0:00:03 > 0:00:09It was 1914, the First World War had just begun.
0:00:12 > 0:00:17As Britain's boys enlisted to fight for "King and Country",
0:00:17 > 0:00:21one young man was enjoying the attractions of his local fairground.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29His name was Mark Gertler,
0:00:29 > 0:00:33an impoverished, but precocious, painter.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44Now, he'd come to the fair for some light relief, to escape the hardships of his everyday life
0:00:44 > 0:00:50and all the incessant talk of the war, but on this visit he wouldn't find any relief.
0:00:50 > 0:00:55He would actually be confronted with a dark and brutal vision of the future.
0:00:59 > 0:01:03As Gertler stood watching the fairground's carousel,
0:01:03 > 0:01:10he had a premonition... of Britain trapped in the insanity
0:01:10 > 0:01:12of a never-ending war.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18A war that would consume both soldiers and their families...
0:01:21 > 0:01:25..that would transform their hope into horror,
0:01:25 > 0:01:31and would then spin desperately out of control.
0:01:31 > 0:01:37But the painting he made was much more than a vision of the Great War.
0:01:39 > 0:01:43It was a prophecy of the entire 20th century.
0:01:45 > 0:01:48The ride we couldn't get off.
0:01:54 > 0:01:59And Mark Gertler was just one of a new breed of British artist
0:01:59 > 0:02:05who would help us make sense of the catastrophic century that lay ahead.
0:02:09 > 0:02:14In the early years, when new challenges, new technologies,
0:02:14 > 0:02:17and new conflicts shattered all our certainties
0:02:17 > 0:02:22they taught us how to survive in the modern world.
0:02:29 > 0:02:34As our Empire collapsed and the nation itself was under threat
0:02:34 > 0:02:41they created an image of Britain in which we could believe and for which we could fight.
0:02:47 > 0:02:50And in the new nuclear age,
0:02:50 > 0:02:52they renewed our faith in the human spirit
0:02:52 > 0:02:56and gave us hope again for the future.
0:02:58 > 0:03:01As the rest of the world was out exploring abstraction,
0:03:01 > 0:03:05expressionism and all these other new "isms", our painters
0:03:05 > 0:03:08were doing something far more interesting.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11They took the best bits of modern art and infused them
0:03:11 > 0:03:14with our own great painting traditions.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17The result was a uniquely British take on modern art.
0:03:17 > 0:03:19A glorious take on modern art
0:03:19 > 0:03:24and I think it was one of the finest artistic movements in all of Western culture.
0:03:54 > 0:03:56One's life really was
0:03:56 > 0:04:02up in the morning and then for a ride in the park.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05After that, tea somewhere,
0:04:05 > 0:04:08scrumptious little iced cakes and strawberry ices.
0:04:08 > 0:04:14For the privileged few, the Edwardian era was one long and lavish tea party.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18The table always had a beautiful white tablecloth on it
0:04:18 > 0:04:21and lovely silver and flowers.
0:04:21 > 0:04:27The largest empire in history brought them luxuries from all corners of the globe
0:04:27 > 0:04:34and high society frolicked in wealth, splendour and decadence.
0:04:34 > 0:04:40Soup in silver plates, a fish of some beautiful sort, with a lovely sauce.
0:04:40 > 0:04:43It was apt to get a little cold, by the time it came round.
0:04:45 > 0:04:48Theirs was a fantasy life.
0:04:50 > 0:04:55A fantasy that our painters were only too happy to endorse.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08This is a typical example
0:05:08 > 0:05:10of Edwardian art.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14It was painted by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema
0:05:14 > 0:05:18and he became immensely rich pedalling lurid fantasies like this.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23Now, you can see why it was so popular,
0:05:23 > 0:05:27It's well painted, it's elegant,
0:05:27 > 0:05:31it's vaguely intellectual, but not too intellectual, and, of course,
0:05:31 > 0:05:34it's filled with naked women.
0:05:37 > 0:05:41But don't be fooled by its charms,
0:05:41 > 0:05:46because the truth is, this is really, really, really bad art.
0:05:47 > 0:05:54It's reactionary, it's elitist, it's sexist, it's motivated by money
0:05:54 > 0:05:57alone and, what's more, it was completely out of touch
0:05:57 > 0:06:01with the realities of modern Britain.
0:06:06 > 0:06:10The realities were not so pretty
0:06:10 > 0:06:12and in a grubby corner of North London
0:06:12 > 0:06:17British art would finally start to confront them.
0:06:19 > 0:06:23And all because of a murder.
0:06:28 > 0:06:32It was the morning of September 12th, 1907.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39A railway man had finished his late shift
0:06:39 > 0:06:45and was making his way through the back streets of Camden Town.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51He arrived home to greet his wife...
0:06:54 > 0:06:56..but on this morning
0:06:56 > 0:06:59he was greeted with a shock.
0:07:03 > 0:07:07This brutal killing became known
0:07:07 > 0:07:09as the Camden Town Murder.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12The killer was never found
0:07:12 > 0:07:15but that night in September, 1907
0:07:15 > 0:07:19was a seminal moment in the history of British art
0:07:19 > 0:07:25and that's because one painter dared to shock the whole country and paint it.
0:07:27 > 0:07:33That painter was Walter Sickert, a man dedicated to taking art
0:07:33 > 0:07:38out of the Edwardian drawing room and into the real world.
0:07:41 > 0:07:46For years, he'd been painting the insalubrious lives of Britain's underclass.
0:07:50 > 0:07:52A drunkard heads off to the pub.
0:07:56 > 0:08:00A singer plies her trade in a grubby music hall.
0:08:00 > 0:08:03LAUGHTER
0:08:03 > 0:08:07And the rowdy crowd heckle from the cheap seats.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14But inspired by the Camden Town Murder
0:08:14 > 0:08:18he would make his most audacious statement yet.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24This isn't really a painting.
0:08:26 > 0:08:28It's a crime scene.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32Indeed, at first, it looks like a rather touching portrait
0:08:32 > 0:08:37of a wife or a girlfriend dozing away in bed one morning,
0:08:37 > 0:08:39but when you look closer
0:08:39 > 0:08:44you begin to notice that Sickert has planted all these little clues throughout the painting
0:08:44 > 0:08:49that gradually, and together, reveal something horrific.
0:08:49 > 0:08:50Why, for instance,
0:08:50 > 0:08:53is the woman wearing lipstick when she's asleep?
0:08:54 > 0:08:56Why is she wearing jewellery
0:08:56 > 0:08:58when she's asleep?
0:08:58 > 0:09:04Why is she sleeping naked and why have the bed sheets been pulled down
0:09:04 > 0:09:07And then you get revelation number one.
0:09:09 > 0:09:11She's not a wife,
0:09:11 > 0:09:12she's not a girlfriend,
0:09:12 > 0:09:15she can only be a prostitute.
0:09:15 > 0:09:19And then you begin to notice more things, strange things.
0:09:19 > 0:09:22Her cold, yellow-green flesh,
0:09:22 > 0:09:25the twisted neck.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28And that's when you get revelation number two.
0:09:28 > 0:09:30Maybe she's not sleeping at all,
0:09:30 > 0:09:33maybe she's dead.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36And then you've only got one question left,
0:09:36 > 0:09:37who could have done this?
0:09:37 > 0:09:39And that's when you discover
0:09:39 > 0:09:42the final clue - this...
0:09:42 > 0:09:48A man's overcoat is on the chair next to her bed
0:09:48 > 0:09:51and that means only one thing,
0:09:51 > 0:09:55the killer is still in the room.
0:09:55 > 0:10:00And that's when the most awful and devastating revelation of them all strikes you -
0:10:00 > 0:10:05you are the person in the room.
0:10:05 > 0:10:07You are the client.
0:10:07 > 0:10:09You are the killer.
0:10:09 > 0:10:15And this painting is your viewpoint of a crime you've just committed.
0:10:16 > 0:10:22You arrive at this painting innocent and you leave it guilty.
0:10:31 > 0:10:36For Sickert, the entire Edwardian elite stood guilty,
0:10:36 > 0:10:41guilty of neglecting the poverty and violence that simmered in Britain's streets.
0:10:45 > 0:10:50But Sickert had one young devotee who wanted to go even further.
0:10:54 > 0:10:57He didn't just want to accuse Edwardian society,
0:10:57 > 0:11:01he planned to overthrow it.
0:11:03 > 0:11:11It was a diabolical plot dreamed up by one of the most poisonous minds of the 20th century.
0:11:20 > 0:11:24This is the brain of Percy Wyndham Lewis
0:11:24 > 0:11:27and it only survives because of a very rare tumour
0:11:27 > 0:11:32he developed in his pituitary gland that sent him blind and eventually caused his death.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36But it's a suitably gruesome relic to a very gruesome man.
0:11:36 > 0:11:41Wyndham Lewis was a misogynist, fascist and anti-Semite,
0:11:41 > 0:11:45who had the dubious honour of writing the very first biography of Hitler,
0:11:45 > 0:11:48and was described by Ernest Hemmingway, no less,
0:11:48 > 0:11:52as having "the eyes of an unsuccessful rapist."
0:11:52 > 0:11:55He was not a nice man,
0:11:55 > 0:11:58but bad men can be great artists
0:11:58 > 0:12:02and Wyndham Lewis' twisted mind was the secret of his genius.
0:12:07 > 0:12:09Wyndham Lewis was born 1882,
0:12:09 > 0:12:14on a yacht somewhere off the coast of Nova Scotia.
0:12:15 > 0:12:20His mother was English, his father a bigamist,
0:12:20 > 0:12:25and a veteran of the American Civil War.
0:12:25 > 0:12:30As a young man, Wyndham Lewis lived an itinerant life
0:12:30 > 0:12:33but in 1908, he made London his home.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40He was entranced by the vitality of the city,
0:12:41 > 0:12:44its dazzling, electric light...
0:12:45 > 0:12:48...its roaring motorcars,
0:12:50 > 0:12:52..and its towering buildings.
0:12:55 > 0:13:01Together, they offered the possibility of a mechanical paradise
0:13:01 > 0:13:06and Wyndham Lewis began to fantasise about how a new society,
0:13:06 > 0:13:12governed by machines, could overthrow the stuffy world of the Edwardian elite.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31In every way conceivable, he was the enemy, really,
0:13:31 > 0:13:35of the existing status quo of the time.
0:13:35 > 0:13:39He's attacking everything he thinks is complacent,
0:13:39 > 0:13:47cant, hypocrisy, people who are idle and lazy in their thought
0:13:47 > 0:13:53and were frightened of the modern world, frightened of modern ideas.
0:13:53 > 0:13:59He considered himself to be extremely revolutionary, I suppose.
0:13:59 > 0:14:06And in Wyndham Lewis' revolution the secret weapon would be art.
0:14:10 > 0:14:16In 1912, he embarked on a blistering series of breakthrough works
0:14:16 > 0:14:20that first announced his vision of the future.
0:14:22 > 0:14:25At the heart of them all was the human figure,
0:14:27 > 0:14:29but as never seen before.
0:14:36 > 0:14:41Violent, robotic humanoids are trapped in an angular wilderness.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49They look like nightmares,
0:14:49 > 0:14:55but they were Wyndham Lewis' dream of a mechanical world order.
0:15:03 > 0:15:08But Wyndham Lewis knew he couldn't realise that dream alone.
0:15:08 > 0:15:13To succeed in revolutionising Britain, he needed to create a movement.
0:15:15 > 0:15:19In July 1914, he published a manifesto.
0:15:21 > 0:15:27It was a call to arms, a work of art in its own right,
0:15:27 > 0:15:29and its name was Blast.
0:15:32 > 0:15:36"Blast quack English drug for stupidity and sleepiness.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40"Impossibility for Englishmen to be grave and keep his end up psychologically.
0:15:40 > 0:15:43"Impossible... Blast... The years 1837 to 1900.
0:15:43 > 0:15:47"An abysmal and inexcusable luxury sport... The famous English...
0:15:47 > 0:15:52It was less a manifesto, more a vitriolic, incoherent rant.
0:15:52 > 0:15:54"Incapable of anything.
0:15:54 > 0:15:58"Bless the hairdresser, he attacks Mother Nature for a small fee.
0:15:58 > 0:16:01"Bless England - industrial, island machine.
0:16:01 > 0:16:02"Pyramidal workshop,
0:16:02 > 0:16:06"its apex at Shetland."
0:16:06 > 0:16:08It stinks of his personality.
0:16:08 > 0:16:12The aggression, the violence, the megalomania,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15all of that squeezes through every single page,
0:16:15 > 0:16:19every single word is Wyndham Lewis taking up assault against Britain.
0:16:19 > 0:16:23"Point one, we hear all sorts of disagreeable things about England.
0:16:23 > 0:16:28"The unmusical, anti-artistic unphilosophic country. We quite agree."
0:16:28 > 0:16:30Wyndham Lewis is not pulling his punches here,
0:16:30 > 0:16:32he's really going for the jugular,
0:16:32 > 0:16:34he's really attacking England.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38And I think for me this is the most revealing image of them all.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42It's a wrecking ball and that's precisely what
0:16:42 > 0:16:47Blast was, the big, giant, angry, violent wrecking ball,
0:16:47 > 0:16:51that was let loose on Britain and its cultural conventions.
0:16:53 > 0:16:59A small group of artists rallied to Wyndham Lewis's cause
0:16:59 > 0:17:03and they called themselves The Vorticists.
0:17:06 > 0:17:11Edward Wadsworth imagined industrial Britain as seen from the air.
0:17:17 > 0:17:22Cuthbert Hamilton saw steel girders rise up from a building site.
0:17:27 > 0:17:32And Lawrence Atkinson plotted a cathedral for the machine age.
0:17:33 > 0:17:38They remain some of the most radical artworks ever made.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44The extraordinary thing about Vorticism is that
0:17:44 > 0:17:49it's still looks revolutionary, avant-garde today.
0:17:49 > 0:17:53Whereas most so-called avant-garde today is as stale as old mutton.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06And the greatest Vorticist painting of them all
0:18:06 > 0:18:08was made by the mastermind himself.
0:18:08 > 0:18:12It is a bold and terrifying vision
0:18:12 > 0:18:14of the mechanical metropolis of his dreams.
0:18:16 > 0:18:22This is a very special picture because it's one of Wyndham Lewis's
0:18:22 > 0:18:25only Vorticist paintings to have survived.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30Most of them were burnt in fires or destroyed in explosions
0:18:30 > 0:18:33or ruined in floods. Some just disappeared and were never seen again.
0:18:35 > 0:18:41You've got this vast prison-like city of skyscrapers and streets.
0:18:42 > 0:18:45But the most alarming thing, I think, of all
0:18:45 > 0:18:47is his treatment of the figures,
0:18:47 > 0:18:49because they're all dehumanised.
0:18:49 > 0:18:55They're all turned into little soulless robots
0:18:55 > 0:18:58and they're fighting each other.
0:18:58 > 0:19:04They're waving flags and they're shouting on to their comrades.
0:19:07 > 0:19:10You know, this painting now is almost 100 years old,
0:19:10 > 0:19:15but I just can't believe how truly prophetic it is.
0:19:15 > 0:19:19It really does prefigure a whole disastrous century
0:19:19 > 0:19:21of wars and revolutions,
0:19:21 > 0:19:25of fascism, of ideology, of class struggle.
0:19:25 > 0:19:28It prefigures a whole century of ever-expanding cities
0:19:28 > 0:19:30and unsustainable development.
0:19:31 > 0:19:35And it prefigures a whole century
0:19:35 > 0:19:39where individuals were isolated,
0:19:39 > 0:19:42dehumanised and alienated.
0:19:45 > 0:19:48And you know something?
0:19:48 > 0:19:52If you think this painting doesn't have anything to do with you,
0:19:52 > 0:19:55just look through the window
0:19:55 > 0:19:58and you can see these little people working away at their desks.
0:20:14 > 0:20:20Wyndham Lewis failed to turn Britain into his own mechanical dystopia,
0:20:20 > 0:20:23it became one without him.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29But a very different dream would come from a most unlikely place.
0:20:44 > 0:20:48A hundred years ago the East End of London wasn't
0:20:48 > 0:20:50just a different neighbourhood,
0:20:50 > 0:20:52it was a different world,
0:20:52 > 0:20:55London's very own badlands.
0:20:58 > 0:21:01To get here you actually had to cross a river of blood
0:21:01 > 0:21:04that surged down the road from the local slaughterhouses
0:21:04 > 0:21:08and when you crossed that grizzly threshold you suddenly immerged
0:21:08 > 0:21:11into a dangerous and exotic world of criminals and prostitutes
0:21:11 > 0:21:16and Orthodox Jews and Eastern Europeans asylum seekers.
0:21:16 > 0:21:21Now you might think that this kind of place was no kind of place for art
0:21:21 > 0:21:27but as it turned out these slums produced one of the finest painters of the 20th Century.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35His name was David Bomberg
0:21:35 > 0:21:37and he was as tough as they come.
0:21:39 > 0:21:46His family were Jewish refugees who fled brutal persecution in Tsarist Russia.
0:21:51 > 0:21:56His father was a leatherworker and a gambler prone to violence.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Bomberg's early life was pretty much a daily fight for survival,
0:22:08 > 0:22:11his brothers were actually street fighters and boxers
0:22:11 > 0:22:15and by all accounts David could throw a mean punch himself.
0:22:15 > 0:22:19But he had an even more powerful weapon up his sleeve.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26Bomberg could draw and draw well
0:22:26 > 0:22:32and he became convinced that art was his only way out of the ghetto.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38His world was different from everybody else's
0:22:38 > 0:22:43so domestic life went on around him but his focus was always on
0:22:43 > 0:22:47to my experience always on his art.
0:22:47 > 0:22:54Everybody else was going into some kind of trade and, and he wanted to be a painter for god's sake!
0:22:54 > 0:22:58What use is a painter?
0:23:01 > 0:23:08Bomberg was determined to break into the exclusive London art world in anyway he could.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10And in 1911,
0:23:10 > 0:23:14he finally won a place at art school.
0:23:14 > 0:23:17But not as an artist,
0:23:17 > 0:23:19as a model.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23Bomberg found the job tremendously boring
0:23:23 > 0:23:25and frustrating too.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29He wanted to be an artist and not a model
0:23:29 > 0:23:32so one day he brought some drawings in with him to the class
0:23:32 > 0:23:35and when it was over he showed them to the teacher.
0:23:35 > 0:23:42The teacher was staggered because his drawings were better than anything ever done by the students.
0:23:44 > 0:23:47Bomberg was promptly offered a scholarship at the Slade,
0:23:47 > 0:23:49London's most prestigious art school.
0:23:51 > 0:23:58And here he is posturing proudly in his class photograph.
0:23:58 > 0:24:05The Slade was a blessed relief from the hardships of the East End
0:24:07 > 0:24:11and with new confidence Bomberg began to experiment.
0:24:15 > 0:24:20But the Slade didn't like experiments
0:24:20 > 0:24:24and soon he found himself in trouble.
0:24:27 > 0:24:33On one occasion he actually smashed his professor with a pallet when he dared criticise his work.
0:24:33 > 0:24:40So you'll not be surprised to hear that he was branded a troublemaker and eventually kicked out.
0:24:45 > 0:24:51It seemed that Bomberg had thrown away his one chance to make something of himself.
0:24:54 > 0:25:00Already he had that determination and I think that's probably a very Jewish thing.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04That actually if you're a minority community you know,
0:25:04 > 0:25:08especially then, you get to be tough. You have to be tough.
0:25:11 > 0:25:14And Bomberg's fortunes were to change
0:25:14 > 0:25:18during a visit to the local Jewish baths.
0:25:25 > 0:25:30It was a spiritual place where the East End Jews
0:25:30 > 0:25:32cleansed themselves before Synagogue.
0:25:37 > 0:25:41And here during a moment of quite contemplation
0:25:41 > 0:25:45Bomberg had an epiphany.
0:25:57 > 0:26:00As Bomberg cleansed himself of a weeks worth of filth,
0:26:00 > 0:26:06he realised he could do exactly the same thing with his art.
0:26:06 > 0:26:10He could cleanse it of the past.
0:26:10 > 0:26:16He could cleanse it of all those stultifying techniques that he'd been taught at the Slade
0:26:16 > 0:26:22and he could cleanse it of all the boring old traditions that had held back so many British artists before.
0:26:22 > 0:26:26And by doing so he believed he could make paintings
0:26:26 > 0:26:34that were purer, cleaner, fresher and bolder than any ever made before.
0:26:37 > 0:26:42Like Wyndham Lewis, Bomberg broke with centuries of tradition
0:26:42 > 0:26:46producing fragmented paintings of psychedelic originality.
0:26:46 > 0:26:50But his image was one of optimism.
0:26:52 > 0:26:55Dockers unloading a cargo ship are transformed into
0:26:55 > 0:26:59a colourful Kaleidoscope of energy.
0:27:02 > 0:27:07And in Jujitsu he celebrates the dynamism of martial arts combat.
0:27:10 > 0:27:15But for his greatest work he would turn to his beloved bathhouse.
0:27:21 > 0:27:27This is Bomberg's first great masterpiece and he knew it too.
0:27:27 > 0:27:31He was so proud of this picture that when he first exhibited it, in Chelsea
0:27:31 > 0:27:38He hung it outside the gallery on the street and then proceeded to decorate the whole thing with flags.
0:27:38 > 0:27:43And apparently it caused such a stir that it sent traffic jams all the way down the King's Road.
0:27:43 > 0:27:50And that doesn't surprise me - it doesn't surprise me at all because when he made this in 1914,
0:27:50 > 0:27:55this was as bold and radical as any painting in the world.
0:27:55 > 0:27:59Now it's based on his own memories of the East End baths
0:27:59 > 0:28:02and you may not be able to notice it immediately
0:28:02 > 0:28:05but it is a picture of bathing.
0:28:05 > 0:28:09This bright red rectangle that's the bathing pool
0:28:09 > 0:28:13and these blue and white figures around these are the bathers.
0:28:13 > 0:28:15These are the East End neighbours of Bomberg
0:28:15 > 0:28:19and you can just about make them out doing their thing.
0:28:19 > 0:28:23So for instance here's a form of someone diving into the pool,
0:28:23 > 0:28:26you've got lot's of other figures climbing out of the pool over here
0:28:26 > 0:28:30swimming around inside and over here with the bent legs
0:28:30 > 0:28:33you can just make out these bent legs, here's a figure that
0:28:33 > 0:28:35just climbed out of the pool drying himself off.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40So this painting is all about the process of becoming clean
0:28:40 > 0:28:45but this isn't just about modern Londoners cleansing themselves of dirt.
0:28:45 > 0:28:50Bomberg saw this painting as a great manifesto for the modern world
0:28:50 > 0:28:55and I think he's telling us that the modern world can cleanse and empower us all.
0:28:55 > 0:28:58It can even transform the impoverished Jews of the East End
0:28:58 > 0:29:03into these great muscular heroes of modernity.
0:29:03 > 0:29:05It can render everyone pure,
0:29:05 > 0:29:07it can make everyone equal
0:29:07 > 0:29:10and it can set everyone free.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21David Bomberg had found liberty in modern Britain
0:29:21 > 0:29:24where Wyndham Lewis had seen only cruelty.
0:29:28 > 0:29:32But together their pioneering paintings had completely transformed British art.
0:29:37 > 0:29:42There was just one problem no-one understood them at all.
0:29:42 > 0:29:47The British people didn't understand and certainly didn't like this new modern art
0:29:47 > 0:29:50but something was about to change all that,
0:29:50 > 0:29:56something that would force our artists to abandon modernism and return to tradition.
0:29:56 > 0:29:59And that something was the First World War.
0:30:10 > 0:30:16The declaration of war in 1914 was greeted with hysteria.
0:30:19 > 0:30:23Many were convinced that it would finally unite Edwardian Britain.
0:30:25 > 0:30:30That it would transform ordinary young men into heroes
0:30:30 > 0:30:36and then it would finally confirm Britain's unrivalled supremacy over the world.
0:30:36 > 0:30:40And one young artist was certain it would make him a star.
0:30:44 > 0:30:50Like Bomberg and Wyndham Lewis, Richard Nevinson had trained at the Slade,
0:30:50 > 0:30:55but unlike them he had little natural talent knocking out
0:30:55 > 0:30:58second-rate paintings that aped the avant-garde.
0:31:00 > 0:31:04Here he is posing proudly in front of a painting he called,
0:31:04 > 0:31:07Tum Tiddly Um Tum Pom Pom.
0:31:07 > 0:31:10The title says it all.
0:31:14 > 0:31:17But Nevinson's mediocre prospects would change one evening
0:31:17 > 0:31:20when he was lured to the theatre,
0:31:20 > 0:31:24to witness an unorthodox performance by London's most infamous celebrity.
0:31:24 > 0:31:32A maverick Italian by the name of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
0:31:34 > 0:31:38Marinetti was a poser, an adrenaline junkie and a veritable
0:31:38 > 0:31:41grand master of the silly idea.
0:31:41 > 0:31:45He had proposed burning down all the world's museums
0:31:45 > 0:31:47sinking the whole city of Venice
0:31:47 > 0:31:51and he thought that nothing was more fun than a good old fashioned car crash.
0:31:55 > 0:32:00But in this performance Marinetti reached a new low.
0:32:06 > 0:32:13HE IMITATES GUNFIRE & EXPLOSIONS
0:32:13 > 0:32:16Marinetti loved war
0:32:16 > 0:32:20and he declared his love in an experimental sound poem
0:32:20 > 0:32:25that was supposed to give the public an authentic taste of the battlefield.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37The public's reaction was divided -
0:32:37 > 0:32:40divided between disgust, horror,
0:32:40 > 0:32:44hatred, terror and outrage.
0:32:44 > 0:32:48But Nevinson was entranced.
0:32:48 > 0:32:52He too dreamed of battle, of glory, of heroism
0:32:52 > 0:32:57and on a wave of patriotism Nevinson enlisted.
0:33:02 > 0:33:05But he would be sorely disappointed.
0:33:07 > 0:33:10In 1914, he arrived in France
0:33:10 > 0:33:15but was immediately deemed too weak to fight.
0:33:16 > 0:33:20So he spent his days as a medical orderly
0:33:20 > 0:33:26pottering about on the lonely lanes of Flanders
0:33:26 > 0:33:29far away from the frontline.
0:33:29 > 0:33:35Though you wouldn't have thought it from his tales of daring do.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38Nevinson told one story that in the middle of a Zeppelin raid
0:33:38 > 0:33:44he got the wheels of his ambulance caught in a railway track as a train hurtled towards him
0:33:44 > 0:33:49and flames bellowed around him and he only escaped at the very last second.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52And on another occasion the Germans apparently fired a shell
0:33:52 > 0:33:59directly at him but it miraculously passed through a little hole in his ambulance and he immerged unhurt.
0:33:59 > 0:34:03And on another occasion he was for some reason up in
0:34:03 > 0:34:07a hot air balloon and an enemy aeroplane shot the air balloon down.
0:34:07 > 0:34:14The balloon was plummeted towards the ground but once again Nevinson escaped.
0:34:14 > 0:34:17Now I don't know about you
0:34:17 > 0:34:19but I don't believe a word of it.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28After just ten uneventful weeks
0:34:28 > 0:34:31Nevinson made his way quietly home.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38But back in Britain he was greeted as a real war hero so he
0:34:38 > 0:34:46busied himself making pictures that showed a hero's view of modern war.
0:34:46 > 0:34:49Pictures that would guarantee him public acclaim.
0:34:52 > 0:34:55And in the heart of the West End
0:34:55 > 0:35:00Nevinson bagged his very own one-man show.
0:35:00 > 0:35:05Nevinson's exhibition was a sensation.
0:35:05 > 0:35:07Everyone who was anyone was there.
0:35:07 > 0:35:12Royalty, aristocracy, army generals, famous painters, famous writers
0:35:12 > 0:35:17and no less than four past, present and future prime ministers.
0:35:17 > 0:35:20And when they were all assembled together inside the gallery
0:35:20 > 0:35:26Nevinson made his entrance with a limp a walking stick and in full army uniform.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32Nevinson revelled in his newfound glory
0:35:32 > 0:35:34but the adulation was deserved
0:35:34 > 0:35:38though he'd never seen a moment of combat
0:35:38 > 0:35:42he had managed to capture the essence of modern war.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47He'd discovered a formula.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52Art that was geometrical and modern yet easy to understand.
0:35:52 > 0:35:58Art that could be appreciated by the connoisseur and layman alike.
0:36:02 > 0:36:07Here a battalion march in unison up to the frontline.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14Troops rest after the rigours of battle.
0:36:19 > 0:36:23And an aeroplane swoops down from the clouds.
0:36:26 > 0:36:33But the public's favourite painting was called La Mitrailleuse.
0:36:36 > 0:36:41Most viewers thought this was not just Nevinson's best work to date
0:36:41 > 0:36:45it was the greatest painting of the whole conflict.
0:36:45 > 0:36:47Walter Sickert even called it,
0:36:47 > 0:36:51"The most authoritative utterance on war in the history of painting."
0:36:51 > 0:36:56Now clearly it's a powerful and uncompromising image of war
0:36:56 > 0:37:00and not just any war - this is modern war.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04You can see a group of French machine gunners here their in a dugout,
0:37:04 > 0:37:06they're surrounded by barbed wire.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09One of them has been killed already.
0:37:09 > 0:37:12This one's panicking over the dead body
0:37:12 > 0:37:15and these two are firing blindly into the distance.
0:37:15 > 0:37:20Now this isn't a war of cavalry charges and heroism and flying flags
0:37:20 > 0:37:26this is a war in which scared men fight clumsily for their lives
0:37:26 > 0:37:29and for no apparent reason.
0:37:29 > 0:37:33And that's what people admired about this picture,
0:37:33 > 0:37:38they admired it for telling them an inconvenient, an unpleasant truth
0:37:38 > 0:37:40about what was happening across the Channel.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45And they trusted it too because Nevinson was a soldier,
0:37:45 > 0:37:47Nevinson had been there
0:37:47 > 0:37:53and Nevinson had seen this first hand in the trenches.
0:37:53 > 0:37:55But we know that wasn't true,
0:37:55 > 0:38:00Nevinson had never stepped foot inside a trench
0:38:00 > 0:38:04and Nevinson actually painted this on his honeymoon.
0:38:11 > 0:38:17But the real truth about the war would come from a most unlikely place.
0:38:20 > 0:38:27This Buckingham countryside was once home to a lonely young artist called Paul Nash.
0:38:27 > 0:38:31A man whose intense emotional bond with nature
0:38:31 > 0:38:35would make him the greatest war painter of the 20th Century.
0:38:42 > 0:38:47On his long solitary walks, Paul developed the fanciful idea
0:38:47 > 0:38:52that trees were like people with personalities all of their own.
0:38:52 > 0:38:56And he painted them obsessively.
0:39:07 > 0:39:12But not even a sensitive young man like Nash could avoid the war
0:39:12 > 0:39:14and eventually he signed up.
0:39:28 > 0:39:30It was February 1917,
0:39:30 > 0:39:34when he disembarked at the port town of Le Havre.
0:39:36 > 0:39:41He wondered what all the fuss was about.
0:39:47 > 0:39:51This was a subdued time in the war as armies regrouped
0:39:51 > 0:39:54and the Generals argued over strategy.
0:39:58 > 0:40:03But after a few relaxed weeks Nash finally received orders to move up to the frontline.
0:40:05 > 0:40:11But during the lull, nature had reclaimed the battlefields...
0:40:11 > 0:40:14and the trenches were in bloom.
0:40:17 > 0:40:21Where his comrades saw death and destruction,
0:40:21 > 0:40:24Nash thought this place was actually quite nice.
0:40:24 > 0:40:26What wasn't there to like?
0:40:26 > 0:40:31There were trees, leaves, birds, sunrises.
0:40:31 > 0:40:33Even the trenches were quite pretty.
0:40:33 > 0:40:37In fact, the whole place reminded him of Sussex.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41And he couldn't resist the temptation to paint it.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47Two swallows swoop low past an orchard...
0:40:52 > 0:40:54..and shrubs thrive amid the trenches.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02But this pastoral idyll wasn't to last.
0:41:06 > 0:41:08That spring, the British Army began preparing
0:41:08 > 0:41:10for a massive new offensive...
0:41:12 > 0:41:15..and it was then that an accident would
0:41:15 > 0:41:17profoundly alter Nash's future.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26One day, Nash, actually climbed out of the trench to make a sketch of
0:41:26 > 0:41:31some rather delightful lights he saw shining away in the distance.
0:41:31 > 0:41:35Anyway, as he stepped to the side to get a better look at them,
0:41:35 > 0:41:39he lost his balance, tumbled back into the trench and broke a rib.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43Now, he was immediately sent back to England to recover from the injury,
0:41:43 > 0:41:45but it was probably the luckiest thing
0:41:45 > 0:41:47that ever happened to him in his life,
0:41:47 > 0:41:51because only a few days later, his whole company was slaughtered
0:41:51 > 0:41:53in a disastrous offensive.
0:42:02 > 0:42:07Passchendaele, the most brutal and inhumane battle of the whole war.
0:42:10 > 0:42:13Hundreds of thousands of men disappeared into no man's land,
0:42:13 > 0:42:18and many of them never returned.
0:43:19 > 0:43:24After his recovery, Paul Nash returned to Passchendaele,
0:43:24 > 0:43:26but the place that he had once found so beautiful
0:43:26 > 0:43:29was now a desolate wasteland.
0:43:35 > 0:43:39Nash was utterly horrified by what he saw here,
0:43:39 > 0:43:42and to understand how he felt, you really have to hear what he wrote
0:43:42 > 0:43:45in a letter to his wife after he saw it.
0:43:45 > 0:43:49Because I think it is one of the most powerful things ever written
0:43:49 > 0:43:52about the First World War, perhaps about any war.
0:43:52 > 0:43:55And this, this is what he wrote.
0:43:57 > 0:44:04"Sunset and sunrise are blasphemous. They are mockeries to man.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08"It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless.
0:44:10 > 0:44:14"I am no longer an artist, interested and curious.
0:44:14 > 0:44:18"I'm a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting.
0:44:18 > 0:44:22"To those who want the war to go on forever,
0:44:22 > 0:44:26"feeble, inarticulate will be my message,
0:44:26 > 0:44:31"but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls."
0:44:31 > 0:44:35And it was that horror, that outrage,
0:44:35 > 0:44:39that desire to tell the truth about the war that caused Nash to make
0:44:39 > 0:44:42the greatest masterpieces of his career.
0:45:09 > 0:45:13But Nash's greatest work is the bleakest of them all.
0:45:17 > 0:45:20It's the morning after the battle.
0:45:21 > 0:45:22The sun is rising.
0:45:24 > 0:45:26And now, the sunrise is typically a symbol
0:45:26 > 0:45:31of hope and rebirth and renewal, but not this sunrise,
0:45:31 > 0:45:34because this sunrise doesn't reveal a twinkling new morning -
0:45:34 > 0:45:36it reveals a truly appalling scene.
0:45:38 > 0:45:40You can see here a sky that's blood red,
0:45:40 > 0:45:44filled with all the blood that has been shed the night before.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49You can see a forest all the way here of burnt and broken trees,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52and underneath, this crazy, writhing ocean of mud.
0:45:56 > 0:45:59And out of that mud, these trees become metaphors
0:45:59 > 0:46:01for the dead buried beneath them.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06With their sagging limbs, like the arms, these become like the bodies
0:46:06 > 0:46:08who have fallen on the field of battle.
0:46:11 > 0:46:15Parts of this tree here look like a hand, imploring the heavens,
0:46:15 > 0:46:17but the heavens remain indifferent.
0:46:19 > 0:46:24I think this is a truly brutal and incredibly powerful attack on war
0:46:24 > 0:46:26and its consequences from Nash.
0:46:26 > 0:46:31And I think it's more powerful than any book or any poem or any film,
0:46:31 > 0:46:39precisely because it's so silent and so empty and so wordless.
0:47:00 > 0:47:05But as war turned to peace, it wasn't horror that people wanted.
0:47:05 > 0:47:07They wanted hope...
0:47:08 > 0:47:11..and one artist was determined to provide it.
0:47:14 > 0:47:18Stanley Spencer had given four years of his life to the war,
0:47:18 > 0:47:25first as a medical orderly, and then as a frontline soldier in Macedonia.
0:47:26 > 0:47:30And it was in a quiet corner of Hampshire that he set about
0:47:30 > 0:47:36creating a masterpiece that would finally consign the war to history.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43This is the Sandham Memorial Chapel.
0:47:47 > 0:47:52Few come here today, but I believe this modest brick building
0:47:52 > 0:47:55contains one of our most neglected treasures...
0:47:56 > 0:47:58..and an artwork that completes
0:47:58 > 0:48:01the great reawakening of British painting.
0:48:06 > 0:48:10There are mornings when I open up, I say, "Good morning, chapel,"
0:48:10 > 0:48:12and how well it's looking.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18As custodian, you do everything,
0:48:18 > 0:48:22so the gardens and the chapel and the buildings and the day-to-day cleaning
0:48:22 > 0:48:24and maintenance, things like that.
0:48:37 > 0:48:42You stand in the middle of the chapel and you look around,
0:48:42 > 0:48:45and that's the closest you'll ever get to being inside Spencer's mind.
0:48:45 > 0:48:48Just having all these images around you.
0:48:57 > 0:49:01In his chapel, Spencer created an artwork
0:49:01 > 0:49:06on a scale of the great fresco cycles of the Italian Renaissance.
0:49:06 > 0:49:09But he did it in his own inimitable way.
0:49:17 > 0:49:19This is Spencer's war...
0:49:21 > 0:49:25..and Spencer's war began as an orderly in a Bristol hospital.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33This is the first thing you see as you come in here,
0:49:33 > 0:49:37and it shows the wounded returning from the Western Front
0:49:37 > 0:49:40and arriving at the War Hospital in Bristol,
0:49:40 > 0:49:43and the big iron gates are being opened for them.
0:49:44 > 0:49:50Now you would think this scene would be a scene of horror and pain and suffering, but not for Stanley.
0:49:50 > 0:49:55You see the soldiers, although they've got their slings and their bandages and their casts,
0:49:55 > 0:49:57they almost seem to be having a good time
0:49:57 > 0:49:59at the top of this open-topped bus
0:49:59 > 0:50:02and there are these beautiful rhododendron flowers around them.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05So the whole scene seems like some kind of bank-holiday outing
0:50:05 > 0:50:09rather than some terrible traumatic scene of the First World War.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12This is the case of all of these pictures in here.
0:50:25 > 0:50:27This is probably my favourite
0:50:27 > 0:50:31and it shows the beds being made in the hospital.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34Now, the best thing about it is this figure on the left
0:50:34 > 0:50:37because he's so cold as his bed's being made
0:50:37 > 0:50:39that he's wrapped himself completely in his blanket
0:50:39 > 0:50:43and he's keeping his feet warm by standing on a hot water bottle.
0:50:43 > 0:50:47Now, I remember doing that as a child when it was particularly cold in the morning
0:50:47 > 0:50:49and it's just amazing that a scene like this
0:50:49 > 0:50:52could ever make its way into a war painting,
0:50:52 > 0:50:54but that's the great thing about Spencer -
0:50:54 > 0:50:56he's not painting the horror of war,
0:50:56 > 0:50:58he's not painting the brutality of war,
0:50:58 > 0:51:02he's painting, if anything, the banality of war.
0:51:02 > 0:51:04And you can see the banality in this picture.
0:51:04 > 0:51:07This shows tea in the ward
0:51:07 > 0:51:11and you can see these enormous piles like Jenga of bread and butter,
0:51:11 > 0:51:16and Spencer's favourite meal in the world was bread and butter.
0:51:18 > 0:51:21This is called Ablutions,
0:51:21 > 0:51:25and it shows the early morning washing up and cleaning,
0:51:25 > 0:51:31so you can see one guy polishing the taps like he's sort of doing a rock and roll dance with the taps.
0:51:32 > 0:51:35You can see another person having their back scrubbed
0:51:35 > 0:51:39and this person in the foreground is washing their hair in a sink.
0:51:39 > 0:51:44Now Spencer actually had an enormous amount of difficulty painting the soapsuds on the hair
0:51:44 > 0:51:48so he did it himself and sketched himself in the mirror as he washed his hair.
0:51:48 > 0:51:51Everywhere you find these domestic moments.
0:51:57 > 0:51:59But his most memorable images
0:51:59 > 0:52:03were drawn from his experiences of the frontline, in Macedonia.
0:52:07 > 0:52:13The culmination of the whole project is this painting. 21 feet high,
0:52:13 > 0:52:16it took Spencer almost a year to paint
0:52:16 > 0:52:21and it shows a battlefield, an enormous battlefield in Macedonia
0:52:21 > 0:52:27that's filled with all the soldiers that have died during the war,
0:52:27 > 0:52:30Spencer's friends, Spencer's comrades.
0:52:30 > 0:52:33But here they're all being resurrected,
0:52:33 > 0:52:36they're all climbing out of the earth rubbing their eyes,
0:52:36 > 0:52:41looking around and saying hello to their old friends,
0:52:41 > 0:52:44the friends they thought they'd never see again.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03Towards the end of his life Spencer returned to revisit this work
0:53:03 > 0:53:05that meant so much to him.
0:53:19 > 0:53:23'When I did this resurrection altarpiece,
0:53:23 > 0:53:28'I wanted it to be in a particular place that I remembered
0:53:28 > 0:53:33'and, um, I felt that all that I hoped for
0:53:33 > 0:53:37'of all the coming back home and everything,
0:53:37 > 0:53:40'could be celebrated there.'
0:53:42 > 0:53:46These places the men were rising from,
0:53:46 > 0:53:49as you see down below, just by the altar,
0:53:49 > 0:53:54are their rising in a place which they would like to rise in.
0:53:54 > 0:53:57It's a happy place and that I was very keen about,
0:53:57 > 0:54:03that one makes this battlefield a happy place without altering anything.
0:54:07 > 0:54:11I tried to get this feeling of the consciousness of the cross
0:54:11 > 0:54:13getting more and more tense as it gets up
0:54:13 > 0:54:15and when it gets to the man above those mules
0:54:15 > 0:54:19who's reclining over a crucifix, and I get a feeling he's there forever.
0:54:19 > 0:54:23I don't think anything, any bomb or anything dropping behind his head,
0:54:23 > 0:54:25will make him take the least notice.
0:54:25 > 0:54:32Immediately above him you see Christ as just a man among the men,
0:54:32 > 0:54:37receiving the crosses and quietly talking to them.
0:54:39 > 0:54:44Well, I feel in that way that all these things which were previously war scenes
0:54:44 > 0:54:51are now having to behave as the bringers of the happy message of the resurrection.
0:54:57 > 0:55:03Every single wound of war is being healed in this picture, in this whole chapel.
0:55:07 > 0:55:11You can see here they're shaking hands.
0:55:14 > 0:55:18I've got to say that I think that's one of the greatest passages
0:55:18 > 0:55:20of 20th-century painting, that handshake,
0:55:20 > 0:55:24because, you know, a handshake is something we do every day,
0:55:24 > 0:55:29but Spencer found something epic in it, something momentous in it,
0:55:29 > 0:55:31and you realise that that handshake
0:55:31 > 0:55:37isn't just a handshake between old friends who thought they'd never see each other again.
0:55:37 > 0:55:43It's a handshake between the past and the future.
0:55:55 > 0:56:01With the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Stanley Spencer had reinvented tradition
0:56:01 > 0:56:06to create a timeless sanctuary amid the chaos of the modern world.
0:56:11 > 0:56:14MUSIC PLAYS
0:56:14 > 0:56:19But Spencer had not been alone in responding to the challenges of his age.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25The ten years or so between 1910 and 1919 must surely rank
0:56:25 > 0:56:29as the most remarkable in the whole history of British art,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32because in those years British artists turned themselves
0:56:32 > 0:56:36into nothing less than the conscience of the entire nation.
0:56:36 > 0:56:40They showed us the problems and possibilities of the modern world.
0:56:40 > 0:56:42They told us the truth about the First World War
0:56:42 > 0:56:45when hardly anyone else would and with a nation in trauma,
0:56:45 > 0:56:49they gave us hope and strength for the future.
0:57:15 > 0:57:18In the next episode
0:57:18 > 0:57:23British painters lead the country through a period of national crisis.
0:57:25 > 0:57:28Some find refuge in nostalgia,
0:57:28 > 0:57:31some in fantasy,
0:57:31 > 0:57:37while others search for the timeless spirit of the English countryside.
0:57:37 > 0:57:42But in the darkest hour they come together
0:57:42 > 0:57:46to create an image of Britain in which we can believe...
0:57:47 > 0:57:51..and for which we can fight.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:06 > 0:58:09E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk