0:00:02 > 0:00:03APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
0:00:03 > 0:00:05We live in a confessional age.
0:00:05 > 0:00:07This is the first time in my life
0:00:07 > 0:00:10I've ever told anyone how I'm feeling.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14But the confessional is now a different kind of box.
0:00:14 > 0:00:15Heartbroken.
0:00:15 > 0:00:17I'm going to lose everyone.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23Exposure to the max.
0:00:23 > 0:00:25Privacy, so over.
0:00:25 > 0:00:28How many artists are here from that show?
0:00:28 > 0:00:32I'm here. I'm drunk, but I don't care.
0:00:32 > 0:00:34- I couldn't give a- BLEEP!- about it.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37It's no surprise that sooner or later,
0:00:37 > 0:00:39the long tradition of self-portraiture
0:00:39 > 0:00:41would arrive at this.
0:00:41 > 0:00:45- There's no way I want this- BLEEP! - mic on me.
0:00:47 > 0:00:52An archaeology of sexual disaster presenting itself as art.
0:00:54 > 0:00:59Here, then, is the shrine of celebrity squalor.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01Enthroned like a medieval relic.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05Instead of holy toenails, the unholy, soiled sheets.
0:01:06 > 0:01:08Condoms embalmed.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10Half-squeezed lubricants
0:01:10 > 0:01:13made venerable for modern-art pilgrims.
0:01:16 > 0:01:21Tracey Emin's My Bed ought to be exactly what I most hate
0:01:21 > 0:01:23and despise about some kinds of contemporary art.
0:01:23 > 0:01:27The orgy of personal self-indulgence,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31the assumption that art can really be just a document
0:01:31 > 0:01:35of a broken life in which we ought to be interested.
0:01:35 > 0:01:40The confusion of exhibitionism with an exhibition.
0:01:40 > 0:01:43And yet there is something to it.
0:01:43 > 0:01:48There is something odd, there is something magnetic. I don't deny it.
0:01:48 > 0:01:53In its little corner here, simultaneously miserable
0:01:53 > 0:01:55and then glorious at the same time,
0:01:55 > 0:02:00it does kind of exude a certain smelly power.
0:02:05 > 0:02:10That power comes from the drama at the heart of every self-portrait.
0:02:10 > 0:02:14The passion play between, "Check me out. Aren't I something?"
0:02:14 > 0:02:18And, "Look at me. What a mess."
0:02:22 > 0:02:24When the artists look at themselves in the mirror,
0:02:24 > 0:02:30the mirror becomes the site of a battle between vanity and verity.
0:02:30 > 0:02:32Flattery and truth.
0:02:33 > 0:02:37The artworks they make are courageous moments of candour
0:02:37 > 0:02:40that are reports from this drama of the ego.
0:02:43 > 0:02:48Self-portraiture is one of the most compelling, thrilling,
0:02:48 > 0:02:51disturbing, unsettling, exhilarating
0:02:51 > 0:02:53forms of portraiture there is.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57It has manifold ways of expressing
0:02:57 > 0:03:00the sense of the creative self.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03And what it does is not just introduce you
0:03:03 > 0:03:06to the abyss of the artistic soul,
0:03:06 > 0:03:11it says something to us about our own relationship with it.
0:03:11 > 0:03:16It's a document not just of the boiling creative mind,
0:03:16 > 0:03:18but of the human condition.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42In the medieval world, it would have been unseemly for artists
0:03:42 > 0:03:46to offer their art as a product of individual talent.
0:03:49 > 0:03:56Through the Christian centuries, the most prolific artist was anonymous.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01There was only one creator, God, the Almighty.
0:04:01 > 0:04:03And the artist worked for the glory of the Church,
0:04:03 > 0:04:06not for the glory of himself.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10But in the mid 13th century,
0:04:10 > 0:04:14one Christian artist had the audacity to show his face.
0:04:18 > 0:04:22William de Brailes lived and worked in Oxford.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25It was a time when a market
0:04:25 > 0:04:29for lavishly-decorated sacred books arose.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31For the first time, those books
0:04:31 > 0:04:34could be owned by wealthy individuals
0:04:34 > 0:04:36and shown off as treasures.
0:04:37 > 0:04:42And one of the most spectacular came from the hand of de Brailes.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47It was a book of psalms he made around 1240.
0:04:49 > 0:04:52And so proud was he that among these pages,
0:04:52 > 0:04:55he felt bold enough to proclaim his authorship.
0:04:57 > 0:04:59And he did it with his face.
0:05:01 > 0:05:03It's really very, very early,
0:05:03 > 0:05:09the 13th century, that we see the face of an artist
0:05:09 > 0:05:12and we know who that artist is.
0:05:12 > 0:05:16And where William de Brailes has painted his own portrait
0:05:16 > 0:05:21is in a climatic moment, the last judgment.
0:05:23 > 0:05:26So he wants to be there, right at the heart of the drama,
0:05:26 > 0:05:31and, in case we haven't figured out who this little figure is,
0:05:31 > 0:05:35his advertising logo is painted in at the end.
0:05:35 > 0:05:37"William de Brailes me fecit."
0:05:37 > 0:05:40William de Brailes did this. This is me.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44This is a William de Brailes' fully-authorised,
0:05:44 > 0:05:46there-shall-be-no-imitations production.
0:05:46 > 0:05:48And what a production it is.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55De Brailes' skill shines through in these golden leaves.
0:05:55 > 0:05:59Stories of the Bible brought to life in his unique style,
0:05:59 > 0:06:02both ceremonious and playful.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09He was famous for pictures of demons
0:06:09 > 0:06:13wearing little kind of Roman wrestler loincloths
0:06:13 > 0:06:17with fringy, tasselly bits on.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20Fashion for fashionable demons.
0:06:20 > 0:06:22We always like those.
0:06:23 > 0:06:28And there's a wonderful picture of King David playing the harp.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31Remember, he's the author of all the Psalms.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36Like the good businessman artist he is,
0:06:36 > 0:06:39with a production line to promote,
0:06:39 > 0:06:42De Brailes wants to have it both ways.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44He wants to appear in his own work,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47but at the same time make a point
0:06:47 > 0:06:50that he is aware of the perils of arrogance.
0:06:54 > 0:06:58Look at the context in which it's portrayed. It's wonderful.
0:06:58 > 0:07:02He's not a hero, he's not the virtuoso artist.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05He's not some anticipation of the great Michelangelo.
0:07:05 > 0:07:07Just the opposite.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11He positions himself teetering above
0:07:11 > 0:07:16the vertiginous drop into the world of the damned.
0:07:16 > 0:07:21The damned are all these naked little figures cowering with terror
0:07:21 > 0:07:26because flying above them is the angel of the last judgment.
0:07:31 > 0:07:33And the angel with wings outstretched
0:07:33 > 0:07:37has his arms around two different things.
0:07:37 > 0:07:39One arm is holding a mighty sword
0:07:39 > 0:07:43which is about the whack the damned into the pit of hell.
0:07:43 > 0:07:46Guess what?
0:07:46 > 0:07:50He is also evidently the angel of all good artists,
0:07:50 > 0:07:53publishers and bookmakers,
0:07:53 > 0:07:56because his other arm is protecting de Brailes
0:07:56 > 0:07:59from falling down amidst the doomed.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03So I am after all a good Christian,
0:08:03 > 0:08:06and I'm making something which ultimately
0:08:06 > 0:08:09will propagate the light of the gospel.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16As long as Christian humility was a sovereign virtue for an artist,
0:08:16 > 0:08:21even an ambitious self-promoter like de Brailes has to
0:08:21 > 0:08:23smuggle himself into his work.
0:08:28 > 0:08:30300 years later,
0:08:30 > 0:08:35artists had less trouble squaring humility with self-portrayal.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43Even then, there were dangers.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48The first full self-portrait in England that we know of
0:08:48 > 0:08:50was made in a prison cell.
0:08:51 > 0:08:54But not in solitary confinement.
0:08:56 > 0:09:02In 1554, an elderly German artist named Gerlach Flicke found himself
0:09:02 > 0:09:06sharing a cell with a gentleman pirate.
0:09:08 > 0:09:11Gerlach Flicke had come to England in the wake of Holbein
0:09:11 > 0:09:13and other German successes,
0:09:13 > 0:09:18but this was a time of nervy rebellion and conspiracy
0:09:18 > 0:09:20and you could find yourself in the Tower for reasons
0:09:20 > 0:09:22you couldn't possibly understand,
0:09:22 > 0:09:26and that probably was the case for poor old Gerlach Flicke.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29As for the pirate, Henry Strangwish,
0:09:29 > 0:09:33he was here for doing what he did best, pirating.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36They were an odd couple to share this space.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39But whatever the reason that brought these two men together,
0:09:39 > 0:09:44from this moment came an absolutely exquisite work of art.
0:09:51 > 0:09:56As if staring from the little windows of their shared cell,
0:09:56 > 0:09:59the painter Flicke is on the left.
0:10:01 > 0:10:05And to his right - the buccaneer, Strangwish.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12This is one of the most extraordinary works of art ever seen, really.
0:10:12 > 0:10:17Not particularly in its quality, although it is very, very beautiful,
0:10:17 > 0:10:20but in its circumstances.
0:10:20 > 0:10:23Despite the fact they are in fear of their lives,
0:10:23 > 0:10:27the painter takes the most exquisite care
0:10:27 > 0:10:32to produce a beautiful, beautiful image of the two of them.
0:10:32 > 0:10:36It's also very striking that our first oil self-painting is not
0:10:36 > 0:10:40a solo act, it's a duet.
0:10:40 > 0:10:46It's about the company of each other in straitened circumstances.
0:10:46 > 0:10:52Technically, this is an extraordinary feat of fine motor control.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57My favourite passage is that each of them has a little attribute.
0:10:57 > 0:11:02The pirate is not only a pirate, folks, he's a musical pirate.
0:11:02 > 0:11:07He sings as he does "arrr, me hearties", he's the Red Rover.
0:11:07 > 0:11:11And he has a lute there, and the lute is perfectly painted.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18And then there is the pallet.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25There is everything that makes this slightly elderly German artist
0:11:25 > 0:11:27himself.
0:11:27 > 0:11:31His thumb, stuck through the hole in the pallet,
0:11:31 > 0:11:33and even the nail is beautifully painted here.
0:11:37 > 0:11:41But this enigmatic work gets even more intriguing
0:11:41 > 0:11:45with delicate inscriptions, painted in gold,
0:11:45 > 0:11:48directly above the heads of Flicke and Strangwish.
0:11:50 > 0:11:55Here's what the inscriptions say. And they are in two different moods.
0:11:55 > 0:11:58On the pirate's side, we've got gallows humour.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01"Hey, it's just prison, it's just hangmen,
0:12:01 > 0:12:05"just an executioner's block. Laugh it off, everybody."
0:12:05 > 0:12:07So it says this.
0:12:07 > 0:12:11"Strangwish, thus strangely depicted is.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15"One prisoner for th'other hath done this.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19"Gerlach hath garnished for his delight
0:12:19 > 0:12:22"the work you now see before your sight."
0:12:24 > 0:12:28The word "garnished" is a piece of prison slang for greasing
0:12:28 > 0:12:32the palm of a jailor - paying your way in prison to make life
0:12:32 > 0:12:36a little easier - a bit more food, a bit more walk around the Tower.
0:12:36 > 0:12:41So in some ways this suggests that the painter has painted this
0:12:41 > 0:12:46beautiful thing for the pirate, or for them all,
0:12:46 > 0:12:50to make life in prison just a bit more comfortable.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56But on the other side is the other mood, which is
0:12:56 > 0:13:00solemn and poignant and elegiac.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03And in Latin.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06This was the face of Flicke,
0:13:06 > 0:13:11when he was painter in the city of London.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15He had painted this from a mirror,
0:13:15 > 0:13:21so that his friends might have some remembrance of him after his death.
0:13:24 > 0:13:26So, despite the prison world,
0:13:26 > 0:13:31we have a sense actually of art, both as joke
0:13:31 > 0:13:37and as remembrance, in these two veins of humour, comedy and tragedy.
0:13:42 > 0:13:46Both men survived the Tower, but their time in jail left us with
0:13:46 > 0:13:52a marvel in which so much emotion is crammed into so minimal a space.
0:13:56 > 0:14:01But another painter, a century later, would need maximal space
0:14:01 > 0:14:06to carry the great weight of his outsized personality.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11Brimming with artistic flair, Isaac Fuller depicts himself
0:14:11 > 0:14:17as an erudite and virtuoso painter, but the eyes tell a deeper story.
0:14:26 > 0:14:28Isaac Fuller could never decide
0:14:28 > 0:14:34whether he wanted to be an entertainer or a high-minded artist.
0:14:34 > 0:14:36What he did know was after 1660,
0:14:36 > 0:14:39when Charles II was restored to the throne,
0:14:39 > 0:14:44an opportunity opened up to supply exactly the things which
0:14:44 > 0:14:48Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans had banished -
0:14:48 > 0:14:51the painted glorification of the King
0:14:51 > 0:14:56and enormous spectacular pictures in churches.
0:14:56 > 0:15:01And one of Fuller's early commissions could not have been better calculated
0:15:01 > 0:15:04to advertise himself as Mr Restoration.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11It was the job of redecorating the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford.
0:15:14 > 0:15:17He's not getting a little, tiny commission
0:15:17 > 0:15:21from some weenie podunk church at the back of beyond
0:15:21 > 0:15:25in some, you know, Blagwold-on-Pissmire
0:15:25 > 0:15:26in the countryside.
0:15:26 > 0:15:29No, it's All Souls College.
0:15:29 > 0:15:33And these are fragments of an enormous decorative scheme
0:15:33 > 0:15:35which would have covered All Souls Chapel.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40And these paintings were essentially a mighty
0:15:40 > 0:15:44and genuinely noble ambition.
0:15:47 > 0:15:50As he set to work, Fuller drew on everything
0:15:50 > 0:15:54he'd learned during his years of training on the Continent.
0:15:55 > 0:16:00And visions of the great European painters marched through his mind.
0:16:04 > 0:16:08You look at these figures from Fuller's programme for
0:16:08 > 0:16:15The Last Judgment and you see he wants to be the English Michelangelo.
0:16:15 > 0:16:20It's meant to express the power of the revival of Christian decoration.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24He's taking this essential idolisation of Michelangelo -
0:16:24 > 0:16:28and why not? - from his years in training in Paris
0:16:28 > 0:16:29with the great Francois Perrier.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33And he knows what he's supposed to do,
0:16:33 > 0:16:37that you need to have the immense power of the human form.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41There's a foot... What's the largest shoe size you can have,
0:16:41 > 0:16:45size 25 or something? There's a bloody enormous foot
0:16:45 > 0:16:49that's stepping over a ledge from this figure here,
0:16:49 > 0:16:54and everything is sort of huge and beefy and meaty.
0:16:55 > 0:16:59We've got acres of flying textile there
0:16:59 > 0:17:01in the same sort of colour that Michelangelo uses
0:17:01 > 0:17:06on the Sistine Chapel, this lovely delicate green.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10And the head is rather lovely.
0:17:10 > 0:17:11The head is very nice.
0:17:13 > 0:17:18But here, Fuller's talent didn't quite match his ambition.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21The problem is there is something catastrophically wrong
0:17:21 > 0:17:26going on at the shoulder. And indeed at the hip.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30It's all, kind of, apprenticeship
0:17:30 > 0:17:34in surgical reattachment which is not actually going to pass the exams
0:17:34 > 0:17:36at the Royal College of Surgeons.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40So we have bits of muscles in different directions,
0:17:40 > 0:17:42so it doesn't really work.
0:17:42 > 0:17:47You have to BE Michelangelo in order to get the biceps right.
0:17:47 > 0:17:50This looks like an advertisement for a gym.
0:17:53 > 0:17:55If Fuller was aiming at posterity,
0:17:55 > 0:17:59his choice of materials wasn't going to help.
0:17:59 > 0:18:03He'd used oils directly on plaster and timber,
0:18:03 > 0:18:05so not long after they were completed,
0:18:05 > 0:18:09they started to degrade, leaving college with no choice
0:18:09 > 0:18:11but to have them painted over.
0:18:13 > 0:18:15I think wherever it was, on the ceiling,
0:18:15 > 0:18:17he's spending too much time on the ladder
0:18:17 > 0:18:21and needed to get down and step back a bit and say,
0:18:21 > 0:18:23"That's gone really badly wrong!"
0:18:26 > 0:18:27And look what's happened to the knee!
0:18:30 > 0:18:33These fragments are all that survive.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41But there was nothing Fuller believed he couldn't do.
0:18:41 > 0:18:44A new kind of history painting, for instance.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51Not ancient history, but the history everyone was talking about -
0:18:51 > 0:18:55the ripping yarn of Charles II's miraculous escape from Cromwell
0:18:55 > 0:19:00after the Battle of Worcester was currently a Restoration hit.
0:19:03 > 0:19:08And Fuller thought he was the man to bring this history to life.
0:19:08 > 0:19:12Painting as popular entertainment.
0:19:14 > 0:19:21But Fuller's canvases were not so much Classics as comics, writ large.
0:19:21 > 0:19:26So in this kind of extravagant showmanship, there was a danger.
0:19:29 > 0:19:33Well, the danger is when you make the King a character in a cartoon strip,
0:19:33 > 0:19:35you run very close to comedy.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39And not everyone saw the funny side.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45Do you not think that horse is looking a bit worried?
0:19:45 > 0:19:48Maybe he's worried that he has got two riders instead of one.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51"Didn't sign on for two bodies on my back," he says,
0:19:51 > 0:19:56or is he worried because the face of Charles II,
0:19:56 > 0:20:00the great king, is undecided? Or is he worried that,
0:20:00 > 0:20:03"I don't think this picture is working out
0:20:03 > 0:20:04"the way it was supposed to?"
0:20:07 > 0:20:11We don't actually know where the Charles superhero pictures ended up.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15But someone must've liked them because they survived
0:20:15 > 0:20:20and turned up in the 18th century in a grand aristocratic estate.
0:20:21 > 0:20:26But Fuller never succeeded in creating a new kind of popular,
0:20:26 > 0:20:28contemporary history painting.
0:20:29 > 0:20:34And in his disappointment, he sought solace in the taverns of London.
0:20:36 > 0:20:41Spending his days decorating pubs with scenes of bacchanalian abandon,
0:20:41 > 0:20:45spending the proceeds drowning his sorrows.
0:20:47 > 0:20:49Yet even in his boozy period,
0:20:49 > 0:20:53there were moments of sober self-recognition,
0:20:53 > 0:20:59and one of them produced a tour de force of self-portraiture.
0:21:01 > 0:21:05It's a phenomenally engaging painting,
0:21:05 > 0:21:10and it's full of a kind of self-advertisement that he belongs
0:21:10 > 0:21:14to the most seriously considered tradition of art.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18It's extravagant, flamboyant. This is brilliantly painted.
0:21:18 > 0:21:23Wherever you look, you see a really brilliant,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26technically-gifted painter.
0:21:26 > 0:21:28It's as though he has come off the stage,
0:21:28 > 0:21:31as though he is the star of Restoration comedy.
0:21:31 > 0:21:35It's larger-than-life, a good bit larger-than-life.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38No artist, not even Anthony van Dyck,
0:21:38 > 0:21:43does an image of his face which is that much bigger than the real thing,
0:21:43 > 0:21:45and look how extravagantly he's dressed.
0:21:45 > 0:21:51That fantastic red velvet cap that I've never seen anywhere else in art,
0:21:51 > 0:21:55even in Dutch art, which has a very large hat department.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58Down his shoulders comes this enormous waterfall
0:21:58 > 0:22:01of oxblood-red velvet
0:22:01 > 0:22:06and all put together with a pure Mick Jagger, rock'n'roller
0:22:06 > 0:22:10silver and pink scarf - fantastic, I would kill for one of those.
0:22:10 > 0:22:16So we have Isaac Fuller, the showman, the can-do man in any medium,
0:22:16 > 0:22:19someone the world should acknowledge.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24But look beyond the swagger
0:22:24 > 0:22:27and this powerful self-portrait becomes a reckoning.
0:22:28 > 0:22:33Fuller's fantasy majesty is shadowed by deep melancholy.
0:22:36 > 0:22:42It is absolutely the painting of someone who's made it in every way.
0:22:42 > 0:22:45But, of course, Isaac Fuller has not.
0:22:45 > 0:22:47When he's not drunk,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51he is looking for any jobbing work he can get.
0:22:51 > 0:22:57And in that face is a kind of baroque cantata of regret.
0:23:00 > 0:23:05It's a sorrow that he has in some ways wasted his potential.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11What the painting says to us, in its brilliance,
0:23:11 > 0:23:14is this, I could have been.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23Fuller's art was a kind of city theatre,
0:23:23 > 0:23:26straining for applause, the ego on parade.
0:23:26 > 0:23:28Looking at us.
0:23:31 > 0:23:36But a century later, finding oneself had become a kind of religion.
0:23:38 > 0:23:42And the place to do it was not amidst the clamour of town, but in nature.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54There, amidst God's unpolluted creation,
0:23:54 > 0:23:59it was possible to recover what had been lost in the urban swarm.
0:24:00 > 0:24:02The inner child.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17And no-one was looking harder than Samuel Palmer.
0:24:23 > 0:24:29He really hated what he called the "great national dust hole" of London,
0:24:29 > 0:24:30but he had grown up in it.
0:24:30 > 0:24:34He was the son of a quite prosperous bookseller who also happened to be
0:24:34 > 0:24:37a Baptist lay preacher, and both those things
0:24:37 > 0:24:41were important for the forming of Palmer
0:24:41 > 0:24:46and his very peculiar, extraordinary, visionary kind of art.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50What he hated was the crass vulgarity of what
0:24:50 > 0:24:54he called the "flashy distraction" of the modern world.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59"It was the kind of world", he said, "where solid facts and still more
0:24:59 > 0:25:04"solid pudding nourishes a fat, waddling alderman."
0:25:04 > 0:25:08So we had this kind of young man's fantasy of coming here
0:25:08 > 0:25:12and getting towards a non-modern England.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16If you could only get away from the tatty, tacky modern world,
0:25:16 > 0:25:23you'd find this perfect heaven of a Jerusalem among the green fields.
0:25:31 > 0:25:36In 1825, Samuel Palmer came to the Kentish village of Shoreham.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43Here, he seemed to acquire a new pair of eyes.
0:25:43 > 0:25:47Eyes which saw deeper, clearer than in the London murk.
0:25:54 > 0:26:00And what he trained them on right away was, of course, himself.
0:26:07 > 0:26:09Around the time Palmer is going to Shoreham,
0:26:09 > 0:26:13he produces this extraordinary self-portrait -
0:26:13 > 0:26:18perhaps the greatest romantic self-portrait ever,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21in Britain, in any other kind of art. And why?
0:26:21 > 0:26:24Because it does something which was indispensable
0:26:24 > 0:26:27to the Romantic temperament.
0:26:27 > 0:26:29It's an epiphany, it's a revelation,
0:26:29 > 0:26:32but it's a revelation of the inner person.
0:26:35 > 0:26:40When you look at it, you feel you're absolutely cheek by jowl with it.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44And the technique is absolutely wonderful.
0:26:44 > 0:26:46It's a drama of his own face
0:26:46 > 0:26:50and the drama is made more spectacular by the special instrument
0:26:50 > 0:26:53of Palmerian drama - white chalk,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56to heighten accents, to give it light.
0:26:56 > 0:26:58Look where the chalk heightening falls.
0:26:58 > 0:27:03It falls in the temple of the imagination, on his forehead.
0:27:03 > 0:27:10It occurs on the eyes - this is a man with amazing fine motor control.
0:27:10 > 0:27:13Everything he does that's good is teeny-weeny,
0:27:13 > 0:27:19but out of teeny-weeny comes immense emotional power.
0:27:35 > 0:27:38So you do have this astonishing sense of being rather searingly,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42and disconcertingly, spookily addressed
0:27:42 > 0:27:45in a kind of confrontational way by Palmer.
0:27:45 > 0:27:48But that, of course, is an illusion.
0:27:48 > 0:27:52What Samuel Palmer is looking at, staring at
0:27:52 > 0:27:58in this trancelike intensity, is the innermost Samuel Palmer.
0:28:02 > 0:28:07Palmer stared and stared until the landscapes passing before his eyes
0:28:07 > 0:28:10turned into mindscapes.
0:28:17 > 0:28:21And a mind, for that matter, on a serious trip.
0:28:22 > 0:28:25At the height of his creative fervour,
0:28:25 > 0:28:29Palmer set down these startling little drawings.
0:28:29 > 0:28:33The vision somehow both compressed and expanded,
0:28:33 > 0:28:36dreamily, far, far away.
0:28:41 > 0:28:44These landscapes come out of his own head,
0:28:44 > 0:28:48from a superior, ecstatic illumination.
0:28:49 > 0:28:53These are kind of magnificently clotted, little gem-like,
0:28:53 > 0:28:58dense, concentrated miracles of compression.
0:29:01 > 0:29:07Palmer said that the visions of the soul, being perfect,
0:29:07 > 0:29:10are the only true standard
0:29:10 > 0:29:15by which nature should be tried. And he clung to his vision.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19Everything is really an earthly paradise.
0:29:19 > 0:29:22It has that kind of fullness, the fecundity, the fruitfulness
0:29:22 > 0:29:26that goes way back as Palmer wanted it to do.
0:29:26 > 0:29:32And by going back, by consciously recovering an innocent vision,
0:29:32 > 0:29:38he is at the same time archaic and profoundly, profoundly modern.
0:29:38 > 0:29:42We don't see this kind of stylisation of landscape
0:29:42 > 0:29:45until you get to the end of the 19th century.
0:29:46 > 0:29:50This particular one, which I love very much...
0:29:50 > 0:29:53There are these beautiful wheat sheaves
0:29:53 > 0:29:57around a recumbent reader.
0:29:57 > 0:29:59We are in Fairy Land.
0:29:59 > 0:30:04We're really in the land of the child's imagination.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07Another one of these has a tree which... Look at it,
0:30:07 > 0:30:09it's a magic mushroom, isn't it? Absolutely.
0:30:09 > 0:30:13There's the kind of...the hare from heaven with his ears
0:30:13 > 0:30:16in a state of quivering attentiveness.
0:30:16 > 0:30:20Samuel Palmer, at this perfect moment,
0:30:20 > 0:30:26is a child in a glorious state of suspended animation,
0:30:26 > 0:30:27a child who doesn't grow up.
0:30:27 > 0:30:33And it's this child's vision of earthly heaven that he gives us,
0:30:33 > 0:30:35and no-one else does it.
0:30:35 > 0:30:39And it happens in the bosom of England.
0:30:44 > 0:30:45For generations,
0:30:45 > 0:30:49Palmer's startling, revolutionary work went virtually unseen.
0:30:52 > 0:30:57Too strange for Victorian tastes, too out-there to make a living,
0:30:57 > 0:30:59Palmer hid them away.
0:30:59 > 0:31:03And, in time, he retreated from visions,
0:31:03 > 0:31:07left Shoreham and became conventional,
0:31:07 > 0:31:10dull, respectively successful.
0:31:16 > 0:31:21Palmer traded in his originality for acceptability.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24But for another whole category of artists,
0:31:24 > 0:31:29being accepted was always going to be a prolonged battle.
0:31:30 > 0:31:33It was very tough for women in Victorian England
0:31:33 > 0:31:35because the governing institutions
0:31:35 > 0:31:40and the schools of art were not designed to help female talent along.
0:31:40 > 0:31:45Women were expected to do things that were all about being pretty
0:31:45 > 0:31:47and feminine.
0:31:47 > 0:31:54So, in Britain, there was this great, teeming mass of frustrated,
0:31:54 > 0:31:56gifted women artists.
0:31:56 > 0:31:59And one of them was Laura Knight.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04Laura Knight was to become a front-line warrior who'd use
0:32:04 > 0:32:09the self-portrait to violate gloriously all the confining
0:32:09 > 0:32:14conventions that the men who ruled the art world had imposed.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18She would bring a startlingly distinctive vision to what
0:32:18 > 0:32:22women could do when they became painters.
0:32:22 > 0:32:24But it was very difficult.
0:32:24 > 0:32:28Her father had left and then died when she was very young.
0:32:28 > 0:32:30The mother was in modest circumstances
0:32:30 > 0:32:33and there was very little money in the family.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37The mum essentially made ends meet from teaching at art school.
0:32:37 > 0:32:42So when she saw that her daughter, aged 10, 11, 12, 13,
0:32:42 > 0:32:45had this phenomenal, precocious gift for drawing,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48she did everything she could to encourage it.
0:32:50 > 0:32:54Laura won a scholarship to the Nottingham School of Art.
0:32:56 > 0:32:58But, like most women,
0:32:58 > 0:33:02she was excluded from the exalted art of drawing the nude,
0:33:02 > 0:33:08and in the name of decency, confined to the inert forms of plaster casts.
0:33:09 > 0:33:12Thus, she was denied the training that since the Renaissance had
0:33:12 > 0:33:17been considered essential for any serious artist.
0:33:25 > 0:33:27To find the freedom she craved,
0:33:27 > 0:33:32Laura Knight would have to travel to the remotest edge of England.
0:33:46 > 0:33:50By the time she arrived, in 1907,
0:33:50 > 0:33:53Cornwall had become known as a haven for artists.
0:33:56 > 0:34:00With its bohemian atmosphere and scintillating light,
0:34:00 > 0:34:07Laura found herself living, she said, "A carefree life of sunlit pleasure."
0:34:12 > 0:34:16And here, far away from the stuffy art establishment,
0:34:16 > 0:34:18she found her artistic self.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31In this barefooted freedom,
0:34:31 > 0:34:33Laura's friends posed for her,
0:34:33 > 0:34:35comrades in art.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41No men, no poses to please men.
0:34:42 > 0:34:47Instead, these women are caught in quiet pensiveness,
0:34:47 > 0:34:52lost in thought and drenched in hot, radiant colour,
0:34:52 > 0:34:58as if burning from pent-up emotion and frustrated ambition.
0:35:02 > 0:35:07And in 1913, she brought all those instincts - a riot of colour,
0:35:07 > 0:35:12the audacity of a strong woman, a compositional gift -
0:35:12 > 0:35:17to make a self-portrait like no other that had ever been seen before.
0:35:24 > 0:35:26It came from Laura Knight's bitter memory
0:35:26 > 0:35:29all those years ago in Nottingham
0:35:29 > 0:35:34of not being allowed to do life classes because she was not a man.
0:35:34 > 0:35:36It came from an art memory, too.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39It came from knowing very well that
0:35:39 > 0:35:44when you had a portrait of a nude female model and a clothed artist,
0:35:44 > 0:35:49what a surprise, the artist was always going to be a man.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54I don't mean to say this is a political painting,
0:35:54 > 0:35:57but it can't be irrelevant that exactly when this
0:35:57 > 0:36:02is on show in 1913, the suffragette movement is at its height.
0:36:02 > 0:36:05This is a painting about sisterhood,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08but it's about the sisterhood of art.
0:36:12 > 0:36:14The self-portrait shows Laura at work
0:36:14 > 0:36:18painting her friend and model, Ella Naper.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24The consummate professional, brush in hand,
0:36:24 > 0:36:28gaze locked so tightly to the body she is celebrating.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35Though the painting is an anthem to the female body, it is,
0:36:35 > 0:36:40for the first time, delivered entirely on a woman's terms.
0:36:43 > 0:36:46Both the women are masked from us.
0:36:46 > 0:36:50She's sideways, there's a shadow falling down over her face.
0:36:50 > 0:36:53Ella herself has her back to us.
0:36:53 > 0:36:59We get her back doubled twice - rhymed, multiplied.
0:37:01 > 0:37:07But the real boast of this sisterhood collaboration is in the staggering
0:37:07 > 0:37:10cerebral cleverness and complexity of the picture.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13If you take Ella out, if you take Laura out,
0:37:13 > 0:37:18what you've got is a stunning abstract work of art.
0:37:19 > 0:37:24If you want a kind of lesson in what the French New Wave
0:37:24 > 0:37:27of painters are doing, all you have to do is look at
0:37:27 > 0:37:31the tremendous stabbing marks on the back of her jacket.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34These very loose brush strokes.
0:37:34 > 0:37:37There's a rhyme between this beautiful rug
0:37:37 > 0:37:40and the stripes on the back of the scarf
0:37:40 > 0:37:42which Matisse would have killed for.
0:37:44 > 0:37:50That huge red screen is a kind of abstract slab of colour.
0:37:50 > 0:37:55All the planes are shifting this way and that, very ambiguously.
0:37:55 > 0:37:59She's applied this fantastic streaky quality to the scarlet there,
0:37:59 > 0:38:03so that your vision is absolutely gripped
0:38:03 > 0:38:05by the energy she's put into it.
0:38:09 > 0:38:15When she showed it in Cornwall, Laura called it Self Portrait With Nude,
0:38:15 > 0:38:18and although there are two people here, it is
0:38:18 > 0:38:22essentially a self-portrait, a manifesto issued by someone
0:38:22 > 0:38:27who knew exactly who she was and what she wanted to be.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33But not everyone was so self-assured.
0:38:38 > 0:38:40At the beginning of the 20th century,
0:38:40 > 0:38:46few parties were more notorious than the Chelsea Arts Club Ball.
0:38:46 > 0:38:49And if you were to grace the dance floor, it is
0:38:49 > 0:38:52more than likely you'd have come across this man.
0:38:53 > 0:38:55Or this man...
0:38:55 > 0:38:57or this man.
0:38:57 > 0:39:01All of these men are in fact the Irishman, William Orpen,
0:39:01 > 0:39:03painter and party animal.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09While self-portraits were supposed to reveal the real,
0:39:09 > 0:39:13unique inner painter, Orpen thought, "Why bother?"
0:39:13 > 0:39:16It was much more fun being a quick-change artist.
0:39:18 > 0:39:22He imagined himself as champion jockey one moment...
0:39:24 > 0:39:26..a heroic hunter the next,
0:39:26 > 0:39:30then a virtuoso painter from a bygone age.
0:39:30 > 0:39:35All with that look of impish mock severity.
0:39:37 > 0:39:41He was never sure which persona he'd next adopt.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47But then, he was given a chance to dress up once more.
0:39:48 > 0:39:52And it was a costume that would change his life forever.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59The painting is called Ready To Start,
0:39:59 > 0:40:02and since Orpen is the master of irony,
0:40:02 > 0:40:07you pretty much know that he never is going to be quite ready.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10He had arrived in France in the spring
0:40:10 > 0:40:13and he is in the little town of Cassel in a small hotel.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17He writes about its picturesqueness, about the sweetness of the town.
0:40:17 > 0:40:20He says, "In this place are all kinds of people -
0:40:20 > 0:40:25"some thoughtful, some unthoughtful. Misery, delight, all mixed up..."
0:40:25 > 0:40:29Beautifully, he puts it, "..all mixed up like a kaleidoscope."
0:40:31 > 0:40:34But despite Orpen's playfulness, there's a mood here
0:40:34 > 0:40:38that's not seen in any of his previous incarnations.
0:40:39 > 0:40:43There is, very unusually for Orpen's self-portraits,
0:40:43 > 0:40:48a sombre expression to his face underneath that Tommy helmet,
0:40:48 > 0:40:54and a very watchful, apprehensive, nervous look in his eyes.
0:40:54 > 0:40:59There is something in Orpen's letters and something about Orpen's art,
0:40:59 > 0:41:01too, at this moment which is fearful.
0:41:01 > 0:41:04"I don't have the courage, really, for what lies ahead,"
0:41:04 > 0:41:08says Orpen, "except one kind of courage - Dutch courage."
0:41:08 > 0:41:12The kind of courage represented in this spectacular still life
0:41:12 > 0:41:17at the front of the painting. It pretty much dominates everything.
0:41:17 > 0:41:20He might as well have called the picture Whisky And Splash.
0:41:24 > 0:41:26Orpen had been drinking heavily in Cassel,
0:41:26 > 0:41:31hoping to lose himself in the warm embrace of intoxication.
0:41:31 > 0:41:36But the alcoholic haze disappeared swiftly with the first salvos
0:41:36 > 0:41:39of the Battle of Arras.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43EXPLOSIONS
0:41:43 > 0:41:48The great offensive of 1917 saw Orpen on the front line.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52And it was here, amidst the labyrinth of trenches,
0:41:52 > 0:41:55that Orpen's soul-searching came to an end.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11In the summer of 1917,
0:42:11 > 0:42:16in the pit of human horror, he finds, at last,
0:42:16 > 0:42:21the incarnation which somehow makes sense.
0:42:21 > 0:42:27He becomes the most unlikely tommy perhaps in the entire British Army.
0:42:27 > 0:42:30He had been able to have the rank of second lieutenant
0:42:30 > 0:42:35and then he was jumped up through social connections to become a major.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38And he was still insecure about what he was supposed to be doing,
0:42:38 > 0:42:41which, officially, of course, was to be a war artist.
0:42:41 > 0:42:46He sends a letter back to his mistress, which has a little picture
0:42:46 > 0:42:52in which some British Army officer says, "And what exactly can you do?"
0:42:52 > 0:42:56And Orpen, 'ickle Orps, little Orps, as he constantly called himself,
0:42:56 > 0:43:00said, "Nothing, sir. I'm an artist."
0:43:00 > 0:43:05And he never lost that sense of kind of withering...
0:43:05 > 0:43:08almost humiliation about his impotence
0:43:08 > 0:43:10in the face of human horror.
0:43:10 > 0:43:13And look, just look at how he is standing.
0:43:13 > 0:43:19The cigarette there is not the way a tommy is going to smoke, is it?
0:43:19 > 0:43:22This is the way you hold a cigarette in a fashionable
0:43:22 > 0:43:25Mayfair cocktail party.
0:43:25 > 0:43:29The stance, actually shifting your weight to one leg,
0:43:29 > 0:43:32has an enormous art historical provenance.
0:43:32 > 0:43:38It is called "contrapposto" - one leg nonchalantly against the other.
0:43:38 > 0:43:42He's still crawling in the skin of a fashionable man.
0:43:42 > 0:43:48And yet, he wants to embody the experience of every man
0:43:48 > 0:43:50in the trench.
0:43:50 > 0:43:55It's here in the Somme, at this moment, that the Orpen who is
0:43:55 > 0:44:01constantly searching for himself has found something and someone
0:44:01 > 0:44:06he wants to be, but he's also losing something at the same time.
0:44:06 > 0:44:12What he's losing is the belief that humanity can do anything.
0:44:12 > 0:44:15What he now believes is what humanity does is to
0:44:15 > 0:44:19kill each other in ever-increasing numbers.
0:44:23 > 0:44:28With this new sense of himself came a new sense of purpose.
0:44:28 > 0:44:33Orpen set about making a devastating set of paintings that captured
0:44:33 > 0:44:36everything he'd witnessed.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39No dressing up, just the implacable truth.
0:44:49 > 0:44:52This is what Orpen saw.
0:44:52 > 0:44:57Summer 1917, and the sunlight was boiling down.
0:44:57 > 0:45:02Orpen has the genius to make this painting about the cruelty
0:45:02 > 0:45:04of radiance.
0:45:04 > 0:45:06Because what's it shining on?
0:45:06 > 0:45:10These figures found at the bottom of the trench.
0:45:10 > 0:45:17German soldiers, putrefying bodies, a hand held up in rigor mortis.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23This is the ultimate picnic in hell.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28More than any other picture that I know of, bathed in hot sunlight
0:45:28 > 0:45:34on one side and deep, dark, infernal shadow on the other,
0:45:34 > 0:45:38this really is an open grave.
0:46:00 > 0:46:05Orpen returned home after the war to resume a successful career
0:46:05 > 0:46:08as a society painter.
0:46:08 > 0:46:10But he was never the same man.
0:46:10 > 0:46:12Unable to forget,
0:46:12 > 0:46:16his memories of the war shattered his fragile sense of self.
0:46:19 > 0:46:23Two years before he died, he painted his masterpiece -
0:46:23 > 0:46:29the self-portrait of a tormented and fragmented soul.
0:46:37 > 0:46:40What do self-portraits do?
0:46:40 > 0:46:44They're investigations of the self, of the artistic self.
0:46:44 > 0:46:46And the investigation here, even though
0:46:46 > 0:46:51the face isn't completely bleak or despairing, none of that...
0:46:51 > 0:46:55Don't you think it's more anxious
0:46:55 > 0:47:01and tentative in its questioning than any other Orpen self-portrait?
0:47:01 > 0:47:02I think so.
0:47:02 > 0:47:04And what he has done, of course,
0:47:04 > 0:47:08is play this extraordinary mirror game with his own image
0:47:08 > 0:47:14and the painting of his own image using multiple mirrors.
0:47:14 > 0:47:20Endless versions of the painting and of Orpen, receding endlessly,
0:47:20 > 0:47:24multiplying endlessly, each one more broken than the last.
0:47:24 > 0:47:29What is so brilliant is that as you get further away,
0:47:29 > 0:47:30they're not the same.
0:47:30 > 0:47:33They're not identical. He knows what he's doing.
0:47:33 > 0:47:40That bloody, red, juicy, fruity lower lip goes all pink and anaemic and,
0:47:40 > 0:47:46as you go further and further back, it becomes more and more like a mask.
0:47:46 > 0:47:51And the message, the payoff of all this,
0:47:51 > 0:47:57is if you want to ask me the question fundamental to self-portraiture,
0:47:57 > 0:48:02"Who am I?", poor 'ickle Orps's answer is simply,
0:48:02 > 0:48:05"Damned if I know."
0:48:14 > 0:48:18The fractured sense of self will become an obsession among
0:48:18 > 0:48:20artists and writers of the 20th century.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24For them, the self was no longer something that could be
0:48:24 > 0:48:27discovered and located.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30Instead, it was nothing but a chimera.
0:48:31 > 0:48:37Recoiling from that futile search, artists fell back on the only thing
0:48:37 > 0:48:42they could be sure of - the anatomical facts in the mirror.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50But even this was too much for one young artist.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01In the 1940s and '50s,
0:49:01 > 0:49:06Lucian Freud was fanatical about avoiding anything sentimental.
0:49:14 > 0:49:19Instead, we get the glittering eye of the hawk, flat, linear forms,
0:49:19 > 0:49:24as hostile and spiky as the dried thistle on the sill.
0:49:25 > 0:49:27There's something spooky about it.
0:49:27 > 0:49:32We don't know whether that's a window or a mirror or both.
0:49:37 > 0:49:40It's as if he's stalking himself.
0:49:40 > 0:49:45Yes, Freud means all this to be a study in watchful cool, but in
0:49:45 > 0:49:51its chilly calculation, it's as cold as the grave and wooden as a coffin.
0:49:57 > 0:50:02But at some point in the 1960s, Freud suddenly warmed up.
0:50:03 > 0:50:08And it was because he fell deeply and irreversibly in love.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13I don't know if Lucian Freud was ever in love with anything
0:50:13 > 0:50:18so much as he was in love with the texture of paint itself.
0:50:18 > 0:50:20He almost made a religion out of it.
0:50:20 > 0:50:24He said very often, "I don't paint likenesses of people.
0:50:24 > 0:50:26"I create flesh.
0:50:26 > 0:50:31"I create a kind of living sense of their presence, their immediacy,"
0:50:31 > 0:50:37and this is a trip into the heart of majestic oil painting.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47Freud's creative revelation led him
0:50:47 > 0:50:51to believe that he could match the texture of oil paint,
0:50:51 > 0:50:56in all its unctuous ooze, to the substance and colour of human flesh.
0:51:00 > 0:51:02Match it, in fact,
0:51:02 > 0:51:06to the felt physical experience of being in a body,
0:51:06 > 0:51:12and to do it without any of the emotional baggage he so detested.
0:51:13 > 0:51:19Give Lucian Freud a passion, sorrow, desire, joy, he couldn't do it.
0:51:21 > 0:51:24But a black eye, given to him by a taxi driver,
0:51:24 > 0:51:28becomes a symphony of discolouration.
0:51:34 > 0:51:37In the most powerful works, like this one painted
0:51:37 > 0:51:42when he was in his 60s, the Siamese twins of the self-portrait
0:51:42 > 0:51:44tradition are with him -
0:51:44 > 0:51:48sombre watchfulness and a hint of self-admiration.
0:51:50 > 0:51:54But he has one supreme concern - the physical truth.
0:51:56 > 0:52:01Look at the work of time squarely in the face and you'll defeat it.
0:52:01 > 0:52:06You may wear out, but this portrait never will.
0:52:12 > 0:52:16What you have here is an unflinching look at the work that time
0:52:16 > 0:52:21does sculpturally, almost, on the face.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25If you look at the kind of red rims on the lower eyelid under the eye,
0:52:25 > 0:52:29that kind of red sense of concentration, the slight break
0:52:29 > 0:52:33in the line of the nose, the wrinkles in the brow,
0:52:33 > 0:52:36you look at the crevices under the cheekbone,
0:52:36 > 0:52:41that's full of different kinds of colours - an incredibly exact
0:52:41 > 0:52:45and creative sense of the way you would do shadow.
0:52:45 > 0:52:47Of the darks and lights.
0:52:47 > 0:52:50You can go from feature to feature, from passage to passage
0:52:50 > 0:52:57of painting with absolute, gripping, poetically-precise clarity.
0:52:58 > 0:53:03All those things somehow resolve themselves into nothing
0:53:03 > 0:53:05but the naked truth.
0:53:09 > 0:53:13So, is that all there is?
0:53:13 > 0:53:19Once, when the artist looked in the mirror, the image called out,
0:53:19 > 0:53:21"I made this.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24"Remember me. Pity me."
0:53:27 > 0:53:31And, turning inwards, they set off in search of the soul,
0:53:31 > 0:53:35only to find it had gone AWOL.
0:53:35 > 0:53:39And when the self-portrayers couldn't find anything in their faces,
0:53:39 > 0:53:41they turned instead to the body.
0:53:42 > 0:53:45Even when that body had left the premises.
0:53:47 > 0:53:49So, we have this.
0:53:53 > 0:54:00Marc Quinn has gone as far as to make a face out of his body fluid - blood,
0:54:00 > 0:54:04the metabolical juice of life suspended in liquid silicon.
0:54:05 > 0:54:10It's hard to tell if this is a death mask or if, one day, the artist
0:54:10 > 0:54:12may awake from his bloody sleep.
0:54:14 > 0:54:17So is this the fate of self-portraiture,
0:54:17 > 0:54:24to go so far inside the body that it disappears entirely into our DNA?
0:54:35 > 0:54:40There's one modern work of art at least in which self-portraits
0:54:40 > 0:54:44look not inward but outward to the world.
0:54:54 > 0:54:58On the very western edge of Britain is a beach at Crosby Sands.
0:55:01 > 0:55:05To walk this deserted coast ought to be a lonely experience,
0:55:05 > 0:55:07but here, you are never alone.
0:55:14 > 0:55:18Spread over two miles are 100 iron figures,
0:55:18 > 0:55:26each one identical, each one staring impassively to the great beyond.
0:55:26 > 0:55:28Together, they form an installation of self-portrait
0:55:28 > 0:55:32sculptures by one of Britain's most visionary artists.
0:55:35 > 0:55:38This is the body of Antony Gormley, cast in iron
0:55:38 > 0:55:42and then reproduced on an industrial scale.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30Well, you would suppose when the age of the self meets the obsession
0:56:30 > 0:56:35of the body and an artist makes a body cast of himself
0:56:35 > 0:56:40and then clones it 100 times and then plants those clones all over
0:56:40 > 0:56:44a beach near Liverpool, it would be the ultimate ego trip.
0:56:44 > 0:56:49Oddly enough, that's not the way we read Antony Gormley's figures,
0:56:49 > 0:56:51because they are faceless.
0:56:51 > 0:56:57They become an emblem of the human condition, not of A Gormley, Esq.
0:56:57 > 0:57:02They are planted there on the edge of the earth,
0:57:02 > 0:57:05on the rim of the land facing the ocean.
0:57:05 > 0:57:08So there's a way in which something which begins
0:57:08 > 0:57:14physically as a self-portrait becomes a symbol of humanity.
0:57:14 > 0:57:16These are very, very poignant figures.
0:57:20 > 0:57:25An individual self-portrait is now dissolved, featureless,
0:57:25 > 0:57:27into the universal human condition.
0:57:27 > 0:57:31And these iron men, standing for all of us,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34seem oddly, touchingly skinless...
0:57:34 > 0:57:36vulnerable,
0:57:36 > 0:57:40forever worked on by time and tide.
0:57:43 > 0:57:46But there they stand, as must we.
0:57:46 > 0:57:48Not masters of the earth,
0:57:48 > 0:57:50not separate from the physical world,
0:57:50 > 0:57:53but inevitably and fully part of it.
0:58:09 > 0:58:13So, these figures are not just Gormley, they're really all of us.
0:58:13 > 0:58:19This is the self-portrait made plural, made collective, forever.
0:58:19 > 0:58:22As the tide comes in,
0:58:22 > 0:58:25disappearing in the water, re-emerging,
0:58:25 > 0:58:33coming from and going back into the element from which we all came.