0:00:09 > 0:00:12So far, our story of the Low Countries has been about a tangle
0:00:12 > 0:00:14of different cultures,
0:00:14 > 0:00:18a hybrid world from which stemmed huge developments in religion,
0:00:18 > 0:00:23politics, economics, but, above all, art.
0:00:25 > 0:00:27From Bosch...
0:00:27 > 0:00:29to Brueghel...
0:00:29 > 0:00:33Van Eyck and into the golden age of Dutch art,
0:00:33 > 0:00:36this small corner of Northern Europe
0:00:36 > 0:00:39produced a rich crop of extraordinary images.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47At the end of the 17th century, if Vermeer's great vision
0:00:47 > 0:00:50appeared to herald a continued age of artistic brilliance,
0:00:50 > 0:00:52it wouldn't turn out that way.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58The next 200 years would see a barren time for art,
0:00:58 > 0:01:01in which the Low Countries were perhaps too comfortable,
0:01:01 > 0:01:06too contented to produce anything daring or new.
0:01:07 > 0:01:11It was a time of decline in religious faith.
0:01:11 > 0:01:17And in its place the rise of trade, industry, money.
0:01:17 > 0:01:22It was almost as if art had gone into hibernation.
0:01:22 > 0:01:24The Low Countries were awoken from their collective slumbers
0:01:24 > 0:01:27at the onset of the 19th century.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30First came the great trauma of the Napoleonic invasions,
0:01:30 > 0:01:34followed by the still-greater trauma of the Industrial Revolution,
0:01:34 > 0:01:38which changed the landscapes and the cityscapes of this region for ever.
0:01:40 > 0:01:45Dutch art would be dominated by two towering figures,
0:01:45 > 0:01:48each of whom, in his own way, attempted to fill the great voids
0:01:48 > 0:01:51opened up by modern civilisation -
0:01:51 > 0:01:54the dearth of beauty, as they saw it, the death of God -
0:01:54 > 0:01:58by turning art itself into a new kind of religion.
0:01:59 > 0:02:04Here in Belgium, this most uneasy of modern nation states,
0:02:04 > 0:02:09a collectively questioning, fractured sense of identity
0:02:09 > 0:02:14would be mirrored in an art of feverish dream and nightmare.
0:02:48 > 0:02:51Early in the morning on Sunday, 23rd July, 1882,
0:02:51 > 0:02:54a 29-year-old Dutchman climbed up
0:02:54 > 0:02:59onto the roof of his house in a suburb of the Hague
0:02:59 > 0:03:05while his alcoholic prostitute girlfriend and her small child slept downstairs.
0:03:05 > 0:03:10On any other day, this young man would have had plenty to complain about.
0:03:10 > 0:03:12His parents have just disowned him,
0:03:12 > 0:03:16he has had two marriage proposals rejected, he has been sacked twice
0:03:16 > 0:03:21and he has just come out of hospital yet again for gonorrhoea.
0:03:21 > 0:03:23But on this day he feels happy.
0:03:23 > 0:03:28He looks out across the rooftops, he completes a watercolour
0:03:28 > 0:03:30and then he paints the scene again,
0:03:30 > 0:03:35this time in the words of a letter to his brother, Theo Van Gogh.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41"You must imagine me here," he writes.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45"Over the red-tiled roofs comes a flock of white pigeons,
0:03:45 > 0:03:48"flying between the black, smoking chimneys.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53"Behind this, an infinity of delicate, gentle green.
0:03:53 > 0:03:55"Miles and miles of flat meadow.
0:03:55 > 0:04:02"And the grey sky is still and as peaceful as a Corot or Van Goyen.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05"This is the subject of my watercolour.
0:04:06 > 0:04:08"I hope you will like it."
0:04:11 > 0:04:17"I have found my work," he writes, in another letter from around this time,
0:04:17 > 0:04:19"something which I live for heart and soul.
0:04:19 > 0:04:26"I have a certain faith in art, a certain trust that it is a powerful current that drives a person."
0:04:26 > 0:04:31Now, coming from anyone else in his position - he had only been studying art for two years -
0:04:31 > 0:04:37that might just have been pretentious guff, but what wonderful art he had been creating.
0:04:37 > 0:04:42Paintings and drawings that really capture the lonely,
0:04:42 > 0:04:46atmospheric feel of the flatlands at the edge of the city.
0:04:46 > 0:04:50Canals spearing towards the flat horizon.
0:04:50 > 0:04:54Skies full of fast-moving dark clouds.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57Early work, maybe, but already it seems to hold out
0:04:57 > 0:05:01the promise of another Rembrandt in the making.
0:05:03 > 0:05:06Van Gogh's life story is the familiar tale.
0:05:06 > 0:05:12The unstable genius who, in a fit of despair, cut off his ear.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15The life of the passionate misfit has been filtered through
0:05:15 > 0:05:18countless potboilers and biopics.
0:05:18 > 0:05:21In Vincente Minnelli's 1950s version,
0:05:21 > 0:05:24Kirk Douglas ratchets up the emotional volume
0:05:24 > 0:05:28as a restless caged animal whose crippling depression
0:05:28 > 0:05:33turns to frenzied ecstasy in the sunlit landscapes of the South of France.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45In his most radiant pictures, you can see
0:05:45 > 0:05:50Van Gogh's faith in nature as a religion unstaged, uncut.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57And it's impossible to appreciate where this passion came from
0:05:57 > 0:06:00without understanding his early years in Holland and Belgium.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07Van Gogh hadn't set out to be an artist.
0:06:07 > 0:06:12He started off in the priesthood, preaching to poor coal miners
0:06:12 > 0:06:15in Belgium, but he failed spectacularly.
0:06:15 > 0:06:18He had a stammer and, despite his devotion,
0:06:18 > 0:06:22his Church superiors deemed him unfit for public speaking.
0:06:26 > 0:06:31In Holland, he chose again to settle among the rural poor,
0:06:31 > 0:06:36but this time not to preach to his subjects but to paint them.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43It's a strange paradox that Vincent Van Gogh,
0:06:43 > 0:06:47who painted some of the most radiant, light-filled paintings
0:06:47 > 0:06:50in the whole history of art, should have begun...
0:06:51 > 0:06:56This is his first major ambitious figure painting -
0:06:56 > 0:07:02with a work that is so dark, so murky, so copper-coloured.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05It's called The Potato Eaters
0:07:05 > 0:07:10and what you first notice about it is this pervasive drabness.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14Van Gogh himself actually liked the effect.
0:07:14 > 0:07:20He said, "My subject is potato eaters and I want to paint them."
0:07:20 > 0:07:25In the colours of a muddy potato, unpeeled, of course.
0:07:25 > 0:07:31He said he wanted the picture to smell of potato steam and bacon.
0:07:35 > 0:07:40I can also smell the thick, malty aroma
0:07:40 > 0:07:45of this peasant brew the old lady is pouring.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49It's a viscous form of chicory coffee, quite disgusting
0:07:49 > 0:07:51but all that they could afford.
0:07:54 > 0:07:56The picture was greatly criticised.
0:07:56 > 0:08:02The hands were said to be too gnarled, the arms too long,
0:08:02 > 0:08:06the faces too caricatured, the eyes too bulging,
0:08:06 > 0:08:10the noses too much like potatoes.
0:08:10 > 0:08:12But it was all intentional.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Van Gogh wanted us to feel that those hands reaching into
0:08:16 > 0:08:22that plate of cubed potatoes had dug those potatoes up from the earth.
0:08:22 > 0:08:26Those hands have been shaped, misshapen
0:08:26 > 0:08:29by all that manual labour.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37Although it's such a visually unappealing, unappetising,
0:08:37 > 0:08:40literally copper-coloured murk of a picture,
0:08:40 > 0:08:47Van Gogh did continue to regard it through his life as "one of the best things I have done".
0:08:47 > 0:08:51And I do think it is an extremely significant picture
0:08:51 > 0:08:54in the context of his whole career, because it establishes,
0:08:54 > 0:08:58right from the outset, what he's all about as a painter.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06What mattered to Van Gogh throughout his life
0:09:06 > 0:09:09was not sophisticated technique.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12He wanted to re-make in paint the intensity
0:09:12 > 0:09:15and violence of his own feelings.
0:09:15 > 0:09:20And to arouse those feelings in his audience.
0:09:20 > 0:09:23Van Gogh's later French pictures might look very different
0:09:23 > 0:09:26from his early work, but they, too, use a form
0:09:26 > 0:09:32of self-conscious exaggeration, an ecstatic version of caricature.
0:09:34 > 0:09:38It's an attempt to forge a kind of new religion for the common man,
0:09:38 > 0:09:40for the potato eaters of this world.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44Everyday experiences of field and flower
0:09:44 > 0:09:47become visions of divine beauty.
0:09:50 > 0:09:56And it would reach a climax in his most famous subject of all.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00Van Gogh had left Holland simply
0:10:00 > 0:10:04because it was too gloomy for an artist trying to find God,
0:10:04 > 0:10:09trying to find some sense of transcendence in the natural world.
0:10:09 > 0:10:11Too much rain, too much shadow, too much darkness.
0:10:11 > 0:10:14That's why he went to the South of France.
0:10:14 > 0:10:18In the South of France, he felt illuminated by the sun.
0:10:18 > 0:10:22He said, "Suddenly, nature's colours sing to me."
0:10:22 > 0:10:26He felt that he had never seen the colours of nature before.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30He felt that he'd found what he was looking for
0:10:30 > 0:10:35and I think the sunflower was so important to him because...
0:10:35 > 0:10:40it was a plant that seemed to him to have somehow taken into itself,
0:10:40 > 0:10:43kept, preserved, all that radiance, all that colour.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47It was as if he was looking at the sun itself when he looked at these blooms
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and he painted these pictures in a kind of storm of enthusiasm.
0:10:51 > 0:10:53He wrote to Theo, his brother,
0:10:53 > 0:10:58to say that, "I am painting with the energy of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse."
0:10:58 > 0:11:00Always the food metaphors.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03And this is almost a picture that you could eat.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05It's as if it's been painted
0:11:05 > 0:11:09in that Provencal mayonnaise they call aioli,
0:11:09 > 0:11:12that hot, peppery, garlic-infused mayonnaise.
0:11:14 > 0:11:18Van Gogh also said that "the sunflower is mine, in a way".
0:11:18 > 0:11:20Why was it his?
0:11:20 > 0:11:22Well, I think he knew...
0:11:22 > 0:11:26he knew that this life, his career was going to be a short one,
0:11:26 > 0:11:28and, my goodness, how short it was.
0:11:28 > 0:11:32His career was like a comet flashing across the sky.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36He compressed into just five years of a career
0:11:36 > 0:11:41what most other artists would spend perhaps 40 years creating
0:11:41 > 0:11:44and I think that is what he's depicting when he depicts the sunflower.
0:11:44 > 0:11:50He's depicting his sense of himself, this rapid rise.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54This one seems anthropomorphised.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57It could be an outraged eye staring into space.
0:11:57 > 0:12:03And these others, these are cut flowers. We see them falling.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06It is as if the whole of Van Gogh's life
0:12:06 > 0:12:09is encapsulated in this one picture.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12He's signed it "Vincent"...
0:12:12 > 0:12:15in that wonderful mauve colour,
0:12:15 > 0:12:21"Vincent" on the vase, as if to say, "This is me, this is who I was."
0:12:25 > 0:12:30Van Gogh's message was always destined to fall on stony ground.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33In the early years of the 20th century,
0:12:33 > 0:12:37Holland became a nation of ever more practical people.
0:12:37 > 0:12:39They weren't looking for God.
0:12:39 > 0:12:43They were looking for market opportunities.
0:12:43 > 0:12:48In a fragile sea-level world, nature had always been something
0:12:48 > 0:12:53to be conquered and tamed, rather than swooned over.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56The Dutch were carving out their own space in the modern
0:12:56 > 0:13:01global economy by pioneering what's now called agribusiness,
0:13:01 > 0:13:06leading the way in the export of lucrative farm produce and flower bulbs.
0:13:06 > 0:13:10Almost half the world's cut flowers are still sold
0:13:10 > 0:13:13from their great flower auctions.
0:13:14 > 0:13:17Everything that made Van Gogh despair
0:13:17 > 0:13:20of his fellow countrymen is still true of Holland today.
0:13:29 > 0:13:32But Van Gogh wouldn't be entirely without influence
0:13:32 > 0:13:35in 20th-century Holland.
0:13:35 > 0:13:40The seeds he had sown would bear fruit - at least,
0:13:40 > 0:13:44in the rarefied arena of modern art.
0:13:44 > 0:13:49In the summer of 1905, 16 years after his death, the Dutch paid
0:13:49 > 0:13:53belated tribute to Van Gogh with a vast exhibition of his work.
0:13:56 > 0:14:01Among the visitors was a little-known Dutch landscape artist
0:14:01 > 0:14:03called Piet Mondriaan.
0:14:03 > 0:14:08Until now, Mondriaan hadn't been thought a huge talent.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12He had spent his early years creating
0:14:12 > 0:14:15a group of intriguingly stylised...
0:14:15 > 0:14:18symbolically charged...
0:14:18 > 0:14:21moody, rather murky landscapes.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28Now, if you want to understand the incendiary effect
0:14:28 > 0:14:31that Van Gogh's art had on the young Piet Mondriaan,
0:14:31 > 0:14:37there's no better place to start than here. This is his early work.
0:14:37 > 0:14:43Low-toned, slightly melancholic, slightly mystical landscapes
0:14:43 > 0:14:48painted 1905, 1906, 1907, but then, look!
0:14:48 > 0:14:50HE IMITATES BURST OF FLAME
0:14:50 > 0:14:55It's as if someone has lit a match and set fire to the world.
0:14:55 > 0:14:57This is how Mondriaan sees reality
0:14:57 > 0:14:59after he's seen Van Gogh's paintings.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05Skies that seem to be alive
0:15:05 > 0:15:10with some kind of strange electrical charge,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13but what's interesting about Mondriaan
0:15:13 > 0:15:17is that he is different from van Gogh.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20He's fallen under the influence of the philosophical ideas
0:15:20 > 0:15:22of a movement known as Theosophy.
0:15:22 > 0:15:27He has come to believe that matter is the enemy of spirit,
0:15:27 > 0:15:30so, for example, while van Gogh might have said,
0:15:30 > 0:15:34"Oh, I want to paint sunflowers that feel like you could eat them,
0:15:34 > 0:15:36"like a blob of mayonnaise,"
0:15:36 > 0:15:39that's not at all Mondriaan's ambition.
0:15:39 > 0:15:42He would never have compared one of his paintings to food.
0:15:42 > 0:15:46What he's looking at, what he's looking for,
0:15:46 > 0:15:50is some kind of mysterious spiritual essence of reality
0:15:50 > 0:15:53that he feels lies beyond the visible appearance.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59So his visual adventure will take him to completely different worlds.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08Like Van Gogh before him,
0:16:08 > 0:16:12Mondriaan felt he had to get out of Holland.
0:16:12 > 0:16:14In 1911 he set up studio
0:16:14 > 0:16:18at the heart of the international art scene.
0:16:18 > 0:16:21Paris.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25In the early 20th century, the city was a magnet for artists
0:16:25 > 0:16:28wanting to be part of the avant-garde.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33Instability in Europe had fuelled a mood of creative rebellion,
0:16:33 > 0:16:38with radical breakthroughs in all forms of artistic expression.
0:16:38 > 0:16:44In this heated atmosphere, Picasso and Braque created Cubism
0:16:44 > 0:16:48and Mondriaan fell completely under its spell.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56From now on, Mondriaan would still paint nature,
0:16:56 > 0:16:59but his individual tree starts to dissolve
0:16:59 > 0:17:03into a Cubist kaleidoscope of muted forms.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08To express the universal, abstract nature of "tree".
0:17:10 > 0:17:13As he squares off his environment,
0:17:13 > 0:17:17Mondriaan moves closer to grid-form abstraction,
0:17:17 > 0:17:20but he's not there yet.
0:17:20 > 0:17:24That style-defining revelation would come not from Paris,
0:17:24 > 0:17:27but almost by accident,
0:17:27 > 0:17:31from the weather-battered dunes of Holland's North Sea coast.
0:17:37 > 0:17:42When the great breakthrough came, chance played a large part.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45Mondriaan was actually living in Paris,
0:17:45 > 0:17:47to be at the centre of modern art.
0:17:47 > 0:17:50He got word that his father was ill and he came to Holland
0:17:50 > 0:17:54on what was supposed to be a short visit, but then the war broke out.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57He couldn't leave the country, so what did he do?
0:17:57 > 0:18:00He came here to Domburg beach.
0:18:00 > 0:18:02He had almost no money,
0:18:02 > 0:18:06just a stump of charcoal and a sketchbook.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11But he spent day after day looking at the sea,
0:18:11 > 0:18:13studying the sea, studying the sky,
0:18:13 > 0:18:17studying the stumps of these piers.
0:18:17 > 0:18:23And the result was the art that he considered the great change.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31Mondriaan would sometimes sketch by moonlight,
0:18:31 > 0:18:33or even with his eyes closed,
0:18:33 > 0:18:38so determined was he to find the essence of his subject.
0:18:43 > 0:18:46Mondriaan returned from the sea,
0:18:46 > 0:18:49like a beachcomber,
0:18:49 > 0:18:52with this.
0:18:52 > 0:18:55It's an astonishingly abstracted, distilled,
0:18:55 > 0:18:59reduced vision of the pewter disc of the North Sea
0:18:59 > 0:19:04beneath the pewter disc of the grey Dutch sky.
0:19:07 > 0:19:09I think we can sense Mondriaan's rapture
0:19:09 > 0:19:13before the glitter and the dazzle of light on the ocean breakers.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18We can feel the motions, the relentless motions, of the sea.
0:19:18 > 0:19:23We can sense mists, fogs, coming in across the ocean.
0:19:23 > 0:19:26It's an extraordinary image,
0:19:26 > 0:19:30and it's one that takes us to the heart of the difference
0:19:30 > 0:19:33between Mondriaan and Van Gogh.
0:19:33 > 0:19:38They start from exactly the same position -
0:19:38 > 0:19:42the Church is gone, it's no good to them any more,
0:19:42 > 0:19:47but they're looking for some sense of the spiritual,
0:19:47 > 0:19:52some mystery, some sense of deeper meaning.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56And they're going to a new Church,
0:19:56 > 0:19:58the cathedral of nature.
0:19:58 > 0:20:04But whereas Van Gogh is essentially helpless before nature,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08Mondriaan takes control.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13It's the artist's job, in his opinion,
0:20:13 > 0:20:17to see the structures, to see the patterns,
0:20:17 > 0:20:19to see the deeper meaning of the world
0:20:19 > 0:20:23behind the visible appearances of the world,
0:20:23 > 0:20:27hence he distils, he purifies,
0:20:27 > 0:20:30he reduces, he purges.
0:20:31 > 0:20:36Now, he sees himself as the pioneer
0:20:36 > 0:20:39of a new spiritualised vision, but...
0:20:42 > 0:20:44..how Dutch.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47How very Dutch this art seems
0:20:47 > 0:20:49with its insistent horizontals and verticals
0:20:49 > 0:20:53echoing the Dutch landscape, but not only that.
0:20:53 > 0:20:59Mondriaan was the son of Dutch Calvinists.
0:20:59 > 0:21:04I look at this picture and I'm instantly transported back 300 years
0:21:04 > 0:21:09to those very first images of the purged Protestant church
0:21:09 > 0:21:12painted by Pieter Saenredam in the 1600s.
0:21:14 > 0:21:15A white space.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20Lines, lines, structure.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24Nothing left in the church any more but a cross.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30Mondriaan, all he sees in the end...
0:21:32 > 0:21:34..a cross.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38But while Mondriaan was embedded in tradition,
0:21:38 > 0:21:42it's also important to remember that he was enmeshed
0:21:42 > 0:21:46in a very particular catastrophic moment of modern history.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49This picture was painted in 1915,
0:21:49 > 0:21:51shortly after the outbreak of the First World War,
0:21:51 > 0:21:57and if you look at this painting, created in 1917,
0:21:57 > 0:22:02I think you can sense the shadow of that war
0:22:02 > 0:22:04hovering over Mondriaan's spirit.
0:22:07 > 0:22:10Look at the way in which the cross forms
0:22:10 > 0:22:14have become heavier, darker, more oppressive.
0:22:14 > 0:22:16It's an image that, to me,
0:22:16 > 0:22:21very much evokes the mass graves of the First World War.
0:22:39 > 0:22:44Mondriaan might not have had a conventional belief in God,
0:22:44 > 0:22:48but he did believe in art as a kind of divine force
0:22:48 > 0:22:51capable of reordering chaos after the war.
0:22:53 > 0:22:58He was sure that he could change the objective conditions of humanity,
0:22:58 > 0:23:01if only he could commit to canvas
0:23:01 > 0:23:05the perfect arrangement of block and line.
0:23:11 > 0:23:16Mondriaan's stark grid compositions are his trademark.
0:23:16 > 0:23:20The Dutch landscape distilled, purified,
0:23:20 > 0:23:24into something that he felt improved upon nature.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33It's impossible to overstate Mondriaan's extremism.
0:23:33 > 0:23:34As far as he was concerned,
0:23:34 > 0:23:38he had invented the ultimate language of art,
0:23:38 > 0:23:40perfectly abstracted,
0:23:40 > 0:23:43reduced to the perfect combination of colours and forms.
0:23:43 > 0:23:47But for him that was just the beginning.
0:23:47 > 0:23:51His pictures were blueprints for the world.
0:23:51 > 0:23:55And if the world took up the message embedded in the pictures
0:23:55 > 0:23:58then art itself would no longer be necessary.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02We would have entered the final millennium
0:24:02 > 0:24:04of absolute understanding and enlightenment.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12Sensing that most of his fellow Dutch countrymen
0:24:12 > 0:24:16were too level-headed to take to his dogmatic idealism,
0:24:16 > 0:24:20Mondriaan sought out like-minded artists
0:24:20 > 0:24:24and formed an extremist group.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27He took up the role of theorist-in-chief
0:24:27 > 0:24:29and in the summer of 1917
0:24:29 > 0:24:32the group published a brazen manifesto of their faith
0:24:32 > 0:24:35under the banner Die Stijl.
0:24:39 > 0:24:44Their new world order would be one of pure abstraction,
0:24:44 > 0:24:47a rigid aesthetic of angular austerity.
0:24:52 > 0:24:57In 1924 one of the members, Gerrit Rietveld,
0:24:57 > 0:25:00attempted to turn the group's hard-edged theory
0:25:00 > 0:25:02into a family home.
0:25:04 > 0:25:08So here we are, the famous Schroder House.
0:25:15 > 0:25:17So this is the entrance.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22'Rietveld's Schroder House is the dogma of Die Stijl made real.
0:25:22 > 0:25:26'It's got more straight lines than a chessboard.'
0:25:26 > 0:25:31Everything framed as if in a Mondriaan composition.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34When you open the window in the maid's room
0:25:34 > 0:25:36you get a double benefit.
0:25:36 > 0:25:39Light from outside, and a kind of abstract composition
0:25:39 > 0:25:43like Malevich's Black Square painting.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48The house was designed nearly 90 years ago
0:25:48 > 0:25:52for a very forward-thinking client - Truus Schroder.
0:25:52 > 0:25:55She loved it, even while her children
0:25:55 > 0:25:59refused to admit that they lived in the crazy house.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01I love this.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05Look, this is how you open the door that takes you to the upstairs.
0:26:05 > 0:26:08It's like a constructivist sculpture that you can activate.
0:26:08 > 0:26:11Here...we go.
0:26:11 > 0:26:12Whoops.
0:26:12 > 0:26:14(Up we come.)
0:26:22 > 0:26:24The floor's a painting.
0:26:26 > 0:26:31Or an arrangement of form in Mondriaan primary colours.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35Primary colours plus black and white,
0:26:35 > 0:26:38so red, yellow, blue, black, white.
0:26:40 > 0:26:42Here's the famous Rietveld Chair.
0:26:44 > 0:26:46I'm not allowed to sit in it.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51But I'm not sure that I mind.
0:26:51 > 0:26:53I think, um...
0:26:55 > 0:26:58- HE CHUCKLES - There is something about this house
0:26:58 > 0:27:02that you feel you somehow need to evolve yourself as a human being,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05you need to evolve into a higher form,
0:27:05 > 0:27:08perhaps something a little bit more Cubistic,
0:27:08 > 0:27:10something a bit more angular, you know?
0:27:10 > 0:27:16When the day comes that human beings have evolved cubical buttocks
0:27:16 > 0:27:18then we can all sit on chairs like these.
0:27:20 > 0:27:22Ah!
0:27:24 > 0:27:26So there is one concession
0:27:26 > 0:27:30to the organically rounded shape of the human form.
0:27:30 > 0:27:34The toilet. Bodily functions are allowed in the Rietveld House.
0:27:37 > 0:27:42And what I love about the space is it's totally modernist,
0:27:42 > 0:27:46it's totally original, it's stark, it's extraordinary,
0:27:46 > 0:27:52there's a window that opens, if I can master the mechanism,
0:27:52 > 0:27:54like a cantilever.
0:27:54 > 0:27:59It goes straight out into space,
0:27:59 > 0:28:02thrusting another pictorial,
0:28:02 > 0:28:06Rietveldian rectangle into the world.
0:28:06 > 0:28:12Although it's so modern, although it's so cubistic, futuristic,
0:28:12 > 0:28:16Mondriaan-ist, it's also very Dutch
0:28:16 > 0:28:20because the whole space has the feeling of a ship,
0:28:20 > 0:28:24of the boat, where one thing folds out into another,
0:28:24 > 0:28:29maximum use is made of space, and what is a boat to a Dutchman?
0:28:29 > 0:28:33A boat is something you embark on an adventure in.
0:28:36 > 0:28:38It's wonderful.
0:28:50 > 0:28:54Today the great Die Stijl house has a slightly sad air,
0:28:54 > 0:28:58marooned as modern Utrecht passes noisily by.
0:29:00 > 0:29:03The movement broke up in the 1930s.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06And sensing that his own ideas were too extreme
0:29:06 > 0:29:09truly to enchant the pragmatic people of Holland,
0:29:09 > 0:29:12Mondriaan took his dreams elsewhere.
0:29:18 > 0:29:20New York thrilled Mondrian.
0:29:20 > 0:29:27He saw it as a miraculous city-sized realisation of all his ideals.
0:29:27 > 0:29:32A whole living environment modelled on grid-form composition,
0:29:32 > 0:29:37skyscraper and block, clean, sharp opposing verticals and horizontals.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42But it was different from his paintings, too.
0:29:42 > 0:29:45More mobile. More jazzy.
0:29:45 > 0:29:47A city constantly on the move.
0:29:51 > 0:29:55And this is the result of that bombardment of energy.
0:29:55 > 0:29:58He was nearly 70 when he turned away from nature
0:29:58 > 0:30:02towards Manhattan and its taxi-cab buzzing grid.
0:30:05 > 0:30:08It was to be Mondrian's very last composition.
0:30:08 > 0:30:10His funeral march.
0:30:10 > 0:30:13But how full of life!
0:30:13 > 0:30:16He called it Victory Boogie-woogie.
0:30:25 > 0:30:27Mondriaan was the great exile.
0:30:27 > 0:30:32But his spirit does live on throughout Holland,
0:30:32 > 0:30:35sometimes in surprising places.
0:30:35 > 0:30:40Dutch commerce in particular operates like a well-oiled
0:30:40 > 0:30:41Mondriaan machine.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46In Rotterdam's vast international port,
0:30:46 > 0:30:50each colour-coded unit is wedged with perfect economy
0:30:50 > 0:30:56into an ever-shifting chequerboard of transaction and exchange.
0:30:56 > 0:31:01It is a Mondriaan but with the spirituality stripped out.
0:31:01 > 0:31:04Container boogie-woogie.
0:31:08 > 0:31:11But what of modern Holland's neighbour?
0:31:11 > 0:31:19We mustn't forget Belgium, though it seems, over the years, many have.
0:31:19 > 0:31:21Until nearly 200 years ago,
0:31:21 > 0:31:25this region of north-west Europe wasn't even a country.
0:31:25 > 0:31:30And the question has often been asked, what's the point of Belgium?
0:31:33 > 0:31:34Well, there was one once.
0:31:34 > 0:31:38The kingdom was created as a strategic buffer between France
0:31:38 > 0:31:42and Germany and to keep Holland in its place.
0:31:45 > 0:31:48But its inherent internal differences have made Belgium's
0:31:48 > 0:31:54cultural identity almost impossible to define, if easy to mock.
0:31:54 > 0:31:59The French poet Baudelaire started the ball rolling
0:31:59 > 0:32:02with his caustic remark that Belgians
0:32:02 > 0:32:05are the stupidest race on Earth
0:32:05 > 0:32:08and the ball has rolled on ever since.
0:32:08 > 0:32:11Now, the result of last week's competition
0:32:11 > 0:32:15when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians.
0:32:15 > 0:32:17Monty Python made them
0:32:17 > 0:32:20and those who mocked them the subject of a Flying Circus satire.
0:32:20 > 0:32:23Some very clever entries. A Mrs Hatred of Leicester said,
0:32:23 > 0:32:25"Let's not call them anything, let's just ignore them."
0:32:25 > 0:32:28APPLAUSE
0:32:28 > 0:32:32And a Mr Singin of Huntingdon said he couldn't think of anything
0:32:32 > 0:32:34more derogatory than "Belgians".
0:32:34 > 0:32:37APPLAUSE
0:32:37 > 0:32:40Belgium has long been the butt of jokes
0:32:40 > 0:32:43and I think those jokes stem from frustration.
0:32:43 > 0:32:48A desire to pin down this un-pin-down-able country.
0:32:48 > 0:32:50This nation, if it truly is one,
0:32:50 > 0:32:55was brought into being at the Conference of London in 1830
0:32:55 > 0:32:58and it was a birth by Caesarean section,
0:32:58 > 0:33:02carved into existence by the three superpowers of the day,
0:33:02 > 0:33:05the Prussians, the French and the British.
0:33:05 > 0:33:10But, if you look back at the history of this whole region,
0:33:10 > 0:33:15it used to be a patchwork of fiercely independent mini states,
0:33:15 > 0:33:16and that sense of local,
0:33:16 > 0:33:22regional loyalty continues to pull the place apart.
0:33:22 > 0:33:25The people of Antwerp famously hate the people of Brussels,
0:33:25 > 0:33:28who detest the people of Bruges in turn.
0:33:28 > 0:33:32It's not even a nation united by a common language -
0:33:32 > 0:33:35they speak at least three, and counting.
0:33:35 > 0:33:40If ever a people really didn't know who they are, it's the Belgians.
0:33:43 > 0:33:46Ever since this nation was invented,
0:33:46 > 0:33:50it has been crippled by its catastrophically complicated
0:33:50 > 0:33:54political structure and the larger chasms of language.
0:33:54 > 0:33:57400 years the dispute has gone on between the Flemish
0:33:57 > 0:34:02and the Walloons about who should speak what language when and where.
0:34:02 > 0:34:09Even now, Belgium excels at making everything as complex as possible.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13The only bilingual bit is Brussels Central.
0:34:13 > 0:34:15The Flemish region is monolingual in Dutch,
0:34:15 > 0:34:19although there are administrative services for the French-speaking.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22Wallonia is a pure French-speaking territory
0:34:22 > 0:34:25except for where they speak German.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34So it follows that the most famous Belgian painting
0:34:34 > 0:34:37of the 20th century should be a joke
0:34:37 > 0:34:39on the slipperiness of language.
0:34:39 > 0:34:41"This is not a pipe," said Rene Magritte.
0:34:41 > 0:34:45Of course it's not, it's a painting of a pipe.
0:34:45 > 0:34:47At least we can all agree on that.
0:34:47 > 0:34:50This cultural knot explains why Belgians are
0:34:50 > 0:34:52so drawn to the European project.
0:34:52 > 0:34:57It's a way of ironing out the crumpled quilt of overlapping
0:34:57 > 0:34:58internal divisions.
0:34:58 > 0:35:03Opting instead for the appealing fantasy of a united Europe.
0:35:07 > 0:35:11Belgians dream of being part of a greater whole.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14They dream of not being Belgian.
0:35:16 > 0:35:20Could this be why the most distinctively Belgian creation
0:35:20 > 0:35:23of the 20th century should be a universal character
0:35:23 > 0:35:26of no identical personality?
0:35:26 > 0:35:30A fictional embodiment of the European dream.
0:35:30 > 0:35:32Tintin.
0:35:32 > 0:35:34The Adventures Of Tintin, what are they?
0:35:34 > 0:35:37Well, I think they are the one good dream produced
0:35:37 > 0:35:41by this nation of insomniac nightmare sufferers.
0:35:41 > 0:35:46The curiously sexless young cub reporter in knickerbockers
0:35:46 > 0:35:48accompanied by his faithful white dog Snowy
0:35:48 > 0:35:50goes on many different assignments
0:35:50 > 0:35:54but his real job is to make Belgium feel better about itself.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57Never more so than in one of the first books,
0:35:57 > 0:36:04Tintin In The Congo, which has been the site of perhaps
0:36:04 > 0:36:09the dirtiest of all of Belgium's colonial exploits.
0:36:09 > 0:36:12But you'd never know it from this book.
0:36:12 > 0:36:16Tintin arrives, he is greeted by a sea of happy, smiling,
0:36:16 > 0:36:22somewhat caricatured, black African faces. He makes everything better.
0:36:22 > 0:36:26There is a nice touch at the beginning of the book
0:36:26 > 0:36:28where he is accosted by agents working for
0:36:28 > 0:36:31all the major newspapers of the world.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35New York wants him, London wants him, Lisbon wants him.
0:36:35 > 0:36:42He's the one Belgian that the whole world hangs on his every last word.
0:36:45 > 0:36:49He's a one-man - one-teenager - United Nations.
0:36:49 > 0:36:55An ambassador for the EU before the EU was invented.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59He lands on the moon, he saves the world from a giant asteroid,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02he plays a decisive, forceful,
0:37:02 > 0:37:06virtuous role in politics of the Cold War.
0:37:08 > 0:37:11He does everything that Belgians know they probably can't really do
0:37:11 > 0:37:13or be.
0:37:14 > 0:37:18There is a charming superficiality about the Tintin books,
0:37:18 > 0:37:22mirrored in the ever-so-clean style of Herge himself.
0:37:22 > 0:37:28A Belgian equivalent to the anonymous style of American Pop Art.
0:37:31 > 0:37:35Roy Lichtenstein wasn't the only one to declare a allegiance
0:37:35 > 0:37:36to Herge's work.
0:37:39 > 0:37:44Andy Warhol, who once said he was bored of emotions and wanted
0:37:44 > 0:37:50to live like a machine, was a huge admirer of the Tintin stories.
0:37:50 > 0:37:54The two artists met in the '70s at the unveiling of Warhol's
0:37:54 > 0:37:59portrait of Herge as a kind of frozen human comic strip.
0:37:59 > 0:38:02A cryptic compliment.
0:38:15 > 0:38:20Behind the heroic fantasies of Tintin lurks a deep-seated fear of
0:38:20 > 0:38:25having to confront the bewildering reality of everyday Belgian life.
0:38:27 > 0:38:32That job was left to the masters of subversion.
0:38:38 > 0:38:43The most sustained assault on 20th-century Belgian middle-class
0:38:43 > 0:38:47existence was masterminded in an anonymous-looking terrace
0:38:47 > 0:38:50in an anonymous suburb of Brussels.
0:38:52 > 0:38:57If the characteristic expressions of Dutch modern culture
0:38:57 > 0:39:00are ecstasy before nature, spiritual affirmation
0:39:00 > 0:39:04and the calm certainties of structure and order,
0:39:04 > 0:39:10the Belgian riposte to all that is disillusionment and bad dreams.
0:39:10 > 0:39:16And if there is one place that is the great cave of Belgian dreaming,
0:39:16 > 0:39:17it's this one.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20Welcome to the house of Rene Magritte.
0:39:27 > 0:39:30Born in 1898, Magritte spent his whole adult life
0:39:30 > 0:39:33issuing mind-wrenching riddles
0:39:33 > 0:39:36from this perfectly bourgeois Brussels townhouse.
0:39:43 > 0:39:46He didn't venture far to find subjects for his pictures.
0:39:46 > 0:39:50They are filled with the stuff of the domestic interior.
0:39:50 > 0:39:52But, as Magritte said,
0:39:52 > 0:39:59he was determined to make the most familiar objects scream aloud.
0:39:59 > 0:40:03Much like those Dutch seekers after higher truth,
0:40:03 > 0:40:05Van Gogh and Mondriaan,
0:40:05 > 0:40:11Magritte seems to place us on the threshold of another world.
0:40:11 > 0:40:15Everywhere you look in Magritte's world, there is a sense of mystery
0:40:15 > 0:40:16and with it, I think,
0:40:16 > 0:40:20an after-echo of spiritual yearning for transformation,
0:40:20 > 0:40:25- for transubstantiation, even... - HE PLAYS A NOTE
0:40:25 > 0:40:28..celestial harmony?
0:40:28 > 0:40:32But, whereas Mondrian really did try to find
0:40:32 > 0:40:36an alternative religion in the everyday world,
0:40:36 > 0:40:38even as Magritte recognised
0:40:38 > 0:40:43the desire for transcendence he made a mockery of it.
0:40:43 > 0:40:49And, yes, in his parody visions of paradise, eternal life is possible.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52But only if you employ a taxidermist.
0:40:59 > 0:41:05The artist who had his Pomeranian dog stuffed stayed in character.
0:41:05 > 0:41:08Magritte lived the part of the conventional Belgian
0:41:08 > 0:41:09whose life he mocked.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17He understood the deep uncertainty that his contemporaries felt
0:41:17 > 0:41:19in the first half of the 20th century
0:41:19 > 0:41:22and he embodied it in picture puzzle form.
0:41:33 > 0:41:37In the gloomy chambers of the Magritte Museum
0:41:37 > 0:41:43his pictures hang like spotlit provocations.
0:41:43 > 0:41:47Common sense is trifled with, laws of gravity defied.
0:41:47 > 0:41:51Everything seems the wrong way round.
0:41:51 > 0:41:55Front and back. Day and night.
0:42:04 > 0:42:09Magritte painted more than 20 versions of this image
0:42:09 > 0:42:17which he called The Empire...or sometimes The Dominion Of Lights.
0:42:17 > 0:42:23It clearly obsessed him, but why? What's it an image of?
0:42:23 > 0:42:28I think it's an image of a moment, a mood an attitude.
0:42:28 > 0:42:34It's the magic hour. It's that threshold moment.
0:42:36 > 0:42:40It's that moment when the visible world
0:42:40 > 0:42:45seems to tremble on the edge of invisibility.
0:42:45 > 0:42:46Light is turning to darkness.
0:42:46 > 0:42:48Mondriaan is obsessed with this moment.
0:42:48 > 0:42:52Mondriaan painting and sketching in the dark at Domburg beach,
0:42:52 > 0:42:58waiting for the world to disclose its inner truth, its pattern.
0:42:58 > 0:43:01Magritte, when he puts us at the front of this image,
0:43:01 > 0:43:03is putting us in this same frame of mind.
0:43:03 > 0:43:07We sit here or stand here looking at this image
0:43:07 > 0:43:12and we become someone waiting for the world to reveal itself,
0:43:12 > 0:43:16waiting for the miraculous to unfold.
0:43:19 > 0:43:23But Magritte keeps us waiting a very long time.
0:43:26 > 0:43:27And that's the point.
0:43:27 > 0:43:33Magritte's principal weapon is to deliver everything but the answer.
0:43:33 > 0:43:38He gives us the paraphernalia of a religion - the apparitions,
0:43:38 > 0:43:41the wonders - but without the explanation.
0:43:41 > 0:43:46There's a very Flemish particularity about his style,
0:43:46 > 0:43:49so sharp and so clear that you really do believe,
0:43:49 > 0:43:55if only for a moment, that it's raining businessmen.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58For all his self-conscious surrealism,
0:43:58 > 0:44:02Magritte is the direct descendant of the old Flemish painters
0:44:02 > 0:44:03of Christian miracle,
0:44:03 > 0:44:07Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden.
0:44:10 > 0:44:16But Magritte is a painter of sabotaged altarpieces.
0:44:16 > 0:44:18His wine is not the blood of Christ,
0:44:18 > 0:44:24instead the bottle that carries it turns into a phallic carrot.
0:44:25 > 0:44:27But the centre of this bleak,
0:44:27 > 0:44:33nihilist universe is the apple - emblem of the Fall.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36In Magritte's hands it has become a trademark,
0:44:36 > 0:44:39a brand stamped on all of humanity.
0:44:39 > 0:44:44Redemption? Forget it, especially if you're Belgian.
0:44:51 > 0:44:56While Magritte played games with the bourgeois Belgian mind,
0:44:56 > 0:45:00there was another, less well-known, more vulnerable Belgian surrealist
0:45:00 > 0:45:03who actually tried to grapple with it.
0:45:05 > 0:45:09Paul Delvaux spent his life trying to open up cracks in the psyche
0:45:09 > 0:45:12to see what might lie within.
0:45:15 > 0:45:18Delvaux himself began life as a bourgeois
0:45:18 > 0:45:21and ended it is a wild-haired bohemian.
0:45:21 > 0:45:23His art was a journey,
0:45:23 > 0:45:26leading from the safe subject matter of his youth,
0:45:26 > 0:45:31the steam trains of Belgium's Industrial Revolution,
0:45:31 > 0:45:35to the more troubling, sexually charged work of his maturity.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42How did Delvaux get to the destination of his later art?
0:45:42 > 0:45:47Filled as it is with curiously transfixing glassy-eyed nudes,
0:45:47 > 0:45:49and ghastly reminders of death.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53Well, he bought a ticket as a young man
0:45:53 > 0:45:58to a peculiar kind of fairground attraction.
0:46:05 > 0:46:08You have to imagine yourself back to 1932,
0:46:08 > 0:46:12it's the summer fair in Brussels, the height of July,
0:46:12 > 0:46:16and the star attraction is the Spitzner horror show.
0:46:16 > 0:46:21Display of skeletons, anatomical models -
0:46:21 > 0:46:26the young Paul Delvaux enters the booth through a pair of red curtains
0:46:26 > 0:46:29and he remembers what he sees for the rest of his life,
0:46:29 > 0:46:32with the force of a revelation.
0:46:32 > 0:46:36Grisly displays of syphilitic disease,
0:46:36 > 0:46:41models of human genitalia that have been deformed by illness.
0:46:41 > 0:46:44As far as the Belgian authorities are concerned,
0:46:44 > 0:46:47this is a kind of government health warning - a way of encouraging
0:46:47 > 0:46:50Belgium's young men, particularly soldiers,
0:46:50 > 0:46:52to steer clear of prostitutes.
0:46:52 > 0:46:54But to Delvaux,
0:46:54 > 0:47:00this young man brought up by a cosseting mother, a rather prudish father,
0:47:00 > 0:47:05the scene was like an eruption of sexuality and death
0:47:05 > 0:47:09into his hitherto rather conservative world.
0:47:09 > 0:47:15Almost overnight, the spectacle triggered a sudden unleashing
0:47:15 > 0:47:21of latent desires and anxieties onto his canvases.
0:47:21 > 0:47:27What's the deeper message behind the strangeness of Delvaux's art?
0:47:27 > 0:47:28On one level,
0:47:28 > 0:47:35he's proclaiming in paint what Freud had written in psychoanalysis.
0:47:35 > 0:47:38Telling us that, no matter how normal we like to seem, we are
0:47:38 > 0:47:43all of us constantly subject to subconscious dreams and fantasies.
0:47:45 > 0:47:47Ruled by thoughts of sex and death.
0:47:50 > 0:47:55That's why naked women stalk his otherwise bourgeois precincts.
0:47:55 > 0:47:59They stand, or lie, for desire.
0:48:01 > 0:48:04In some of his wartime work,
0:48:04 > 0:48:07Delvaux's sense that we hide from what we don't want to know
0:48:07 > 0:48:10becomes charged with even darker meanings.
0:48:10 > 0:48:16If we don't control our drives, what might we do to the world?
0:48:19 > 0:48:23In his sleeping Venus, apart from the central nude,
0:48:23 > 0:48:26everyone seems to be looking at something
0:48:26 > 0:48:29beyond the tight confines of the architecture.
0:48:29 > 0:48:31Something terrible,
0:48:31 > 0:48:35to judge by their staring eyes and agonised expressions.
0:48:38 > 0:48:43The skeleton has the air of a messenger, bringing unwelcome news
0:48:43 > 0:48:46to the lady in the feathered hat.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50News of the goings-on at Belsen or Auschwitz?
0:48:53 > 0:48:58After the war, and this outpouring of anguish and guilt,
0:48:58 > 0:49:01did Delvaux have anything left?
0:49:01 > 0:49:05Some say he was so traumatised that he spent the rest of his life
0:49:05 > 0:49:11almost sleepwalking - retreating into a rather safe fantasy world,
0:49:11 > 0:49:14as if he couldn't bear all that he'd uncovered.
0:49:17 > 0:49:22In the early 1950s, Delvaux embarked on his largest cycle of paintings.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26'It's in a private home in a gated enclave,
0:49:26 > 0:49:30'within one of Brussels' exclusive neighbourhoods.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33'Only a handful of people have ever seen it.'
0:49:36 > 0:49:38- Helena.- Hi.- I'm Andrew.
0:49:38 > 0:49:42- Nice to meet you.- Come to see the Delvaux.- Yeah! Come in.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48Wow, it's straight in!
0:49:52 > 0:49:55I had no idea it was going to be so big.
0:49:55 > 0:50:00You really feel like you are in Paul Delvaux's world.
0:50:03 > 0:50:08I like this world, but I think sometimes it can be strange and weird.
0:50:08 > 0:50:12You feel like there's people watching you and observing you
0:50:12 > 0:50:15and you don't know really what they are thinking about you.
0:50:15 > 0:50:20- So you like it but it sometimes makes you feel uncomfortable?- Yes.
0:50:20 > 0:50:26And also, like with the paintings, most of the time the curtains,
0:50:26 > 0:50:29they have to be closed to preserve the paintings.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32So it's not that easy to live in a house like this.
0:50:33 > 0:50:36So when you do throw the curtains open to the light,
0:50:36 > 0:50:38do you sometimes feel that the figures in the paintings,
0:50:38 > 0:50:41like they've been asleep and now they've come back to life?
0:50:41 > 0:50:44Exactly, they're quite happy to come back to life!
0:50:47 > 0:50:51Do you know how long it took Delvaux to create this mise-en-scene?
0:50:51 > 0:50:53It took him two years.
0:50:53 > 0:50:56So at the beginning it was supposed to take six months
0:50:56 > 0:51:00and then he realised that the work was much bigger.
0:51:00 > 0:51:02Two years!
0:51:06 > 0:51:10It's a cross between bourgeois Brussels and the classical past.
0:51:10 > 0:51:15You don't really know if you are in Italy or in antique Greece.
0:51:15 > 0:51:20I like the way they come from the commissioner of the painting
0:51:20 > 0:51:23and his daughter, we come down these stairs,
0:51:23 > 0:51:30we seem to go from the present day, the 1950s, into the classical past.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35Then we're into the 19th century
0:51:35 > 0:51:38and then we're back into the classical past
0:51:38 > 0:51:41and suddenly all their clothes are falling off!
0:51:43 > 0:51:47But there's not really an expression on the faces.
0:51:47 > 0:51:50They are all quite beautiful women
0:51:50 > 0:51:53but there's no expressions and that's what's weird
0:51:53 > 0:51:58because we expect them maybe to smile or to be enjoying themselves.
0:51:58 > 0:52:02It's nature and it's landscape, but there's no expression
0:52:02 > 0:52:05so it feels like there's something weird happening
0:52:05 > 0:52:08but you don't know what exactly.
0:52:08 > 0:52:11I often feel with Delvaux, what he does is he takes the traditions
0:52:11 > 0:52:17of the past and surrealises them, so you think you know where you are
0:52:17 > 0:52:21but you start looking closely and you think, "No, it's not like that."
0:52:21 > 0:52:24It's almost the classical past, but not really.
0:52:24 > 0:52:27Almost the modern day - no, not quite.
0:52:27 > 0:52:32Almost a mythological painting, but no, something's strange.
0:52:32 > 0:52:35But you could never get beyond that mystery.
0:52:35 > 0:52:39- There's something about the dream. - Something about the dream, yeah.
0:52:46 > 0:52:52While Delvaux was holding the world at bay with those curiously numb,
0:52:52 > 0:52:57stunned pictures, this already divided country was falling further into domestic chaos.
0:53:00 > 0:53:06Since then, economic crisis has widened the chasm separating north from south.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10Fortunes have all but reversed, with the once-prosperous south
0:53:10 > 0:53:14suffering terribly in these post-industrial times.
0:53:14 > 0:53:17Inequality is the rule in modern Belgium.
0:53:17 > 0:53:24The top 20 per cent of the population earn almost four times as much as the bottom 20 per cent.
0:53:24 > 0:53:27And many earn nothing at all.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33This is Charleroi - once an industrial boomtown,
0:53:33 > 0:53:39it now has one of the worst unemployment rates in Western Europe.
0:53:39 > 0:53:44But against its backdrop of rusting steel and cracked concrete
0:53:44 > 0:53:49flowers this raw, mesmerising form of surrealist dreaming.
0:53:51 > 0:53:54For me, it's these yowling walls of graffiti that speak
0:53:54 > 0:53:57most nakedly about the plight of
0:53:57 > 0:54:00this fractured, disillusioned nation.
0:54:00 > 0:54:06What are they images of? Hope? Despair? Defiance?
0:54:06 > 0:54:10Their chaotic co-mingling certainly speaks of division.
0:54:23 > 0:54:26While Belgium worries and looks within,
0:54:26 > 0:54:30what of its more confident, more united neighbour?
0:54:30 > 0:54:35Where do you go to find the art that's reflected the modern Dutch identity?
0:54:38 > 0:54:44Well, the idea of art certainly appeals to the civilised Dutch.
0:54:44 > 0:54:49For a while they paid their artists a social benefit to produce it.
0:54:49 > 0:54:51'Most of it ended up here,
0:54:51 > 0:54:55'in a state-owned lock-up in the outskirts of The Hague.'
0:54:55 > 0:54:58Nice big lifts. What's the floor area?
0:54:58 > 0:55:03It's almost three football pitches.
0:55:03 > 0:55:08- Automatic doors.- Yes, sir. Three football pitches!- Yeah.
0:55:08 > 0:55:10HE LAUGHS
0:55:10 > 0:55:13As you can see, here is one of the buildings.
0:55:13 > 0:55:18'The social welfare scheme was set up in 1949.
0:55:18 > 0:55:22'50,000 works of art are locked within its vaults,
0:55:22 > 0:55:27'brought out on rare occasions to decorate the offices of government officials.'
0:55:27 > 0:55:30We've got a lot of bequests, a lot of gifts.
0:55:30 > 0:55:34So if a Dutch ambassador who's got an embassy, he's got a wall to fill,
0:55:34 > 0:55:38- he might come to you and say, "Can I have one of these paintings?" - Yes, yes.
0:55:38 > 0:55:41- And if he is very nice, you might say yes?- Yes.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44- We have to say yes.- OK.
0:55:45 > 0:55:47Oh, fantastic.
0:55:55 > 0:55:57It keeps coming.
0:55:57 > 0:56:01We've got a lady in furs peeking out, still life, leather boots...
0:56:04 > 0:56:07Naked black lady reclining on the American flag, why not.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15'By the time the money ran out in the late 1980s,
0:56:15 > 0:56:19'it had subsidised a quarter of all the artists in the Netherlands.
0:56:19 > 0:56:26'Paying them up to three times the market value for their work to be expensively shelved.'
0:56:28 > 0:56:31These are the works that are currently waiting.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36They're waiting for someone. This is a little bit like the orphans' home.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39- They're waiting for someone to adopt them.- Yes.
0:56:41 > 0:56:43These poor little art children.
0:56:46 > 0:56:51'This must be the largest Euro mountain of unwanted art in existence.
0:56:51 > 0:56:54'What does it say about a modern society
0:56:54 > 0:56:57'that it's willing to pay lip service to art
0:56:57 > 0:57:00'and then manage to forget about it almost completely?
0:57:00 > 0:57:05'What would poor old Van Gogh have made of it all?'
0:57:07 > 0:57:11- The quality is quite uneven. - Yeah, yeah. It is.
0:57:11 > 0:57:14We have 50,000 works now here, so
0:57:14 > 0:57:19- not everything...- Is going to be a masterpiece!- Yes, yes.
0:57:25 > 0:57:27Cultures constantly change,
0:57:27 > 0:57:31and it's my own personal view, but right now I feel the Dutch
0:57:31 > 0:57:35are most at home with the practical arts of design and architecture.
0:57:35 > 0:57:41And I suspect that's why their galleries are so much more impressive than their art.
0:57:41 > 0:57:45This gallery is by Rotterdam's Rem Koolhaas,
0:57:45 > 0:57:49and what a very "cool house" it is!
0:57:56 > 0:58:00More than 2,000 years ago, Plato declared that the last thing
0:58:00 > 0:58:07a republic needs is the destabilising figure of the artist.
0:58:07 > 0:58:10Someone whose individual visions ran counter
0:58:10 > 0:58:13to the communal efforts of the state.
0:58:13 > 0:58:16I think that's true of Holland today.
0:58:16 > 0:58:21What do the modern Dutch want? Above all, I think business as usual.
0:58:21 > 0:58:24They want their banks, they want their container ports,
0:58:24 > 0:58:30they want to grow and sell more flowers than anyone else in the world.
0:58:30 > 0:58:34And I think it's that sense of profound,
0:58:34 > 0:58:40collective enterprise that sets modern Holland apart from modern Belgium.
0:58:40 > 0:58:45And I think it's also what defines the Dutch attitude to art.
0:58:45 > 0:58:47They know they've got to have lots of it,
0:58:47 > 0:58:51because after all it's the mark of a modern, civilised state,
0:58:51 > 0:58:55but do they really want to look at it?
0:58:55 > 0:58:59Do they really want to think about it too deeply? I don't think so.
0:59:08 > 0:59:10Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd