 0:09:57as the goods piled high in the new shopping malls...
0:09:57 > 0:10:00but it concealed a bitter aftertaste.
0:10:03 > 0:10:06Claes Oldenburg made supersize,
0:10:06 > 0:10:10floppily repulsive hamburgers out of stuffed cloth
0:10:10 > 0:10:12as if to lay bare
0:10:12 > 0:10:16the excesses provoked by the rise of fast food chains.
0:10:19 > 0:10:21The dot matrix language of comics
0:10:21 > 0:10:23inspired the work of Roy Lichtenstein,
0:10:23 > 0:10:26but always with an uneasy sense that the modern world
0:10:26 > 0:10:30was simplifying human emotions to cartoon stereotypes.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38James Rosenquist created vast canvases of collaged images,
0:10:38 > 0:10:41poster-bright impressions of the modern world,
0:10:41 > 0:10:44mimicking the vomitous splurge
0:10:44 > 0:10:47of America's yowling jungle of signs.
0:10:51 > 0:10:55Like most pop artists, Rosenquist began as a commercial artist,
0:10:55 > 0:10:58part of the very establishment that he would go on to parody
0:10:58 > 0:11:01in his later work.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05Now 77,
0:11:05 > 0:11:10Rosenquist is one of the last truly great surviving pop artists.
0:11:10 > 0:11:13And he's still making his vast pictures.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Here's a late number I did this year.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18It's called,
0:11:18 > 0:11:23"The Richest Person Looking At A Universe...
0:11:23 > 0:11:25"Through A Hubcap."
0:11:25 > 0:11:28It's not THE universe, it's A universe
0:11:28 > 0:11:30because there's many universes.
0:11:31 > 0:11:34In his early years, Rosenquist earned a living
0:11:34 > 0:11:37by painting ads on the billboards of Times Square.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40That's him, bottom right.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43I painted everything you can imagine
0:11:43 > 0:11:45in Times Square,
0:11:45 > 0:11:47from food,
0:11:47 > 0:11:49to movie stars,
0:11:49 > 0:11:51to everything.
0:11:51 > 0:11:55I mean, you know, when I was painting big movie stars,
0:11:55 > 0:11:58their heads were as wide as this room.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01So I'd paint the hair down to the eyelid, right here,
0:12:01 > 0:12:04it was a good place to stop for blending skin.
0:12:05 > 0:12:09Then after lunch, I'd paint from the eye
0:12:09 > 0:12:11all the way down cheeks
0:12:11 > 0:12:15which were multicoloured pastel things,
0:12:15 > 0:12:17down to the corner of the lips.
0:12:17 > 0:12:19Paint the top lip,
0:12:20 > 0:12:24and then next morning finish the job.
0:12:24 > 0:12:27You took all that and put it in your art, billboard scale,
0:12:27 > 0:12:28colours that shout at you,
0:12:28 > 0:12:30images that shout at you,
0:12:30 > 0:12:34was there a part of you that actually was in love with that,
0:12:34 > 0:12:36that was seduced by it?
0:12:36 > 0:12:38No, I thought they were terrible! They were like...
0:12:38 > 0:12:41eyesores!
0:12:41 > 0:12:43Since I was a kid I listened to,
0:12:43 > 0:12:47# Rinse so white rinse so white Happy little wash day song... #
0:12:47 > 0:12:49I hated fucking advertising.
0:12:49 > 0:12:52I hated it all my life and here I was,
0:12:52 > 0:12:56painting gigantic advertisements in Times Square.
0:12:56 > 0:12:58So I began to think,
0:12:58 > 0:13:02"Can I take fragments of billboard imagery,
0:13:02 > 0:13:06"assemble them in a picture plane, that meant nothing."
0:13:06 > 0:13:10If you look hard enough, it means nothing.
0:13:10 > 0:13:12Are you saying to me
0:13:12 > 0:13:15that those wonderful, huge, early works,
0:13:15 > 0:13:18are you saying that they are in a sense anti-billboards,
0:13:18 > 0:13:20kind of cutting against...?
0:13:20 > 0:13:23Exactly, exactly.
0:13:23 > 0:13:26This enlarged imagery is really empty.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30And that's what I wanted to show.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37The one pop artist whose work seemed to embrace consumerism
0:13:37 > 0:13:39was Andy Warhol.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43He took America's most familiar mass-produced objects
0:13:43 > 0:13:46and re-presented them as art,
0:13:46 > 0:13:47an art of numb repetition
0:13:47 > 0:13:50that mimicked the production line.
0:13:50 > 0:13:52His critics accused him of selling out,
0:13:52 > 0:13:56but they didn't get the true starkness of his message.
0:13:58 > 0:14:00There's a common misconception about Andy Warhol,
0:14:00 > 0:14:04the idea that he was a mere gimmick-monger,
0:14:04 > 0:14:08a trickster on the New York art scene,
0:14:08 > 0:14:12a man purely obsessed by celebrity,
0:14:12 > 0:14:13status and money.
0:14:14 > 0:14:16But it's not true.
0:14:16 > 0:14:18Andy Warhol...
0:14:18 > 0:14:20was, for my money,
0:14:20 > 0:14:22the single most significant American artist
0:14:22 > 0:14:25of the second half of the 20th century,
0:14:25 > 0:14:28a great philosopher, describer,
0:14:28 > 0:14:31a man who really understood
0:14:31 > 0:14:33what it was that made
0:14:33 > 0:14:36this new, post-war American civilisation
0:14:36 > 0:14:40unlike any other civilisation that had preceded it.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43In this world there's variety,
0:14:43 > 0:14:45but only of a certain kind.
0:14:46 > 0:14:48That's the subject of this,
0:14:48 > 0:14:50one of his earliest series of pictures
0:14:50 > 0:14:52I think it's one of his greatest series of pictures,
0:14:52 > 0:14:55the Campbell's soup tins.
0:14:55 > 0:14:57We begin with tomato soup,
0:14:57 > 0:14:59vegetable soup, green pea soup,
0:14:59 > 0:15:03we come all the way through to bean with bacon soup,
0:15:03 > 0:15:05cream of chicken soup, turkey noodle,
0:15:05 > 0:15:09minestrone Italian style vegetable soup,
0:15:09 > 0:15:11new "great as a sauce too"
0:15:11 > 0:15:12Cheddar cheese soup.
0:15:14 > 0:15:17You can have all this,
0:15:17 > 0:15:21but then again everyone else can have all this too.
0:15:21 > 0:15:25It's variety, but it's also a trap.
0:15:25 > 0:15:29And I love the way that the paintings are laid out,
0:15:29 > 0:15:33almost as if they're lining a cell
0:15:33 > 0:15:34that you can pace,
0:15:34 > 0:15:36but you can't ever escape from.
0:15:36 > 0:15:39I think this is Warhol's way of saying,
0:15:39 > 0:15:41"This is your world, America.
0:15:41 > 0:15:45"This is the prison you've made for yourself."
0:15:48 > 0:15:51To help him generate his mass-produced art,
0:15:51 > 0:15:54Warhol surrounded himself with a group of free spirits
0:15:54 > 0:15:56in The Factory,
0:15:56 > 0:15:59his aptly-named Manhattan studio.
0:15:59 > 0:16:02It was THE hip hangout for bohemians,
0:16:02 > 0:16:03speed freaks,
0:16:03 > 0:16:05anyone hoping to attain
0:16:05 > 0:16:08Warhol's 15 minutes of fame.
0:16:10 > 0:16:12So glamorous! Oh!
0:16:15 > 0:16:18One of The Factory stalwarts was photographer Billy Name,
0:16:18 > 0:16:21who started out as Warhol's lover,
0:16:21 > 0:16:25but quickly became the visual chronicler of The Factory scene.
0:16:25 > 0:16:2745 years on,
0:16:27 > 0:16:29Billy lives in the town of Poughkeepsie
0:16:29 > 0:16:31in upstate New York.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35These are actually
0:16:35 > 0:16:39silkscreen prints of some of my photographs.
0:16:39 > 0:16:40Here's Andy on the telephone.
0:16:40 > 0:16:44Now what's more important than Andy on the telephone?
0:16:44 > 0:16:46In the early years especially,
0:16:46 > 0:16:48he was always on the telephone.
0:16:48 > 0:16:50You were the original fly on the wall,
0:16:50 > 0:16:52I mean, in the sense that you were so ever present
0:16:52 > 0:16:54- people just stopped seeing you. - I was.
0:16:54 > 0:16:57They stopped seeing you, you could just record what was going on.
0:16:57 > 0:16:59I just could live there, be there,
0:16:59 > 0:17:02and no-one would even pay any attention to me.
0:17:02 > 0:17:06And I did know Andy from the time he was a commercial artist,
0:17:06 > 0:17:11through the transition period to when he was a celebrated fine artist.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14So I went through that whole period with him.
0:17:14 > 0:17:16So I've known all the changes, all the Andys and...
0:17:16 > 0:17:19All the Andys! I like it!
0:17:19 > 0:17:22If you wanted to explain to somebody who'd never heard of Andy Warhol,
0:17:22 > 0:17:25you know, who never knew who this guy was,
0:17:25 > 0:17:29you know, what would you say the point of those Brillo boxes
0:17:29 > 0:17:30and those Del Monte boxes,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33you know, remade and presented as works of art?
0:17:33 > 0:17:35What was he trying to say,
0:17:35 > 0:17:38or what were you all trying to communicate with this?
0:17:38 > 0:17:40Well, what we were trying to say was that
0:17:40 > 0:17:42you live in art.
0:17:42 > 0:17:43You go to the supermarket
0:17:43 > 0:17:47and you go down the rows of cans and they're all just
0:17:47 > 0:17:48stacks and stacks
0:17:48 > 0:17:51of icons on your shelves,
0:17:51 > 0:17:54and you're living in art.
0:17:54 > 0:17:58And Andy was fascinated with the lucidity of repetition,
0:17:58 > 0:18:02the absolute clarity of what you can see
0:18:02 > 0:18:07because in a supermarket they really want you to see what's there.
0:18:07 > 0:18:09And so we produced
0:18:09 > 0:18:12these boxes like the Brillo box
0:18:12 > 0:18:16in a numerous occasion so you saw what was there,
0:18:16 > 0:18:19and you could not escape the Brillo box
0:18:19 > 0:18:21and the reality of it.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23I think of him as almost like a mirror,
0:18:23 > 0:18:25- I think of his art like a mirror.- Yes.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28It's like, "Look, this is your world, I'm mirroring it to you."
0:18:28 > 0:18:29He is, yes.
0:18:29 > 0:18:32The older artists considered
0:18:32 > 0:18:36the artist as a hero
0:18:36 > 0:18:38whereas when Andy came,
0:18:38 > 0:18:41he was the artist as a zero.
0:18:41 > 0:18:44The previous generation had been,
0:18:44 > 0:18:48turn your back on the surface culture,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51you don't want to deal with that, it's cheap,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55it's shallow, and don't go into that water.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58Whereas Warhol would say,
0:18:58 > 0:19:00instead of turning our back on it,
0:19:00 > 0:19:04let's just turn around, face it, and take it over and manipulate it.
0:19:11 > 0:19:13Warhol saw that America treated celebrities
0:19:13 > 0:19:15just as it treated products,
0:19:15 > 0:19:19as objects replicated for mass consumption.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23A single image, screenprinted over and over,
0:19:23 > 0:19:25evokes a row of magazine covers,
0:19:25 > 0:19:26the frames of a film,
0:19:26 > 0:19:29a stack of TV screens.
0:19:30 > 0:19:32But Warhol's most powerful work
0:19:32 > 0:19:36is his "Death and Disaster" series, begun in 1962.
0:19:36 > 0:19:38Race riots.
0:19:38 > 0:19:40Atomic bombs.
0:19:40 > 0:19:42Electric chairs.
0:19:43 > 0:19:45Car crashes.
0:19:45 > 0:19:49All are made from actual press photographs.
0:19:49 > 0:19:50In America,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52even death is reproduced
0:19:52 > 0:19:54and homogenised.
0:19:58 > 0:20:00I think what Warhol was driving at
0:20:00 > 0:20:03in those pictures was the way in which the big media,
0:20:03 > 0:20:05television and the newspapers,
0:20:05 > 0:20:10were desensitising Americans by exposing them continually
0:20:10 > 0:20:13to horrific images, whether of war, or of car crashes.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17Warhol said in relation to the car crash paintings,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20"When you see a gruesome image once, it shocks you,
0:20:20 > 0:20:22"when you see it again and again and again,
0:20:22 > 0:20:25"you stop thinking about it, it stops bothering you".
0:20:25 > 0:20:27I think he felt that something
0:20:27 > 0:20:30strange and bizarre and unpleasant
0:20:30 > 0:20:32was happening to the American psyche,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34he felt that Americans were being desensitised.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37Perhaps his darkest statement of all
0:20:37 > 0:20:40was simply when he said,
0:20:40 > 0:20:42"I think in the 1960s,
0:20:42 > 0:20:46"Americans forgot what emotions were supposed to be,
0:20:46 > 0:20:50"and I don't think they've ever remembered."
0:20:53 > 0:20:55Warhol portrayed the car
0:20:55 > 0:20:57as just another of America's morbid machines,
0:20:57 > 0:21:00mass producing road crash deaths
0:21:00 > 0:21:03for tabloid readers to gawk at.
0:21:03 > 0:21:07But others saw the car in a far more romantic light.
0:21:07 > 0:21:09It was a way to leave behind
0:21:09 > 0:21:12the suburbs and the shopping malls...
0:21:13 > 0:21:17..and disappear down the endless open road.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20As Jack Kerouac wrote,
0:21:20 > 0:21:23"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me,
0:21:23 > 0:21:25"as is ever so on the road."
0:21:26 > 0:21:29For several generations of American artists,
0:21:29 > 0:21:32above all American photographers,
0:21:32 > 0:21:34the car on the road,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37becomes, literally,
0:21:37 > 0:21:39a mobile studio-cum-darkroom,
0:21:39 > 0:21:42from which...
0:21:42 > 0:21:44a whole series of photographers create
0:21:44 > 0:21:46a set of disconcerting,
0:21:46 > 0:21:51kaleidoscopically fractured images of America, all seen
0:21:51 > 0:21:54from the perspective of the two lane blacktop.
0:22:13 > 0:22:14When pictured from a car,
0:22:14 > 0:22:18the subtle differences and dissonances of American society
0:22:18 > 0:22:20often became more apparent.
0:22:23 > 0:22:24The road photographers showed
0:22:24 > 0:22:27that within Warhol's mass-produced society,
0:22:27 > 0:22:29same church,
0:22:29 > 0:22:30same shopping mall,
0:22:30 > 0:22:32same gas station,
0:22:32 > 0:22:35there was still room for the individual.
0:22:36 > 0:22:38And that people who seemed rootless,
0:22:38 > 0:22:41alienated and unhappy,
0:22:41 > 0:22:44still travelled on in search of a better life
0:22:44 > 0:22:45somewhere else.
0:22:45 > 0:22:47Because in one form or another,
0:22:47 > 0:22:49the trailblazing spirit
0:22:49 > 0:22:51still lived on in America.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY: 'We choose to go to the moon
0:23:01 > 0:23:04'because that challenge is one we're willing to accept,
0:23:04 > 0:23:07'and one we intend to win.'
0:23:11 > 0:23:13As the US and Russia raced skywards
0:23:13 > 0:23:16to reach the furthest frontiers of space,
0:23:16 > 0:23:18ordinary men and women
0:23:18 > 0:23:20followed their astronaut heroes
0:23:20 > 0:23:22from the comfort of their living rooms.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25But for anyone in search of their own frontier,
0:23:25 > 0:23:29American history favoured just one direction -
0:23:29 > 0:23:30west.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36A century after the last pioneers trekked across the continent,
0:23:36 > 0:23:39the west was still seen as the direction of progress -
0:23:39 > 0:23:40the future.
0:23:42 > 0:23:45And if you kept going west, you reached Los Angeles.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48In the '60s, it was one of the youngest,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51fastest-growing cities in America,
0:23:51 > 0:23:53home to Walt Disney's first theme park,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56and of course, Hollywood.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59Here, the car was not only a symbol of freedom,
0:23:59 > 0:24:01it was a necessity,
0:24:01 > 0:24:04the only way to navigate a city so vast,
0:24:04 > 0:24:05so strung out.
0:24:12 > 0:24:17I'll never forget the first time I came to LA,
0:24:17 > 0:24:20I was very young, it was a very long time ago.
0:24:20 > 0:24:23I rented a Buick and I set off
0:24:23 > 0:24:25with naive enthusiasm
0:24:25 > 0:24:30to find the centre of this great megalopolis.
0:24:30 > 0:24:34After about three days of driving and driving
0:24:34 > 0:24:35and driving and driving,
0:24:35 > 0:24:37the penny suddenly dropped, I realised
0:24:37 > 0:24:40this is a city that doesn't HAVE a centre!
0:24:40 > 0:24:43What it's got
0:24:43 > 0:24:46is a huge sprawl
0:24:46 > 0:24:50of districts and neighbourhoods, seemingly the same as each other,
0:24:50 > 0:24:53all linked together by a vast spaghetti of a road system.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55I have to say I hated the whole experience,
0:24:55 > 0:24:57I found it thoroughly alienating.
0:24:57 > 0:24:59I just couldn't cope with it.
0:24:59 > 0:25:01Now over the years,
0:25:01 > 0:25:03I feel I have learned,
0:25:03 > 0:25:06actually, to appreciate and enjoy this place,
0:25:06 > 0:25:09and I now think of LA as one of the most thrilling, vibrant,
0:25:09 > 0:25:11visually exhilarating built environments
0:25:11 > 0:25:13ever created by mankind.
0:25:13 > 0:25:15But it took something to unlock
0:25:15 > 0:25:19that in me, and what that something was,
0:25:19 > 0:25:23was the art created by painters who've lived here in LA,
0:25:23 > 0:25:26it was looking at how they painted the city,
0:25:26 > 0:25:28at how they saw the city,
0:25:28 > 0:25:30that taught ME how to enjoy it.
0:25:38 > 0:25:41For artists, LA was a place
0:25:41 > 0:25:46free of the long, European oriented history of the East coast,
0:25:46 > 0:25:49a blank canvas on which to experiment.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52The quality of light was different here.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00Richard Diebenkorn saw the city's bright planes of colour,
0:26:00 > 0:26:03the sky, the sea, the tarmac, and distilled them in paint -
0:26:03 > 0:26:08romantic images that borrowed from cubism and expressionism,
0:26:08 > 0:26:10to conjure an abstract beauty
0:26:10 > 0:26:12from LA's endless samey sprawl.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20Wayne Thiebaud's candy-coloured objects of desire
0:26:20 > 0:26:22captured the plastic brightness
0:26:22 > 0:26:25of LA's must-have pop culture,
0:26:25 > 0:26:27a sickly-sweet temptation.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38And Ed Ruscha used advertising's flat graphic shorthand
0:26:38 > 0:26:41to pick out some of LA's defining images.
0:26:45 > 0:26:47Back in '56,
0:26:47 > 0:26:49Ed Ruscha had left Oklahoma City
0:26:49 > 0:26:52to follow the same route as countless wannabe starlets,
0:26:52 > 0:26:54west to LA.
0:26:57 > 0:27:00His pop art paintings of the Hollywood sign
0:27:00 > 0:27:04seem at first glance to glory in the thrill of Tinseltown,
0:27:04 > 0:27:06in this case
0:27:06 > 0:27:10a big screen sunset as seen from behind the sign,
0:27:10 > 0:27:12up in the Hollywood hills.
0:27:17 > 0:27:19It doesn't take long to realise,
0:27:19 > 0:27:21in fact pretty much as soon as you get here
0:27:21 > 0:27:24you realise you can't actually achieve the point of view
0:27:24 > 0:27:26suggested by Ruscha's painting
0:27:26 > 0:27:28because he's placed the Hollywood sign
0:27:28 > 0:27:30on the summit of a hill that doesn't actually exist,
0:27:30 > 0:27:32the sign's on the side.
0:27:32 > 0:27:34I think that's part of the joke of the painting,
0:27:34 > 0:27:38I think it's an affectionately artificial play
0:27:38 > 0:27:40on the artifice that he saw as being central
0:27:40 > 0:27:42to this whole culture.
0:27:42 > 0:27:45He saw the Hollywood sign as, if you like,
0:27:45 > 0:27:47the quintessence of Hollywood itself.
0:27:47 > 0:27:51As he said with a mixture of affection and irony,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54"This is what Hollywood is,
0:27:54 > 0:27:57"a piece of fakery held up on sticks."
0:28:04 > 0:28:08LA in the '60s just loved artificiality.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12From the unfeasibly tall imported palm trees
0:28:12 > 0:28:16to the shape of the buildings, this was a city inventing itself.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19Its unique new architecture
0:28:19 > 0:28:21was known as Googie.
0:28:21 > 0:28:23Cheeky, referential,
0:28:23 > 0:28:26evoking a stack of jukebox records,
0:28:26 > 0:28:29or the speedfins of a Cadillac,
0:28:29 > 0:28:32it borrowed from the language of the car,
0:28:32 > 0:28:34the space rocket,
0:28:34 > 0:28:36the subatomic particle.
0:28:36 > 0:28:38This was modernism
0:28:38 > 0:28:39for the space age.
0:28:46 > 0:28:50I think the only way to really get the crazy beauty of LA
0:28:50 > 0:28:52is to drive through the city at night.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55When you do that, you realise this whole place...
0:28:57 > 0:28:59..is a kind of extraordinary,
0:28:59 > 0:29:03vast collective work of art.
0:29:03 > 0:29:05And the reason for that, is the fact
0:29:05 > 0:29:09that this is a city where everyone is always on the move.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12And that's why
0:29:12 > 0:29:14the architecture and the signage of LA
0:29:14 > 0:29:17has to shout in the way that it does,
0:29:17 > 0:29:21because it needs you to stop.
0:29:21 > 0:29:25It's saying, "Hey, buddy, come and buy my liquor,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27"come and get some gas,
0:29:27 > 0:29:31"enjoy the live nude girls, girls girls!"
0:29:31 > 0:29:32That's why this is,
0:29:32 > 0:29:35more than any other city in the world,
0:29:35 > 0:29:37it's the city of the sign.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42As the signs and symbols of advertising
0:29:42 > 0:29:45crowded in ever closer on American life,
0:29:45 > 0:29:47so pop art had mirrored the excesses
0:29:47 > 0:29:50of capitalism's increasingly loud,
0:29:50 > 0:29:52evangelical gospel -
0:29:52 > 0:29:53to consume.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02But a new wave of artists was emerging,
0:30:02 > 0:30:04who seemed to reflect a more puritanical side
0:30:04 > 0:30:07of the American character.
0:30:07 > 0:30:10They were known as the minimalists.
0:30:10 > 0:30:13They shared the pop artists' cool disdain for consumer society,
0:30:13 > 0:30:18but took a profoundly different approach to it in their art.
0:30:19 > 0:30:23What the minimalists hated about pop art
0:30:23 > 0:30:25was its apparent celebration of the bright,
0:30:25 > 0:30:28gaudy, tacky packaging
0:30:28 > 0:30:32in which American consumerism wrapped itself.
0:30:32 > 0:30:35Its embrace of the whole ethos
0:30:35 > 0:30:38of mass marketing and advertising,
0:30:38 > 0:30:42the ethos of buy two get one free, 57 varieties, the hard sell.
0:30:45 > 0:30:48The minimalists didn't avert their gaze
0:30:48 > 0:30:50from characteristic spaces of American life
0:30:50 > 0:30:52but they looked at them with different eyes,
0:30:52 > 0:30:55like Andy Warhol with his Campbell soup tin paintings,
0:30:55 > 0:30:58they drew inspiration from the supermarket.
0:30:58 > 0:31:00And while they purged
0:31:00 > 0:31:03and purified it of colour,
0:31:03 > 0:31:04image,
0:31:04 > 0:31:05detail,
0:31:05 > 0:31:10packaging, they still retained its strategies and its forms.
0:31:10 > 0:31:12Theirs would be an art
0:31:12 > 0:31:16made from mute accumulations of objects,
0:31:16 > 0:31:18carefully composed,
0:31:18 > 0:31:20rigorously arranged,
0:31:20 > 0:31:21neatly stacked.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31The minimalists reflected the coldness of consumerism,
0:31:31 > 0:31:34with the formal coldness of a new,
0:31:34 > 0:31:37scarily empty, art.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39A gallery full of their work
0:31:39 > 0:31:43is like a supermarket where the products can't actually be consumed,
0:31:43 > 0:31:45only contemplated
0:31:45 > 0:31:47in all their blankness.
0:31:47 > 0:31:50Minimalism is a good name
0:31:50 > 0:31:53for their vision of what American life had become,
0:31:53 > 0:31:56a life dominated by objects without meaning,
0:31:56 > 0:31:58without hope of transcendence.
0:32:02 > 0:32:05And yet, even in minimalism's rather bleak universe,
0:32:05 > 0:32:08there was room, perhaps, for hope,
0:32:08 > 0:32:10for dreaming,
0:32:10 > 0:32:12for light.
0:32:12 > 0:32:16In 1963, artist Dan Flavin began creating sculptures
0:32:16 > 0:32:20using nothing but that ubiquitous modern lighting unit,
0:32:20 > 0:32:22the fluorescent tube.
0:32:24 > 0:32:28As a gallery for his work, Flavin bought this former Baptist Church
0:32:28 > 0:32:31in the town of Bridgehampton, Long Island.
0:32:47 > 0:32:50Flavin's astonishing luminous art
0:32:50 > 0:32:52is perfectly minimal, in one sense.
0:32:52 > 0:32:55He's taken an element of modern life,
0:32:55 > 0:32:59common to supermarkets, offices, even seedy motels,
0:32:59 > 0:33:01and emptied it of meaning,
0:33:01 > 0:33:05used it to create a series of implacable geometric forms.
0:33:13 > 0:33:17But why put all this in a deconsecrated church,
0:33:17 > 0:33:21and arrange it like a series of chapels?
0:33:22 > 0:33:26Though Flavin denied any spiritual aspect to his work,
0:33:26 > 0:33:29it's surely significant that he'd studied for the priesthood
0:33:29 > 0:33:32before becoming an artist.
0:33:32 > 0:33:34Is there a nostalgia here,
0:33:34 > 0:33:36a yearning for divine light
0:33:36 > 0:33:40to pierce the godless soul of modern life?
0:33:43 > 0:33:47Or is he saying that the very idea of religious transcendence,
0:33:47 > 0:33:50is nothing more than an illusion,
0:33:50 > 0:33:54like a neon sign to be switched on or off?
0:33:54 > 0:33:57You can read it either way.
0:34:08 > 0:34:12By the late 60's, a succession of shocking clashes with authority
0:34:12 > 0:34:16was beginning to unravel the fabric of American society.
0:34:16 > 0:34:20Civil rights marchers were beaten by police,
0:34:20 > 0:34:23students protesting against the Vietnam War
0:34:23 > 0:34:26were gunned down by the National Guard.
0:34:26 > 0:34:28Faith in the established order
0:34:28 > 0:34:31was crumbling.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34Until now artists in post war America
0:34:34 > 0:34:36had expressed their unease with society
0:34:36 > 0:34:38in cool, ironic terms -
0:34:38 > 0:34:39pop's hard realism,
0:34:39 > 0:34:43or the chilly objectivity of the minimalists.
0:34:43 > 0:34:46But now the sheer atrocity of the times
0:34:46 > 0:34:49demanded a radical new response.
0:34:53 > 0:34:58For years, Philip Guston had painted subtle, tasteful compositions,
0:34:58 > 0:35:00like this of 1953.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03He was of the old pre-pop, pre-minimalist school,
0:35:03 > 0:35:04the abstract expressionists,
0:35:04 > 0:35:08rising above the mundanities of modern America
0:35:08 > 0:35:11to search for higher truths.
0:35:13 > 0:35:15But by the end of the '60s
0:35:15 > 0:35:18Guston felt he could no longer keep the world out of his art.
0:35:18 > 0:35:20"What kind of man am I", he said,
0:35:20 > 0:35:24"reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything,
0:35:24 > 0:35:29"and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?"
0:35:30 > 0:35:35So he began producing angry, comic-book satires,
0:35:35 > 0:35:37a shocking seismic shift
0:35:37 > 0:35:41that would change the course of American art itself.
0:35:43 > 0:35:45Guston's daughter, Musa Mayer,
0:35:45 > 0:35:49has preserved his studio pretty much as it was.
0:35:50 > 0:35:53So this is the studio.
0:35:53 > 0:35:57It feels to me almost as if he just left here!
0:35:57 > 0:36:00The painter's table, still spattered with paint.
0:36:00 > 0:36:03- I love it when there's paint on the floor.- Yes...
0:36:03 > 0:36:05- I always think of... - ..we left it.
0:36:05 > 0:36:07..it somehow as painter's blood.
0:36:07 > 0:36:09There it is, all the effort.
0:36:09 > 0:36:12You've left the paints and the brushes neatly arranged...
0:36:12 > 0:36:16Yes, and that cabinet is full of old paint.
0:36:16 > 0:36:18- Still?- Still full of old paint, yes.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21But tell me, because what I'm curious to know is,
0:36:21 > 0:36:24when he made this great shift, this great change,
0:36:24 > 0:36:26this new start, had the first exhibition...
0:36:28 > 0:36:31..what was the response, what did everybody in New York think,
0:36:31 > 0:36:32you know, when they turned up,
0:36:32 > 0:36:34and there it is, the new work?
0:36:34 > 0:36:38Well, very negatively, actually.
0:36:38 > 0:36:39Almost universally,
0:36:39 > 0:36:42the critics panned the new work,
0:36:42 > 0:36:44they were really shocked.
0:36:44 > 0:36:47But when you look at, say, a picture like this,
0:36:47 > 0:36:48the Ku Klux Klan,
0:36:49 > 0:36:50what's it called this one?
0:36:50 > 0:36:52This is called Riding Around.
0:36:52 > 0:36:54Riding Around. I mean,
0:36:54 > 0:36:58what do you think he was driving at by painting pictures like this?
0:36:58 > 0:37:02He had a whole cast of characters, he called them characters.
0:37:02 > 0:37:04And they were hooded figures,
0:37:04 > 0:37:07and yes, they resembled Klansmen,
0:37:07 > 0:37:12but they have a broader meaning, I think, that has to do
0:37:12 > 0:37:14with concealment and...
0:37:14 > 0:37:19what we reveal, and don't reveal, about ourselves.
0:37:19 > 0:37:21Do you think having these hooded figures,
0:37:21 > 0:37:23smoking their cigars,
0:37:23 > 0:37:24is his way of saying,
0:37:24 > 0:37:27"America is a place where people are concealing things,
0:37:27 > 0:37:30"concealing the truth from you. It's a place full of bigotry,
0:37:30 > 0:37:33- "full of racism, it's a place..." - It could be.
0:37:33 > 0:37:37- I mean look at the blood on the hoods there.- Oh, yeah, right.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39So they're definitely up to no good.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42I get the feeling that in a sense, with this late work
0:37:42 > 0:37:44it's as if he's almost
0:37:44 > 0:37:50popping the boil of his own frustration that's been building up,
0:37:50 > 0:37:53it's like he's lancing it, and all this pus is coming out,
0:37:53 > 0:37:55- which is sort of... - Good metaphor!
0:37:56 > 0:37:58You brought out this picture.
0:37:58 > 0:38:02So this is Nixon, with phlebitis, which he was plagued with,
0:38:02 > 0:38:07at San Clemente, which was his retreat on the beach in California.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11What do you think it symbolised for your dad, I mean this pussy leg?
0:38:11 > 0:38:15- Is it the corrupt administration? - To me it looks like a map.
0:38:15 > 0:38:18Doesn't it look like a map to you? In a way.
0:38:18 > 0:38:21I've always thought that this is like the body politic.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24Oh, that's a brilliant idea,
0:38:24 > 0:38:28so this is America, seeping pus...
0:38:28 > 0:38:30Seeping pus and blood,
0:38:30 > 0:38:33with the state lines drawn in blood and pus.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35That's a brilliant idea, hadn't occurred to me.
0:38:35 > 0:38:38So it really is a portrait of America,
0:38:38 > 0:38:40and he's got the American flag.
0:38:40 > 0:38:43I like to think this is almost a little embedded reference
0:38:43 > 0:38:47to Jasper Johns' flag paintings, the flag, but it's the flag melted,
0:38:47 > 0:38:51it's somehow gone rotten and there's Nixon, literally,
0:38:51 > 0:38:54presented as a dickhead,
0:38:54 > 0:38:57with a cock for a nose and two testicles for cheeks.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00I mean it's such a sort of vicious, satirical,
0:39:00 > 0:39:03- angry picture isn't it? - Yes, it is.
0:39:03 > 0:39:09And I notice that you've placed this wonderful picture...
0:39:09 > 0:39:11- pride of place, centre stage.- Yes.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15- I'm guessing that it has a special place in your heart? - It does, it does.
0:39:15 > 0:39:17In a sense it's a self-portrait.
0:39:17 > 0:39:22Um...it's a self-portrait of a self-portrait.
0:39:22 > 0:39:24The artist, the hooded figure.
0:39:24 > 0:39:29Because he acknowledged the... dark side of himself.
0:39:29 > 0:39:33He painted the dark side of himself, he had the courage to do that,
0:39:33 > 0:39:38which is something not many artists at that time were able to do.
0:39:38 > 0:39:40'Guston's disconcerting paintings
0:39:40 > 0:39:44'tore up the rule book of American art.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47'Until now, movement had followed movement
0:39:47 > 0:39:50'in a seemingly inevitable way -
0:39:50 > 0:39:53'abstract expressionism, pop, minimalism.
0:39:53 > 0:39:56'But after Guston anything was possible.'
0:40:01 > 0:40:06Postmodernism was the label critics tried to stick on this new uncertainty,
0:40:06 > 0:40:12but all that meant was that, from now on, art can be about anything you want.
0:40:12 > 0:40:17It was a reflection of what was happening in American society in the '70s -
0:40:17 > 0:40:20the rise of the individual.
0:40:20 > 0:40:22Black power, gay rights, women's lib.
0:40:22 > 0:40:26The emergence of marginalised, hidden voices.
0:40:29 > 0:40:34And art became a means of exploring those newly formed identities,
0:40:34 > 0:40:38whether through the street language of graffiti
0:40:38 > 0:40:41or the unflinching eye of the camera.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49In 1978, a 25-year-old photographer called Nan Goldin
0:40:49 > 0:40:52moved from Boston to Manhattan, New York.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56She came to the Lower East Side, then an extremely shabby district,
0:40:56 > 0:41:00because she was fascinated by its subculture,
0:41:00 > 0:41:06a mix of drag queens, heroin addicts and all other kinds of social outsiders.
0:41:14 > 0:41:18Nan Goldin photographed herself and the people she knew,
0:41:18 > 0:41:20in tenement buildings just like this one.
0:41:20 > 0:41:25Her pictures documented intimate moments,
0:41:25 > 0:41:29intentionally raw, unaltered, unstaged.
0:41:29 > 0:41:33She set out to capture her friends' lives,
0:41:33 > 0:41:37often lived in secret, behind closed doors.
0:41:37 > 0:41:39And when some of her friends began to die of AIDS
0:41:39 > 0:41:42she documented that too.
0:41:44 > 0:41:47But these pictures weren't voyeurism -
0:41:47 > 0:41:50they were Goldin's chronicle of her own life.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54She said, "My camera has saved my life.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57"It's made bearable things that feel unbearable."
0:42:01 > 0:42:03When I think of Nan Goldin's work,
0:42:03 > 0:42:08I can't help thinking back to Jasper Johns' White Flag,
0:42:08 > 0:42:15that image of the American flag, almost as a...as a quilt laid down,
0:42:15 > 0:42:21smothering the teeming multiplicity of America's many voices and many cultures
0:42:21 > 0:42:25and I think her achievement was to...
0:42:25 > 0:42:30was almost if you like to... lift a corner of that sheet
0:42:30 > 0:42:34and reveal this hidden, secret, quite dark world,
0:42:34 > 0:42:39but to do so in a beautifully affectionate and vibrant way.
0:42:48 > 0:42:52When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1981,
0:42:52 > 0:42:54he repackaged the American Dream.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00In an echo of 1950s Levittown,
0:43:00 > 0:43:05he believed the US could be made great again through home ownership.
0:43:05 > 0:43:10Now not only the marginalised voices would be heard, but the voice too of the little man -
0:43:10 > 0:43:13aspirational middle America.
0:43:15 > 0:43:19After all, if a B-list Hollywood actor could make it as President,
0:43:19 > 0:43:24then anyone could make it, regardless of class, background or taste.
0:43:27 > 0:43:32The artist who most perfectly captured that idea was Jeff Koons.
0:43:32 > 0:43:35His work transfigured the seemingly vulgar,
0:43:35 > 0:43:38the telltale lapse of taste of the nouveau riche.
0:43:39 > 0:43:41Most critics were horrified.
0:43:41 > 0:43:45Others saw a witty take on eclectic materialism.
0:43:45 > 0:43:50I think of Koons as Andy Warhol take two,
0:43:50 > 0:43:54but a Warhol who wants to liberate Americans to wallow in their taste,
0:43:54 > 0:43:57no matter how kitsch or obscene.
0:43:59 > 0:44:01But it's hard to know whether I'm right,
0:44:01 > 0:44:05or whether Koons has his tongue firmly in his cheek.
0:44:05 > 0:44:07Because if ever an artist was deadpan,
0:44:07 > 0:44:11more so even than Warhol, it's Jeff Koons.
0:44:12 > 0:44:15- Andrew, how are you?- I'm very well, it's so nice to see you.
0:44:15 > 0:44:19So what are you working on at the moment, paintings or sculptures?
0:44:19 > 0:44:23Well, you know, I'm always working on sculptures and paintings together
0:44:23 > 0:44:28and I'm working on a series called Antiquity right now,
0:44:28 > 0:44:32so I'm just in the process of finishing off some of the first ones.
0:44:32 > 0:44:35I know this is a work in progress
0:44:35 > 0:44:37but we've got a lot of, as it were, your motifs here,
0:44:37 > 0:44:42in the sense of the shiny inflatable, the sexy girl,
0:44:42 > 0:44:46this wonderful dolphin, and these again all seem to me
0:44:46 > 0:44:50to be playing into...imagery that everybody likes.
0:44:50 > 0:44:55So I think you've said to me in the past that you want everyone to feel they can participate in your work,
0:44:55 > 0:44:58you don't want to exclude anybody from it.
0:44:58 > 0:45:02Well, a piece like this I think an average viewer could look at...
0:45:02 > 0:45:07My daughter Scarlet, who's only one year old, was here at the studio three days ago,
0:45:07 > 0:45:13and I brought here in here and she's just pointing, "Ah, ah...", you know, and she loved the painting
0:45:13 > 0:45:17and she was relating to maybe the childlike quality of the monkey
0:45:17 > 0:45:21or just the feminine quality of the painting or the dolphin.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24When you're that age, you're open.
0:45:24 > 0:45:29I mean, it's just like...
0:45:29 > 0:45:33I mean, there's nothing that you're not open to,
0:45:33 > 0:45:36I mean, you're open to everything.
0:45:36 > 0:45:40And it's the opposite of being closed down, that... "Oh, that's kitsch."
0:45:40 > 0:45:43I don't believe in kitsch.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46I believe in things that they are as they are
0:45:46 > 0:45:48and they're perfect as what they are.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51And if lots of people like it, what's wrong with it?
0:45:51 > 0:45:56Yes. I see that as... as being generous,
0:45:56 > 0:46:00because what you want to do in life is remove anxiety.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03And the way you remove anxiety is through acceptance.
0:46:03 > 0:46:07My work always has been trying to communicate to people that
0:46:07 > 0:46:12it's all right to accept your own history, your cultural history,
0:46:12 > 0:46:18the things that you grew up with. I grew up with little knick-knack kind of little ceramic pieces.
0:46:18 > 0:46:22My grandparents had it, my parents would have had ceramic lights. That's OK.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26The painting that we had above our fireplace,
0:46:26 > 0:46:31which was just some commercial painting of some little hut out in a forest,
0:46:31 > 0:46:35that's what I looked at every evening. That's OK.
0:46:35 > 0:46:41My father and mother made us feel very much as though we were participating in the American Dream,
0:46:41 > 0:46:45that we were the middle class, but there was always a sense that we were moving up.
0:46:45 > 0:46:50And I was always brought up to be very self-reliant, self-sufficient,
0:46:50 > 0:46:53and a lot of it's about this sense of mobility.
0:46:53 > 0:46:57Can I ask you about these huge, almost billboard-sized photographs
0:46:57 > 0:47:01of you making love to your then wife La Cicciolina?
0:47:01 > 0:47:05There was something weirdly pure and innocent about it,
0:47:05 > 0:47:10as if you'd taken pornographic imagery and somehow made it sort of innocent.
0:47:10 > 0:47:12Were you trying to take that form
0:47:12 > 0:47:15and say, well, you needn't be degraded by it, or...
0:47:15 > 0:47:19You know, I still find myself puzzling over those pieces.
0:47:19 > 0:47:22Yep. What I wanted to do was to make a body of work
0:47:22 > 0:47:26that communicated the removal of guilt and shame,
0:47:26 > 0:47:29because I'm dealing with cultural guilt and shame.
0:47:29 > 0:47:33So I tried to use the body, and the insecurity that people have,
0:47:33 > 0:47:36the guilt and shame that they have with their own body,
0:47:36 > 0:47:41to again communicate this state of not having guilt and shame.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45And that's the highest state that art can take you.
0:47:45 > 0:47:48And there's no judgment, there's complete acceptance.
0:47:55 > 0:48:00However harshly most of the art establishment judged Koons' work,
0:48:00 > 0:48:04it scored a bull's-eye with wealthy bankers and social climbers.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07In fact, his work has since commanded
0:48:07 > 0:48:11some of the highest prices of any living artist.
0:48:11 > 0:48:15Economically, the '90s were a bit of a rollercoaster.
0:48:15 > 0:48:18But US confidence was at an all-time high.
0:48:18 > 0:48:20The old Soviet enemy had collapsed.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24It seemed like the good guys had won - game over.
0:48:24 > 0:48:30America sank back into a deep armchair of complacency.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33And the quintessential artistic expression of that
0:48:33 > 0:48:36appeared, aptly enough, not on a canvas,
0:48:36 > 0:48:39but on millions of television screens.
0:48:42 > 0:48:44The Simpsons are hardly a model family,
0:48:44 > 0:48:51and the programmes exude a corrosive cynicism about the ideals behind the old American Dream.
0:48:51 > 0:48:53Take Homer's advice to his children -
0:48:53 > 0:48:57"Well, kids, you tried and you failed, the lesson is - never try."
0:48:57 > 0:49:04And yet somehow the adventures of this curiously yellow family seem to me to announce a seismic shift
0:49:04 > 0:49:06in the story of American art.
0:49:06 > 0:49:11The whole show is saturated with cultural references of the broadest possible kind,
0:49:11 > 0:49:16guest appearances are made by characters as various as the pop musician Jon Bon Jovi
0:49:16 > 0:49:18and the reclusive artist Jasper Johns.
0:49:18 > 0:49:23But what the Simpsons says first and foremost is that anything and everything,
0:49:23 > 0:49:26from Dunkin' Donuts to the New York Philharmonic
0:49:26 > 0:49:30can be considered legitimately part of American culture.
0:49:35 > 0:49:41The Simpsons reflected the cultural overload of images streaming through the media and the internet.
0:49:41 > 0:49:46It became harder to tell, through this information blizzard, which way America was headed.
0:49:51 > 0:49:56And then, on September 11th 2001, the world changed.
0:50:10 > 0:50:15The terrorist acts of 9/11 were a murderous outrage,
0:50:15 > 0:50:19the public massacre of thousands of innocent people.
0:50:19 > 0:50:23And they were also planned
0:50:23 > 0:50:28with a hatefully potent sense of visual symbolism,
0:50:28 > 0:50:33flying American planes into American skyscrapers,
0:50:33 > 0:50:40those towering symbols of ascendancy, optimism,
0:50:40 > 0:50:46the free market economy, everything really that America stood for in the 20th century.
0:50:47 > 0:50:49And I think it had a shattering effect
0:50:49 > 0:50:53on this nation's sense of its place in the world,
0:50:53 > 0:50:59I don't think it's any exaggeration to say there was America before 9/11
0:50:59 > 0:51:03and there's America after 9/11, and they aren't the same place.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15Architect Michael Arad's 9/11 Memorial,
0:51:15 > 0:51:18built on the site of the World Trade Center,
0:51:18 > 0:51:22is a solemn, heartfelt monument to a great tragedy,
0:51:22 > 0:51:27but also an unintentionally startling sign of America's lost confidence.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35Two vast pits mark the exact footprints of the Twin Towers,
0:51:35 > 0:51:40powerful reminders of the horrifying destruction that was wrought here.
0:51:40 > 0:51:44But there's no sense of hope -
0:51:44 > 0:51:49none of the old American spirit, determined to survive and overcome any challenge.
0:51:53 > 0:51:58Instead, a great wall of tears flows endlessly down, into the deepest pit of oblivion.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04And when the light catches these flecks of falling water,
0:52:04 > 0:52:07it evokes the most awful 9/11 memory of all -
0:52:07 > 0:52:11the image of those who chose to jump to their deaths
0:52:11 > 0:52:13before the towers collapsed.
0:52:18 > 0:52:25The "War on Terror" and the economic meltdown have created in America, if not a sense of impending doom,
0:52:25 > 0:52:29then certainly a national anxiety that surfaces in art.
0:52:30 > 0:52:34And if you want to take the temperature of American art today,
0:52:34 > 0:52:40there's no better place to come than Brooklyn, home to a hive of younger artists' studios.
0:52:42 > 0:52:46In this warehouse, a team of assistants help sculptor Matthew Day Jackson
0:52:46 > 0:52:51to produce work that tries to get under the skin of modern America's predicament.
0:52:53 > 0:52:58These look like sort of aerial views of cities.
0:52:58 > 0:53:01Yeah, they're from a series called August 6th 1945.
0:53:01 > 0:53:03- Is that the date of Hiroshima? - Yeah.
0:53:03 > 0:53:06They're pretty amazing looking.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10Yeah, these are all in a stage before...
0:53:10 > 0:53:13before they get, uh, burnt.
0:53:13 > 0:53:16- Burnt?- Yeah, they get burnt. I want them to be burnt uniformly,
0:53:16 > 0:53:19as if to suggest that there wasn't a detonation,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22but just a sort of continuation or an atmosphere of fire.
0:53:22 > 0:53:25- Are you going to film? - Actually, I have,
0:53:25 > 0:53:28not to record the act but to create an illusion.
0:53:28 > 0:53:34So I'm not interested in the act, but when you look down the side of the painting,
0:53:34 > 0:53:39tilt your head to the side, that you can begin to see streets and buildings.
0:53:39 > 0:53:45And to see a rush of fire move through the alleyways and streets.
0:53:48 > 0:53:50So in a sense it's this idea
0:53:50 > 0:53:55that when we invent nuclear energy and when we invent the atom bomb,
0:53:55 > 0:53:58we also invent this ability to...
0:53:58 > 0:54:00Eradicate all life on planet Earth?
0:54:00 > 0:54:02HE CHUCKLES
0:54:02 > 0:54:06Yeah, but it's also in terms of the sort of mythology of the Cold War,
0:54:06 > 0:54:10we believe that it's over, it definitely is a much more comfortable thought
0:54:10 > 0:54:15than to think that it's just continued and moved to different places, and...
0:54:15 > 0:54:18So you're sort of saying to us, "Hey, did you forget that?"
0:54:18 > 0:54:21Oh yeah, totally, I think that we have forgotten.
0:54:24 > 0:54:30I'm intrigued by this, I was just thinking that if somebody didn't know your work,
0:54:30 > 0:54:35it'd be pretty hard to guess that the man who created these pieces also created these.
0:54:35 > 0:54:37Tell me what the skeletons are,
0:54:37 > 0:54:40are they based on the oldest ever found human skeleton?
0:54:40 > 0:54:45No, there's a range of current to three million years old.
0:54:45 > 0:54:48And then from three million years old back to current again,
0:54:48 > 0:54:51but in one continuous spectrum, in a rainbow.
0:54:51 > 0:54:56So it's a kind of spectrum evolutionary skeleton.
0:54:56 > 0:55:00Yeah, if you were to take the toes and tip them right next to each other,
0:55:00 > 0:55:05the colour of the toes are one step away from the colour of those toes,
0:55:05 > 0:55:08so that essentially it'd create a sort of Mobius loop.
0:55:08 > 0:55:13- So I could almost imagine them looping round and round.- Yep, for ever and ever and ever.
0:55:13 > 0:55:18But if I walk it, I'm starting with me, and I move through time...
0:55:18 > 0:55:201.5 million years to...
0:55:20 > 0:55:24- and then now you're probably like three...- Million years ago.
0:55:24 > 0:55:27Yeah, and so in terms of thinking about progress.
0:55:27 > 0:55:30To move to a point in technology
0:55:30 > 0:55:36where we've found this ability to return ourselves to a pre-technological past.
0:55:36 > 0:55:41How do you mean? Because we can blow the world up?
0:55:41 > 0:55:47Yeah, but it's also in terms of if that technology was ever used in wide scale,
0:55:47 > 0:55:49it wouldn't just destroy life,
0:55:49 > 0:55:52but also all the tools that we've used in terms of our evolution.
0:55:52 > 0:55:57I see, so if I get it right, if I follow the piece, if I follow the spectrum,
0:55:57 > 0:56:02if I follow the idea... this small brain, Homo sapiens,
0:56:02 > 0:56:06evolved to have such a large brain that he was able to create the possibility
0:56:06 > 0:56:10of destruction on such a vast scale that he would return himself back
0:56:10 > 0:56:13to a state of primitive man.
0:56:13 > 0:56:19I see quite a lot of apocalypse in your imagination, but I do also see it as exultation,
0:56:19 > 0:56:22almost kind of maybe a certain kind of laughter in the dark?
0:56:22 > 0:56:25- If that's the right phrase? - Yeah, yeah.
0:56:25 > 0:56:29Or as Ronnie James Dio might say, a rainbow in the dark.
0:56:29 > 0:56:30THEY CHUCKLE
0:56:35 > 0:56:42Jackson is one of several artists in America today who seem to exude anxiety through their work,
0:56:42 > 0:56:47as they challenge their country's old assumptions about the inevitability of progress,
0:56:47 > 0:56:52the idea that all frontiers must lead to a promised land.
0:56:54 > 0:56:56In one sense, they're part of a tradition.
0:56:56 > 0:57:03For centuries, American artists have played a vital part in shaping the American sense of nationhood.
0:57:05 > 0:57:09They've given visual form to America's dreams and ideals,
0:57:09 > 0:57:11they've questioned its ideologies,
0:57:11 > 0:57:17and above all, they've tried to define just what it is that makes this civilisation unique,
0:57:17 > 0:57:19unlike any to have preceded it.
0:57:21 > 0:57:27Through it all, there's been this sense that because America was a nation unburdened by history,
0:57:27 > 0:57:31it was the home of the new, this was where the future was made.
0:57:31 > 0:57:34But I think that's all changed.
0:57:34 > 0:57:38I think many Americans fear that they're no longer in charge of their destiny,
0:57:38 > 0:57:40that their destiny's being shaped elsewhere.
0:57:40 > 0:57:46And that's why so much recent American art seems so hesitant, so uncertain.
0:57:46 > 0:57:48It's an art of questions, not of answers.
0:57:48 > 0:57:52And at the centre of it lies one particular question -
0:57:52 > 0:57:54what does the future hold?
0:58:12 > 0:58:14Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:14 > 0:58:17E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk