0:00:18 > 0:00:21All artists' studios are the same.
0:00:21 > 0:00:24All artists' studios are different.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28This one belongs to Sir Howard Hodgkin.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34The first time I came here, I thought the objects lining
0:00:34 > 0:00:40the room were canvases, their painted faces turned to the wall.
0:00:40 > 0:00:42That was my first mistake.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47Hodgkin paints only on wood and these are screens designed
0:00:47 > 0:00:52to conceal works in progress, which may take years to complete.
0:01:00 > 0:01:02I have an appointment with the painter,
0:01:02 > 0:01:05who, by all accounts, is not an easy interview.
0:01:05 > 0:01:12His friend Bruce Chatwin described him as longing for both fame and for oblivion.
0:01:15 > 0:01:21He doesn't like talking about his paintings because, he says, "Words are the English disease.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24"They come between the painting and the viewer."
0:01:27 > 0:01:31He once said that painting is like putting a message in a bottle
0:01:31 > 0:01:34and flinging it into the sea.
0:01:34 > 0:01:41He works in this great bowl of glaring white light, but no-one has seen him paint for over 20 years.
0:01:43 > 0:01:48Now, at the age of 73, he has a major retrospective,
0:01:48 > 0:01:52first in Dublin and from tomorrow at Tate Britain,
0:01:52 > 0:01:56and he's the subject of this book, which seems to mark him out
0:01:56 > 0:02:02as a favourite of poets, novelists and critics, many of whom have known him for years.
0:02:06 > 0:02:07And here he comes.
0:02:17 > 0:02:19Welcome!
0:02:21 > 0:02:23'He seems rather benign,
0:02:23 > 0:02:27'but the terms of the interview require some negotiation.'
0:02:27 > 0:02:30'Certain personal areas are off limits,
0:02:30 > 0:02:34'he's not keen to talk about his world class collection of Indian art.
0:02:34 > 0:02:39'And we absolutely cannot film him at work.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42'But there is something he will do.
0:02:42 > 0:02:43'He will leave the white room.
0:02:43 > 0:02:46'He will come to India.'
0:03:16 > 0:03:19This is Hodgkin's 28th visit to India.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22I wonder what keeps bringing him back here.
0:03:24 > 0:03:31'We're following his itinerary, coming to places he has chosen and invariably seen before.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36'This is Fatehpur Sikri, a ghost city,
0:03:36 > 0:03:42'built by the Mogul emperor Akbar, but abandoned after only 14 years.
0:03:45 > 0:03:50'One suspects he has an enormous enthusiasm for Mogul architecture,
0:03:50 > 0:03:52'but Howard's not going to talk about it.'
0:03:54 > 0:03:58He sits and he looks.
0:03:58 > 0:04:03He's doing something else and you know it has to do with how a painting comes about.
0:04:10 > 0:04:14He doesn't sketch, he doesn't take photographs.
0:04:14 > 0:04:17He doesn't do anything obvious to commit a scene to memory.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21And yet somehow you know he's taking it all in,
0:04:21 > 0:04:26and you wonder, which of all these sights and sounds will come back one day?
0:04:26 > 0:04:29Not like a scene from a movie,
0:04:29 > 0:04:32but as patches of colour painted on wood.
0:04:39 > 0:04:44I used to worry that I couldn't articulate exactly what
0:04:44 > 0:04:48even a picture like this that I own by him
0:04:48 > 0:04:51does to me internally when I look at it.
0:04:51 > 0:04:55But now I think that that's only a sort of social handicap
0:04:55 > 0:05:00rather than a sort of failing in regard to me and the painting.
0:05:00 > 0:05:05I don't see why I should necessarily be able to put it into words
0:05:05 > 0:05:08or whether it would be improved by my putting it into words.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12I was looking at it just before you came and one of the things I love
0:05:12 > 0:05:21is sort of leaching out from behind all this exuberance are these little areas of sort of greeny-grey brown.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26I just found my thoughts going along the line of
0:05:26 > 0:05:30this is a sort of blazing picture about joy
0:05:30 > 0:05:34and this is behind every joy, there is some melancholy.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38Might be complete bollocks, and actually, if I remember
0:05:38 > 0:05:41that next time I look at it, it won't help me understand it.
0:05:45 > 0:05:52Night drive to Agra, 125 miles south of Delhi.
0:05:52 > 0:05:57It's my first time in India, and feels exhilarating, overwhelming,
0:05:57 > 0:06:00almost dangerous.
0:06:00 > 0:06:02CAR HORNS BLARE
0:06:20 > 0:06:22It's an assault on the senses, India, isn't it,
0:06:22 > 0:06:25in an extraordinary way?
0:06:25 > 0:06:31I think one of the things about India is that everything is so extreme
0:06:31 > 0:06:34and also so naked.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38But the thing about being an artist is that you are always a stranger.
0:06:40 > 0:06:43Because one's always a stranger,
0:06:43 > 0:06:48it's nice to find a place where it's natural to be one.
0:06:48 > 0:06:53It's not natural to be a stranger in England.
0:07:05 > 0:07:10So many of the pictures refer to "abroad", as it used to be called.
0:07:10 > 0:07:13Seasons in their foreign plumage.
0:07:13 > 0:07:18Fruit, palm trees, a searingly coloured sky.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22It may be that this painter needs to travel.
0:07:22 > 0:07:28You need the separation from home and then you need the return home to consider what you have stored up.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33What is worth painting is what remains in and is transformed by memory.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38Late afternoon at Banganga Tank.
0:07:38 > 0:07:43Howard loves this place and is in a talkative mood.
0:07:43 > 0:07:46It's become very glamorous since I first came here.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48This what you call glamorous, is it?
0:07:48 > 0:07:52Oh, yes. Look at these beautiful clean birds.
0:07:52 > 0:07:59There's a little bit of junk there, but mostly it's very downmarket.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02Look at those colours in a row.
0:08:05 > 0:08:11Lilac, the pink, the orange and yellow in between - amazing!
0:08:11 > 0:08:14What is it about the British that we're so coy about colour?
0:08:16 > 0:08:20I don't really know, but I think that one of the reasons
0:08:20 > 0:08:25we're coy about the colour of sunsets
0:08:25 > 0:08:29is because sunsets are the colour of tumescence,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32and that's thought to be... or something!
0:08:37 > 0:08:39It's also not thought to be serious colour.
0:08:41 > 0:08:46That's right. There is that thing about your pictures.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48People think they're very beautiful
0:08:48 > 0:08:50and therefore they can't be serious.
0:08:50 > 0:08:52Oh yes, absolutely.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59That's why I try to persuade people to never call them beautiful,
0:08:59 > 0:09:00but I didn't get anywhere.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05Look at that. That is pretty amazing.
0:09:13 > 0:09:15It's very bright.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18It is. I like that.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21It's a bit more than the pictures can stand, I think.
0:09:23 > 0:09:27We saw this green in India, but did we quite see this green?
0:09:27 > 0:09:29Yes, absolutely.
0:09:29 > 0:09:37This is the perfect Indian vernacular green, not Raj green.
0:09:37 > 0:09:41Is it a British...? No, I think it's a vernacular green.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43Who knows where colours come from in India?
0:09:50 > 0:09:56The Irish Museum of Modern Art has been painted, blazoned,
0:09:56 > 0:10:01maybe appropriately in green, white and gold
0:10:01 > 0:10:04for the Howard Hodgkin exhibition.
0:10:04 > 0:10:10When I walked through the rooms and stopped with the paintings,
0:10:10 > 0:10:15with green prevailing,
0:10:15 > 0:10:20I couldn't help thinking of a poem by Philip Larkin called The Trees.
0:10:21 > 0:10:26"Trees are coming into leaf, Like something almost being said,
0:10:26 > 0:10:33"The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief.
0:10:33 > 0:10:37"Is it that they are born again and we grow old?
0:10:37 > 0:10:39"No, they die too.
0:10:39 > 0:10:45"Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain,
0:10:45 > 0:10:49"Yet still the unresting castles thresh,
0:10:49 > 0:10:52"In full-grown thickness every May.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54" "Last year is dead", they seem to say,
0:10:54 > 0:10:58"Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."
0:11:02 > 0:11:07As a matter of fact, that "begin afresh"
0:11:07 > 0:11:11is an answer that Howard Hodgkin could give to a question he's often asked.
0:11:11 > 0:11:13He's often asked, "What does this painting mean?"
0:11:13 > 0:11:19Which he avoids with various wiles and wisdoms,
0:11:19 > 0:11:23but he could say, truthfully and adequately,
0:11:23 > 0:11:27"This painting means that I had to begin afresh."
0:11:46 > 0:11:48The Dublin show, like the one opening at Tate Britain,
0:11:48 > 0:11:51is chronological, spanning nearly 50 years.
0:11:51 > 0:11:56It's a chance to see, to walk through, a lifetime of painting.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01"I've been looking at Howard's work for three decades now
0:12:01 > 0:12:03"and it's one of the delights of my life.
0:12:03 > 0:12:07"When his paintings, like a gang of international acquaintances,
0:12:07 > 0:12:09"reassemble for a different show
0:12:09 > 0:12:12"in a different city, in a different country,
0:12:12 > 0:12:15"when I stand in front of a picture again after a period of a few years,
0:12:15 > 0:12:20"I often find myself murmuring internally, 'Yes, of course,' or 'Good,'
0:12:20 > 0:12:25"or, 'That's right,' or sometimes, 'Now I am beginning to see.' "
0:12:33 > 0:12:36'The pictures are packed with cunning design
0:12:36 > 0:12:38'and thick, luscious colour.
0:12:38 > 0:12:44'Hodgkin's green is as excruciating as Tiepolo's blue.
0:12:44 > 0:12:48'Having renounced painting's other primary resource - drawing -
0:12:48 > 0:12:52'Hodgkin has fielded the most inventive, sensuously-affecting
0:12:52 > 0:12:57'colour repertory of any contemporary painter.'
0:12:57 > 0:13:00Here you have this artist who's grown up in England,
0:13:00 > 0:13:05a culture which is thought not to be interested in colour,
0:13:05 > 0:13:10and here he is. Really, he's of totally southern temperament
0:13:10 > 0:13:15in this grey atmosphere of London trying to burst out.
0:13:15 > 0:13:17You see it throughout his painting.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20I mean, this really strong emotion, really strong colour,
0:13:20 > 0:13:25which is completely uncharacteristic of what we think of as British painting.
0:13:25 > 0:13:27When he gets to India, it really explodes.
0:13:32 > 0:13:37The trouble is, once you start becoming aware of colours, you start seeing them everywhere...
0:13:37 > 0:13:39or think you do.
0:13:39 > 0:13:43When travelling with Howard, you soon learn not to take colour for granted.
0:13:45 > 0:13:47Howard, look.
0:13:47 > 0:13:50Yeah.
0:13:50 > 0:13:51Dublin green or not?
0:13:51 > 0:13:53Not quite.
0:13:55 > 0:13:58Not quite blue enough, almost.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07We know objectively that painters see colours better than we do,
0:14:07 > 0:14:11see them more exactly, more precisely, but it's very good to have it demonstrated.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17"Taranto, April 1989.
0:14:17 > 0:14:19"Howard spots a black hand-towel
0:14:19 > 0:14:23"in the window of an old-fashioned haberdashery. Four of us go in.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27"The assistant produces a black hand-towel.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30" 'No,' says Howard, 'It's not as black as the one in the window.'
0:14:30 > 0:14:34"The assistant pulls out another, which is similarly rejected,
0:14:34 > 0:14:36"and then another and then another.
0:14:41 > 0:14:44"Howard has now rejected seven or eight, for God's sake,
0:14:44 > 0:14:47"and is asking the fellow to get the original towel out of the window.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50"The assistant contorts himself to do so.
0:14:50 > 0:14:52"When he lays the item down on the counter,
0:14:52 > 0:14:56"I see instantly what I would not have seen in anyone else's presence -
0:14:56 > 0:15:01"the towel is indeed very, very slightly blacker than all the others.
0:15:01 > 0:15:03"The sale is concluded."
0:15:05 > 0:15:09Your awareness and love of colour,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12it's also connected with your sense of escape,
0:15:12 > 0:15:13going to India and getting away.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17Is there something liberating about colour for you personally?
0:15:17 > 0:15:23I don't think, particularly. I think if the picture needs some colour, I put it there.
0:15:23 > 0:15:26But I don't really think in terms of liberation.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32I find painting too difficult to feel liberated by it.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37Colour has no separate identity for me at all.
0:15:37 > 0:15:43As that great colourist David Hockney once said, "It doesn't matter what colour you use."
0:15:49 > 0:15:53For him, the word colourist is an offensive term.
0:15:53 > 0:15:56He's not a colourist. "I'm not a colourist!"
0:15:56 > 0:16:01So he's a painter and he happens to work with colour,
0:16:01 > 0:16:05but the paintings are not a way
0:16:05 > 0:16:09of making a wall pretty or a space pretty.
0:16:09 > 0:16:15So he has to work out carefully what it is he's doing,
0:16:15 > 0:16:21but it's so hard to describe because he's working very tactfully
0:16:21 > 0:16:24and sensitively off a nervous system to tell something.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27It's absolutely crucial to him, but it's not something simple.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32But being called a colourist is a nightmare.
0:16:32 > 0:16:36It's like for a novelist being called a storyteller.
0:16:36 > 0:16:38"Oh, he's a great storyteller."
0:16:38 > 0:16:42When you've spent your lifetime shaping things,
0:16:42 > 0:16:46forcing sentences into certain positions, making paragraphs sharp
0:16:46 > 0:16:48and, "Oh, he's a great storyteller."
0:16:48 > 0:16:52It's that sort of thing that really irritates people.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58Some people would say, "He's an abstract painter."
0:16:58 > 0:17:02A lot of people would say that who don't necessarily know a great deal about the history of art.
0:17:02 > 0:17:06You're very adamant that you're a representational painter.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09I'm a painter. You're a painter.
0:17:09 > 0:17:12You're being a bit gnomic about that because you have said
0:17:12 > 0:17:17that you paint things that you see and experience.
0:17:17 > 0:17:22Yes, I'm only being a bit gnomic to avoid repeating
0:17:22 > 0:17:27that very glib remark I once made that I'm a representational painter of emotions,
0:17:27 > 0:17:31which was a silly thing to say,
0:17:31 > 0:17:34but I'm not an abstract painter.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39His work hovers in this area.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43It always starts from a given moment or a given memory
0:17:43 > 0:17:48and a very specific experience.
0:17:48 > 0:17:55I think if you start to try and pin down, analyse and define in words,
0:17:55 > 0:18:00it can often make it more difficult to realise the experience in another form.
0:18:02 > 0:18:08I think also that he's very happy to give people clues but not explanations
0:18:08 > 0:18:12because he doesn't want the works to be read literally.
0:18:14 > 0:18:18And the first clue Howard offers us is the painting's title.
0:18:23 > 0:18:26This is called...
0:18:26 > 0:18:27It's called Rain.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31How important is the title, as a matter of interest?
0:18:31 > 0:18:35Extremely important because it's the subject of the picture.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38This is a painting called Sad Flowers.
0:18:38 > 0:18:40Sad Flowers.
0:18:40 > 0:18:45Yes, which has been much repainted.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48When you say much repainted, do you mean you worked on it a lot?
0:18:48 > 0:18:53I worked on it a lot and then I thought it wasn't sad enough so I made it even more sad.
0:18:58 > 0:19:00What is it called?
0:19:00 > 0:19:04That's one of Howard's wittier titles.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08It's such an exuberant and blazing picture.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11He calls it Keep it Quiet.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14Its presence is very demanding.
0:19:14 > 0:19:16It's opposite the front door
0:19:16 > 0:19:21and I sometimes deliberately don't switch the light on that's on it
0:19:21 > 0:19:23so that I sort of skulk past it.
0:19:23 > 0:19:27I think, "I'll get back to you tomorrow."
0:19:27 > 0:19:31This is a picture called Snapshot, Howard,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34and it took you nine years to paint.
0:19:34 > 0:19:38It did indeed. It shows how difficult it is to paint a snapshot.
0:19:38 > 0:19:46So, when you began, there was some image that you caught sight of.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50Is that why you called it Snapshot? I'll go that far, yes.
0:19:52 > 0:19:58It takes you a long time, paradoxically, to capture that moment and that glimpse.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01I don't think it's quite as paradoxical as all that because...
0:20:04 > 0:20:08..a glimpse is much harder to pin down.
0:20:08 > 0:20:13Because you're going back deep into your... You're trying to remember...
0:20:13 > 0:20:20You have to remember and paint from memory and believe in it as well.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23Belief is the real trouble.
0:20:23 > 0:20:26When we think of memory in art, you think of Wordsworth
0:20:26 > 0:20:29and emotion recollected in tranquillity.
0:20:29 > 0:20:32It always seems to me that Howard's paintings
0:20:32 > 0:20:36are emotion recollected with the full power and complication
0:20:36 > 0:20:39of the emotion that was felt in the first place.
0:20:39 > 0:20:44There's nothing calm and reflective about these paintings.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47They seem to me furiously emotional.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55'We rose early one morning to go to Lodi Gardens,
0:20:55 > 0:20:59'a favourite haunt of lovers and joggers.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02'We were there to visit the domed tombs
0:21:02 > 0:21:04'and I hoped Howard might open up
0:21:04 > 0:21:10'and explain why it was India that took such a grip on his imagination.'
0:21:10 > 0:21:14There's something about the everyday in India, just coming across these things.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18Yes. Look, you can see the woman taking her dog for a walk.
0:21:18 > 0:21:22Yes, we talked about glimpses.
0:21:22 > 0:21:25One of my favourite things.
0:21:25 > 0:21:29And the elephant-coloured palm trunks,
0:21:29 > 0:21:32I think that's absolutely amazing.
0:21:37 > 0:21:40Was this Mogul architecture what first captivated you?
0:21:42 > 0:21:48No, not really, it was just a very romantic idea of India.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51It was completely exotic.
0:21:51 > 0:21:57It couldn't be further away than living in Shepherds Bush, where I was then.
0:21:57 > 0:21:59And everybody spoke English.
0:22:00 > 0:22:02They don't any more.
0:22:02 > 0:22:04What, in Shepherds Bush?
0:22:04 > 0:22:07No, here.
0:22:07 > 0:22:09When did you first see this?
0:22:09 > 0:22:15I'm sure I saw it on my first visit to India.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17In '64.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23I thought it was an interesting way of exploring how the paintings begin
0:22:23 > 0:22:29by asking him to go through the past chronologically for me - What year? What happened next?
0:22:29 > 0:22:31This irritated him very deeply.
0:22:33 > 0:22:37But every so often, he would say something,
0:22:37 > 0:22:42he would say, "Remember in that street, there was another boy..." and he would start.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45I'd realise he was almost back somewhere
0:22:45 > 0:22:48in the part of himself that makes images.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55And what did you sense about his childhood?
0:22:55 > 0:23:02I felt that he certainly had a sense of being an outsider,
0:23:02 > 0:23:05which can happen to the most protected, loved children
0:23:05 > 0:23:10in the most bourgeois families, the sudden sense that you're not...
0:23:10 > 0:23:14that you weren't born or that you weren't fully made,
0:23:14 > 0:23:18and that you would have to make yourself up as you went along within a family
0:23:18 > 0:23:21no matter how wonderful the family was.
0:23:21 > 0:23:26Oh, I certainly felt that about him, you feel that about him I think the minute you see him -
0:23:26 > 0:23:30that he is somebody who has been lost.
0:23:34 > 0:23:38'Howard Hodgkin doesn't fit in to any group or school of British art.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41'In the early '60s, he painted a series of portraits
0:23:41 > 0:23:44'of fellow artists from the contemporary scene.
0:23:44 > 0:23:49'But as he told me, he was never one of the gang.'
0:23:49 > 0:23:54So, the beginning of the story is in white. In white, yes.
0:23:54 > 0:23:58Any reason for that? Yes. You begin pure and then get corrupted.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03That is not for publication.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06This picture tells you about the story,
0:24:06 > 0:24:11about the art world you inhabited and your interpretation of it.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15And that awful quotation that critic got.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19"I painted pictures of people because I was scared of them."
0:24:19 > 0:24:22That was actually quoted in relation to that painting.
0:24:22 > 0:24:24He's got a point, hasn't he?
0:24:24 > 0:24:26It's quite a scary picture.
0:24:26 > 0:24:28I suppose so!
0:24:28 > 0:24:31They were very close friends of mine at the time,
0:24:31 > 0:24:35but perhaps I was also a little scared of Robin.
0:24:37 > 0:24:40Your subject for a lot of that time
0:24:40 > 0:24:43was actually this art world and the people who inhabited it
0:24:43 > 0:24:46and all going off in their different directions. You were sort of...
0:24:46 > 0:24:51It was probably the nearest I could get to being in it.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54But you were sort of marooned a bit.
0:24:54 > 0:24:58I say marooned, but you were still finding your own way.
0:24:58 > 0:25:00Yes, I was.
0:25:04 > 0:25:06Throughout the 1960s,
0:25:06 > 0:25:09Howard escaped the confines of the English art world
0:25:09 > 0:25:13through his passion for collecting Indian paintings and drawings.
0:25:27 > 0:25:29As Bruce Chatwin observed,
0:25:29 > 0:25:34part of this enthusiasm was the thrill of the chase.
0:25:34 > 0:25:37'Howard's hunting instincts were thoroughly aroused.
0:25:37 > 0:25:40'He bought, sold and traded.
0:25:40 > 0:25:42'He perfected the tactics of the bazaar
0:25:42 > 0:25:48'and for over 10 years, he channelled about half his creative energies into his collection.'
0:26:01 > 0:26:04This is purely an unfinished painting.
0:26:04 > 0:26:07But I like it very much because of that.
0:26:09 > 0:26:13'Living with objects is...
0:26:13 > 0:26:17'only just less difficult than living with other people.'
0:26:17 > 0:26:22'Any retrospective exhibition of Howard's own paintings would, in my opinion,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26'be incomplete without the Indian collection hanging beside them.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30'Though having once made a purchase, he has an equally strong impulse
0:26:30 > 0:26:34'to hide it, to lend it, or at least to get it out of his sight.'
0:26:36 > 0:26:39And that's just what he has done.
0:26:39 > 0:26:44When I wanted to see his collection, I had to go to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,
0:26:44 > 0:26:50where, for the moment, it was not on display, but somewhere deep in storage.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01The Ashmolean's had a long relationship with Howard Hodgkin
0:27:01 > 0:27:06ever since he was a painting fellow here in the mid-'70s.
0:27:06 > 0:27:12And we were delighted a few years ago when he said, "Would you like to take the collection on loan?"
0:27:12 > 0:27:15So here it is.
0:27:15 > 0:27:18He's been collecting ever since he was a schoolboy.
0:27:18 > 0:27:21It's been a vital part of his life.
0:27:21 > 0:27:26I think Howard has a huge affinity for elephants and for elephants in painting.
0:27:26 > 0:27:30Probably about a fifth of his collection shows elephants.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33They vary from simple drawings,
0:27:33 > 0:27:39which, as it were, capture the whole life and soul of an elephant, particularly an Indian elephant,
0:27:39 > 0:27:42to elaborate paintings like this one.
0:27:46 > 0:27:52Hunters have been sent out by the royal court to trap a wild elephant.
0:27:52 > 0:27:56The bull elephant has been lured away from his herd.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59His herd are all frolicking happily in the lake beneath.
0:27:59 > 0:28:05It's just a great tour de force of elephants playing, elephants charging,
0:28:05 > 0:28:07elephants climbing rocks...
0:28:07 > 0:28:09everything's going on.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12Elephants tripping the light fantastic, almost.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20Indian painters tended to copy the same subjects over and over again.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24They produced good paintings, but they didn't produce great paintings,
0:28:24 > 0:28:27which had that original spark of inspiration.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31That's what you see in so many of the paintings in the Hodgkin collection -
0:28:31 > 0:28:34they're the real thing, they have that original spark.
0:28:48 > 0:28:51Howard also collects people.
0:28:51 > 0:28:55His passion for Indian art led to friendships with scholars
0:28:55 > 0:29:00like Simon Digby, who we met up with to be our guide at Humayan's tomb.
0:29:00 > 0:29:06You think of paintings of the mid-17th...you get domes,
0:29:06 > 0:29:09which probably looked quite like these...
0:29:09 > 0:29:13domes of a century earlier.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16I was looking at some pictures
0:29:16 > 0:29:19in this wonderful installation in the V,
0:29:19 > 0:29:25and there was Simon wearing sandals and carrying two shopping bags,
0:29:25 > 0:29:32which in those days made him look slightly like a male bag lady.
0:29:34 > 0:29:39I thought it was him - I knew him by sight...I thought.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42He came up in his best dithering tones.
0:29:42 > 0:29:44He said,
0:29:44 > 0:29:46"Mr Hodgkin, isn't it?"
0:29:46 > 0:29:48I said, "Yes."
0:29:48 > 0:29:50We went on from there.
0:29:50 > 0:29:57It was a time when so few people among the British
0:29:57 > 0:30:01were interested in Indian art in any way,
0:30:01 > 0:30:06so almost anyone of our generation who were interested
0:30:06 > 0:30:09were bound to run across one another sooner or later.
0:30:09 > 0:30:15But I was so impressed, being much shier than that, that you came up to a perfect stranger.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18I thought that was admirable.
0:30:18 > 0:30:20I've always been badly behaved!
0:30:21 > 0:30:23Hardly.
0:30:23 > 0:30:26I note the Star of David in the roundels.
0:30:26 > 0:30:29That motif becomes popular...
0:30:29 > 0:30:33again in the mid-16th century. It's found also on...
0:30:33 > 0:30:37He would talk for half the night when I first knew him.
0:30:37 > 0:30:40And in his drinking days, it was not half.
0:30:43 > 0:30:49'He's immensely knowledgeable about various things, particularly about Indian decorative art.'
0:31:02 > 0:31:07When you go, and I just watched you there,
0:31:07 > 0:31:12a lot of the time you would just sit and...absorb things.
0:31:12 > 0:31:17Is that the way you are when you're away?
0:31:17 > 0:31:21It's the way I am everywhere now, I think, very much.
0:31:26 > 0:31:28I try and work all the time.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34So that's what you're doing when you're sitting, you're working?
0:31:34 > 0:31:36Yeah.
0:31:44 > 0:31:47"When travelling with Howard, he and I have a running joke.
0:31:47 > 0:31:52"Occasionally, sitting in a bar, relaxing in a restaurant, staring at a sunset,
0:31:52 > 0:31:56"gazing at a piazza, he will say, with a delivery poised between
0:31:56 > 0:32:01"self-satire and true contentment, 'I feel a picture coming on.'
0:32:01 > 0:32:04"I ritually reply, 'I feel a novel coming on.'
0:32:04 > 0:32:08"He means it more than I do - well, I never mean it.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12"I often wonder what is happening inside his head at these moments.
0:32:12 > 0:32:17"Howard looks intently all the time, but when he says he feels a picture
0:32:17 > 0:32:20"coming on, he seems to be looking differently.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24"The moment is digestive, ruminant,
0:32:24 > 0:32:26"and I know he will remember everything.
0:32:26 > 0:32:30"That's to say, everything he needs and will need."
0:32:56 > 0:32:59It's like a stage set.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01She's like...
0:33:01 > 0:33:06She's act one. Yes, exactly. Something's going to happen.
0:33:06 > 0:33:10See how the shape of the...
0:33:10 > 0:33:13bottom of columns echoes the shape of her broom.
0:33:17 > 0:33:21A word would be enough to start a painting.
0:33:21 > 0:33:23A word,
0:33:23 > 0:33:25an event, a place... Yes, a place.
0:33:25 > 0:33:29A thing that happened. Yes.
0:33:29 > 0:33:32A memory in the distant past. Yes.
0:33:32 > 0:33:39And it isn't just a question of capturing the moment.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41It's almost the opposite of that.
0:33:41 > 0:33:48It's trying to find in the experience, whatever it was, the way it was remembered.
0:33:48 > 0:33:52To try and make that something that would matter.
0:34:00 > 0:34:06But if you're feeling miserable, it's a perfect place to come, it only lasts five seconds.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11I did once come here. What, when you were feeling miserable?
0:34:11 > 0:34:12Utterly miserable.
0:34:19 > 0:34:21'India became an emotional lifeline.
0:34:21 > 0:34:25'Each winter, he travelled all over the subcontinent,
0:34:25 > 0:34:26'sopping up impressions -
0:34:26 > 0:34:30'the view from a railway carriage, the colour of cow dust in the evening,
0:34:30 > 0:34:34'or the sight of an orange sari against a concrete balustrade -
0:34:34 > 0:34:38'and storing them for pictures he would paint at home.
0:34:38 > 0:34:43'And then the story might, artistically, have ended, were it not for a chance encounter.
0:34:43 > 0:34:47'The details of the encounter I leave to the imagination.
0:34:47 > 0:34:53'The results were that Howard's painting took a sharp and unexpected swerve.'
0:34:54 > 0:34:59Somehow that Chatwin...because the melodrama of that description...
0:34:59 > 0:35:03Yeah, the melodrama of course has affected...
0:35:03 > 0:35:09Everyone after that said, "Ah, he came out, and his work went...!"
0:35:10 > 0:35:12Nothing so simple
0:35:12 > 0:35:15or direct.
0:35:15 > 0:35:20I don't think it's anything like as simple as suggesting that,
0:35:20 > 0:35:25in the mid-'70s, he came out, and suddenly his painting...
0:35:25 > 0:35:28became of a different order.
0:35:28 > 0:35:31I think the subjects may have changed somewhat.
0:35:31 > 0:35:34And he was probably prepared
0:35:34 > 0:35:36to paint...
0:35:36 > 0:35:40subjects in which he had been, not just an observer,
0:35:40 > 0:35:45but subjects that were more directly about his own experience
0:35:45 > 0:35:46and own relationships.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49That probably did change.
0:36:01 > 0:36:07'We'd come here to the Red Fort at Agra to see Howard's favourite object in all of India
0:36:07 > 0:36:12'and at the same time to get a view of everybody else's favourite, the Taj Mahal,
0:36:12 > 0:36:16'which, rather pointedly, was not on Howard's itinerary.
0:36:16 > 0:36:18'Nor was it actually visible.'
0:36:25 > 0:36:31So, on a different day, when the sun wasn't here, we'd see the Taj Mahal from here? Yes, you would.
0:36:31 > 0:36:33'But not today.'
0:36:33 > 0:36:38We can probably buy a postcard or something of it.
0:36:38 > 0:36:39'Thanks a bunch, Howard.'
0:36:43 > 0:36:46I want to see my favourite object.
0:36:46 > 0:36:51'And there it was, the emperor's throne.'
0:36:51 > 0:36:54No, I'll sit down here and you sit up there.
0:36:54 > 0:36:57All right, go on, then. That would be appropriate.
0:36:57 > 0:36:58Of course(!)
0:36:58 > 0:37:02No, no, you have to sit cross-legged in the middle.
0:37:02 > 0:37:07'Howard had a plan, and I was beginning to think I was being set up.'
0:37:07 > 0:37:09I'm only doing this for you, Howard.
0:37:09 > 0:37:11In the middle. In the middle?
0:37:11 > 0:37:14Like the Emperor Akbar.
0:37:15 > 0:37:17Where he sat.
0:37:17 > 0:37:19Yes.
0:37:27 > 0:37:31I'm trying to remember what the proper posture...
0:37:32 > 0:37:35When you want something, my part would be...
0:37:35 > 0:37:37So what can I do for you?
0:37:39 > 0:37:43I think you could persuade people to look at my pictures.
0:37:43 > 0:37:45That's what I'm trying to do!
0:37:47 > 0:37:49Well, you see, I believe you.
0:37:55 > 0:37:59You love Mogul miniatures, you collect them.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02Why...? I only like big ones,
0:38:02 > 0:38:05I have to interpolate at that point.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08You only like big miniatures? Yes.
0:38:08 > 0:38:10You're a perverse fellow.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12Yes, I know!
0:38:12 > 0:38:17It gives them a certain quality when they're that big and everyone thinks they're that big.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21But this picture is of a very large subject.
0:38:23 > 0:38:27It's called, "Come Back, Dull Care".
0:38:30 > 0:38:32"Come Back, Dull Care". Yes.
0:38:32 > 0:38:34Most people would say,
0:38:34 > 0:38:39"Be Gone, Dull Care". Exactly. I thought it would be very good to have it back.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44It's a feel-good picture.
0:38:44 > 0:38:46Doesn't it look like one?
0:38:48 > 0:38:52Why do people say about your pictures that they're erotic?
0:38:52 > 0:38:56It's a word you hear a lot about your pictures. Well, I think they hope they are.
0:38:56 > 0:38:58And do YOU hope they are?
0:38:58 > 0:39:01Yes, if I've made them erotic, then I do hope they are.
0:39:01 > 0:39:06I saw this man sunbathing in Central Park wearing red Bermudas.
0:39:09 > 0:39:12I can see that sort of New York...
0:39:12 > 0:39:14Looking up, I can see.
0:39:14 > 0:39:16Is it a pleasurable experience, painting?
0:39:16 > 0:39:19No, it's agony.
0:39:19 > 0:39:24But I don't like saying that out loud, cos it sounds like self-pity.
0:39:24 > 0:39:27But it's not pleasurable...to me.
0:39:27 > 0:39:28So why do you do it?
0:39:28 > 0:39:30I don't know.
0:39:30 > 0:39:34I suppose it's a compulsion of some kind.
0:39:34 > 0:39:40And when I've finished a painting which I am pleased with, which does happen,
0:39:40 > 0:39:43then I always think I've got to paint another one.
0:39:44 > 0:39:48Do you surprise yourself when you make a picture? Have to. Have to?
0:39:57 > 0:40:00I mean, when one talks about composition,
0:40:00 > 0:40:02it that something,
0:40:02 > 0:40:06which emerges more than it's...
0:40:06 > 0:40:10conceived or ordained, the composition?
0:40:10 > 0:40:13I'm not going to answer that - it's a trade secret.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23He's very reluctant to talk about that whole process.
0:40:23 > 0:40:25There's not a lot of point in probing.
0:40:25 > 0:40:30You probably have, but he'll give away a bit, but he won't... And I understand that.
0:40:30 > 0:40:32Have you ever seen him paint?
0:40:32 > 0:40:34No.
0:40:37 > 0:40:40I want to go inside, don't you?
0:40:41 > 0:40:46Isn't that beautiful? Look at the light coming in. Beautiful.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51Crawford Market, Mumbai, a flourishing relic of the Raj,
0:40:51 > 0:40:54'designed by Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard's father.'
0:40:54 > 0:40:56There's the fountain.
0:40:56 > 0:40:59Right. I shouldn't be holding your arm on camera.
0:41:09 > 0:41:12'There was something Howard was eager to show me.'
0:41:13 > 0:41:17The fountain really is amazing.
0:41:17 > 0:41:21They've painted over all the original design in technicolour.
0:41:21 > 0:41:25It's been absorbed by India.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28So it was originally built by...
0:41:28 > 0:41:30Designed by Lockwood Kipling.
0:41:33 > 0:41:37What period? It looks like 1930s or '20s.
0:41:37 > 0:41:41No, no, no, that's because of all the paint. It's much earlier, you mean. Yes.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43Not of the same period as the building?
0:41:43 > 0:41:45Yes! My God!
0:41:45 > 0:41:47You see how they've...
0:41:47 > 0:41:49Indianised it?
0:41:49 > 0:41:51They certainly have. Wonderfully!
0:41:51 > 0:41:56You see, it was originally a kind of mock Byzantine. See the little columns.
0:41:56 > 0:42:03Very beautiful, because water would have come out of all these...
0:42:05 > 0:42:06..heads.
0:42:07 > 0:42:10It's been customised. And I like the one that...
0:42:10 > 0:42:14the broken one that they've painted a face on.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20It's in Venetian Byzantine style, partly.
0:42:20 > 0:42:26Actually, what they call Indo-Saracenic. Indo-Saracenic?
0:42:28 > 0:42:30That's a very highfalutin name.
0:42:30 > 0:42:33Well, it's a very highfalutin style!
0:42:33 > 0:42:35It's thanks to Ruskin in the end,
0:42:35 > 0:42:37all this.
0:42:37 > 0:42:42Is there quite a lot of Ruskin's influence in Bombay in the architecture?
0:42:42 > 0:42:45I would think.
0:42:45 > 0:42:50But, of course, the influence eventually came from the government art schools.
0:43:01 > 0:43:06But the biggest architectural treat in our entire India trip was yet to come
0:43:06 > 0:43:10and it was Howard's work on the grandest scale -
0:43:10 > 0:43:12an astonishing giant mural
0:43:12 > 0:43:15cut from white marble and black stone
0:43:15 > 0:43:19for the British Council Library in Delhi.
0:43:19 > 0:43:24His collaborator was the Indian architect, Charles Correa.
0:43:24 > 0:43:25The British...
0:43:25 > 0:43:31layer is just one of many, many layers that make India.
0:43:31 > 0:43:34Any Indian is just a pin you push through these layers
0:43:34 > 0:43:38and it hits them at different speeds and with different consequences.
0:43:38 > 0:43:40So that's what that building is about.
0:43:40 > 0:43:44You're trying to express that, and that's how we got that structure.
0:43:44 > 0:43:47We needed something in front, which would convey all this,
0:43:47 > 0:43:53and that's where Howard came up trumps, because he came up with this idea of the shade of a giant tree.
0:43:53 > 0:43:59India is a place where all these things could happen, a really pluralistic world.
0:44:01 > 0:44:05What was the thought in your mind when you came up with this?
0:44:05 > 0:44:09I wanted to do something that's totally...
0:44:09 > 0:44:12non-sectarian in every way
0:44:12 > 0:44:14and...
0:44:14 > 0:44:20I thought of people sitting under banyan trees reading, which is a very...
0:44:20 > 0:44:24familiar subject in early Indian painting.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27I thought it was appropriate for a library.
0:44:29 > 0:44:34So this is all done with stone? Yes. Amazing.
0:44:34 > 0:44:37White marble and black stone.
0:44:39 > 0:44:42I was so amazed that... He has always dealt in colour.
0:44:42 > 0:44:48When you come to India, you'd think you'd want to deal in colour and, of course, he does when he comes...
0:44:48 > 0:44:53But he had the guts to say, "No, shadows are black. The hotter the sun, the blacker the shadow."
0:44:53 > 0:44:57A lot of Mogul buildings are decorated in black and white marble
0:44:57 > 0:44:59and natural stone like this is.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05The person cutting it will...
0:45:05 > 0:45:07say, "OK, like that."
0:45:07 > 0:45:10Whereas, in fact, you need to do...
0:45:13 > 0:45:16It was all cut out with scissors, originally,
0:45:16 > 0:45:18from paper.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21Is that how you did it in order to get it right? Yes.
0:45:21 > 0:45:24It had to be so meticulous in every...
0:45:24 > 0:45:28There's a very good example up there where you see just a little white dot.
0:45:30 > 0:45:36It's just about over your head. There, the peak? The peak, yes.
0:45:36 > 0:45:38I'd call it a mountain peak.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42I think you're right. It's more a peak than a dot.
0:45:42 > 0:45:44I'm sorry.
0:45:44 > 0:45:48Some murals are a little extra on the building. This is the building, isn't it?
0:45:48 > 0:45:52Yes, and that was something that we were both determined it should be.
0:45:52 > 0:45:57The wonderful thing is that black and white holds all the colour at bay,
0:45:57 > 0:46:00and there's so much colour pressing to get in.
0:46:00 > 0:46:02Even the stone around. It's beautifully done.
0:46:02 > 0:46:04Whether these...
0:46:04 > 0:46:09forms are the limbs of a tree or...
0:46:09 > 0:46:14a banyan or whatever, you have a sense of an organic form, that's the key thing.
0:46:14 > 0:46:18There's tension that exists between this organic form
0:46:18 > 0:46:24contained within a rather severe building...
0:46:24 > 0:46:30austere building in a certain sense, except it has this wonderful pink sandstone.
0:46:30 > 0:46:31It's a wonderful balance.
0:46:31 > 0:46:35You have this sense of these forms pushing their way out.
0:46:35 > 0:46:39In that sense, it's very equivalent to many of his paintings.
0:46:52 > 0:46:58'Our last day in India and one last sight we really mustn't miss.'
0:47:03 > 0:47:06Tumescent? Yes.
0:47:08 > 0:47:10Isn't that fabulous?
0:47:14 > 0:47:18Somebody was thinking of me when they arranged that.
0:47:21 > 0:47:26Where is it going, this sunset, this Bombay sunset?
0:47:26 > 0:47:30Into another painting. You going into another painting, do you think?
0:47:30 > 0:47:32Yes.
0:47:32 > 0:47:34I've painted one Bombay sunset already.
0:47:48 > 0:47:51That was from an early...
0:47:51 > 0:47:53trip to Bombay?
0:47:53 > 0:47:56A long time ago. A long time ago. Yes.
0:47:59 > 0:48:01A sunset is such a...
0:48:01 > 0:48:04remarkable happening.
0:48:06 > 0:48:09And it touches people so deeply
0:48:09 > 0:48:10that...
0:48:10 > 0:48:15somehow that makes one want to... makes ME want to paint it more and more.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20And I've painted several
0:48:20 > 0:48:22and I'm painting more at the moment.
0:48:25 > 0:48:27Nothing more about my future plans.
0:48:27 > 0:48:32I asked him, "Is there anybody working at the very top level in England now
0:48:32 > 0:48:36"whose work really depends on yours?"
0:48:36 > 0:48:42Is there a young painter who's taken everything from you and is now working with it? He said, "Nobody."
0:48:42 > 0:48:46I said, "Have you had any influence?" "None."
0:48:46 > 0:48:51And there was, in saying it, half sadness, but much more than half sadness.
0:48:51 > 0:48:56Let's say a quarter sadness. Three-quarters absolute pride, the doggedness of that,
0:48:56 > 0:48:59that I alone now,
0:48:59 > 0:49:05in this room in London, I'm making images that really matter in this way to people.
0:49:05 > 0:49:06Lovely feeling!
0:49:15 > 0:49:16Mmm.
0:49:21 > 0:49:25What's that called, Howard? "Performance Art."
0:49:25 > 0:49:27Do you remember performance art?
0:49:27 > 0:49:31I do, but this is performance art from when?
0:49:31 > 0:49:34When you remember it from.
0:49:34 > 0:49:37Really? From a long time ago. Mmm.
0:49:37 > 0:49:43And that memory has remained with you, and so you made that picture?
0:49:43 > 0:49:44How could I forget?
0:49:49 > 0:49:51"Living Room,
0:49:51 > 0:49:54"1999-2006."
0:49:58 > 0:50:00And why did it wait...
0:50:00 > 0:50:02seven years to be completed?
0:50:04 > 0:50:06Perhaps fortunately it can't talk.
0:50:13 > 0:50:15'It was our last day of filming
0:50:15 > 0:50:18'and just when it seemed that Howard had, typically,
0:50:18 > 0:50:24'contrived to have the last word, something extraordinary happened.
0:50:24 > 0:50:27'He did exactly what he said he never would.
0:50:27 > 0:50:31'He picked up a paintbrush and prepared to paint.'
0:51:01 > 0:51:03I wonder what will become of that?
0:51:03 > 0:51:05Some pictures...
0:51:05 > 0:51:10may go behind that screen there,
0:51:10 > 0:51:15and you may not to back to them for a long period?
0:51:15 > 0:51:17No, but I do.
0:51:17 > 0:51:19You do? Yeah.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24I can't, off-hand, think of a picture that I've completely abandoned.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30But probably when I die, there'll be several waiting...
0:51:30 > 0:51:34for the coup de grace
0:51:34 > 0:51:36and not getting it.
0:51:43 > 0:51:45It's beginning to go.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47It's going beautifully, though.
0:51:47 > 0:51:51It couldn't be more elegant, the way it slides away.
0:51:54 > 0:51:56All good things come to an end.
0:51:56 > 0:51:58Yes!
0:52:01 > 0:52:03And also start afresh.
0:52:07 > 0:52:11'Is it that they are born again and we grow old?
0:52:11 > 0:52:13'No, they die too.
0:52:13 > 0:52:19'Their yearly trick of looking new is written down in rings of grain.
0:52:19 > 0:52:22'Last year is dead, they seem to say.
0:52:22 > 0:52:23'Begin afresh,
0:52:23 > 0:52:26'afresh, afresh.'