Episode 1 Your Paintings

ANNOUNCEMENT: 'Ladies and gentlemen, the gallery is now closed.

'Please make your way to the nearest exit.'

BELL RINGS

Oh, you're still here?

I was just daydreaming, imagining I was lying on a sunny beach.

SHE CHUCKLES

With a great big chocolate ice cream.

Well, it's tough keeping still all day,

so your mind starts imagining things...

like Sir Grumpalot having a bucket of wet fish poured over his head.

Oh-ho-ho-ho.

Mind you, if you want to see a really big imagination,

you should meet Henri Rousseau.

He was a customs officer - boring! - in Paris, in France.

But whenever he could get a few hours off,

he taught himself how to paint.

And when he was painting,

Rousseau could imagine he was anywhere in the world.

And in 1891, his imagination took him here,

to the middle of a huge storm in a wild tropical jungle,

with a tiger holding its breath, ready to pounce.

He called this painting Surprise.

SHE SCREAMS AT LIGHTNING

THUNDER CLAPS

EXOTIC ANIMAL SOUNDS

I was daydreaming of a beach and an ice cream,

not a jungle!

Not furious wind and pouring rain.

THUNDER CLAPS

Not lightning shooting through the sky.

GROWLING

And definitely not a hungry tiger hunting for dinner.

Hunting for ME.

TIGER GROWLS

Hang on!

Rousseau never went to the jungle.

ACCORDION MUSIC PLAYS

He never got further than Paris.

He was just using his imagination.

And he's got a good one.

A lot of this jungle would have come from Rousseau's visits

to the botanical gardens down the road from where he worked.

They had loads of plants there, and Rousseau would paint the ones

he liked best and put them in his pictures.

That's why you're more likely to find some of these plants

in your house than in a tropical jungle.

And to be honest,

the only tiger Rousseau would have seen was either in the city zoo

or stuffed.

And maybe that's why,

although this painting is scary and exciting, it also feels like

a dream storm in a dream jungle, because that's what it is - a dream.

It's not supposed to look completely real.

It was dreamt up by a man sat in an office,

putting the pieces together in his mind.

The leaves are painted with precise, smooth strokes,

with layer on layer of different greens.

If you could dream up perfect leaves, they might look like this.

And then there's the silver paint,

running diagonally all the way across the canvas,

that makes the rain seem magical and mysterious,

like we're looking through eyes that are half asleep.

And when you're dreaming,

you can break the rules of real life, can't you?

Look at this tiger -

he could never really be floating above the plants like this.

And it's because Rousseau keeps breaking these rules

that the painting feels like a dream.

Art critics at the time thought

this style of Rousseau's was too...simple.

He didn't care, he trusted himself.

He gave up his office job and he kept painting the way he wanted to.

Soon, lots of other artists were inspired by his work.

And so, who is the tiger about to surprise?

Who's about to become dinner?

A delicious antelope?

A tasty wildebeest?

A group of art critics?

Just as long as it's not me!

TIGER ROARS

In fact, Rousseau leaves the answer up to us.

He had such a big imagination.

THUNDER CLAPS

And he wanted us to use ours, too.

Rousseau dreamt of the jungle.

Why not imagine somewhere you've always wanted to go to?

Then, like him, visit that place by painting it.

I wonder where you'll end up.

Oh. It's you.

For a moment I thought you were just another tourist wanting to take my photograph.

I'm used to people staring and taking pictures.

It's part of a statue's job.

It does get annoying after a while.

Nowadays, everyone seems to want to be famous, though, don't they?

Chefs, footballers' wives,

singers with crazy hair on talent shows, dancing dogs.

Anyone can be a celebrity.

But people don't always remember you for very long.

Just ask Lord Posh-Pants.

He was very famous, hundreds of years ago.

There was a time, though, when to be a celebrity,

you had to work really hard

to be the very best at something that everybody loved.

Like the actress Marilyn Monroe.

In the 1950s, she was one of the most famous and beautiful film stars

in the whole world, and everyone wanted to know everything about her.

I fancy going to meet a real celebrity.

Make a bit of room, will you, Marilyn?

Marilyn Monroe was a superstar.

She had platinum blonde hair, deep eyeshadow,

and thick red lips that everyone wanted to kiss.

If they'd had the internet then,

she would have been the top story every day.

Now, this painting could've just been called "Marilyn",

but in fact it's called "Marilyn Diptych",

which means it has two halves.

Because unfortunately, Marilyn died when she was very young,

and maybe that's why the second half feels sadder.

The image is fading away,

as if it represents both her life and the memory of her.

And today, these pictures of Marilyn Monroe are as famous as she was.

They were made by an artist called Andy Warhol,

who was living in New York and surrounded by celebrities.

Everyone was already listening to the new popular - or pop - music.

Now Warhol helped to create pop art.

He did this by making art from objects that people saw around them every day,

like cereal boxes,

or soup tins,

or pictures of Marilyn Monroe.

So when Marilyn died, Andy Warhol decided immediately

to make a portrait of her, using this famous photograph.

But he didn't just want to make one portrait of her.

He made another.

And another.

And another. And another.

And another.

And... Yeah, he made loads.

It looks more like an advert, doesn't it, on a wall?

It's not surprising because Warhol used a printing technique

that was big in advertising.

He pulled inks through a screen mesh using a rubber squeegee.

This meant he could quickly produce the same image

on lots of different canvasses over and over and over again.

He used big, bright colours to grab our attention

and to make us look at the colour of the eyes,

the hair,

and the lips.

Soon, Warhol was making so many pictures,

he had to hire assistants and move to a big, new space

called The Factory,

and he did all this to show how Marilyn could start to look like

anything else made in a factory.

It's like me.

I'm a person.

I've got feelings.

But if you were to see my face over and over again in block colours,

I would start to look just like the outside of a cereal packet,

or a magazine cover.

Warhol did what artists have been doing for hundreds of years.

He made us look at things we know in a new way,

because what I know is there's a real person in this photograph.

Yet the more I look at it, the less I can seem to find of her.

So maybe Warhol wanted to show us

that we don't really know who Marilyn Monroe was after all.

We only know her as a celebrity.

And fame and celebrity don't last for ever.

We're used to seeing celebrities' faces everywhere nowadays.

On T-shirts, on television, online, on our phones.

But you can still be famous for being really good at something too.

So, if you were to become well-known, what would it be for?

Thanks for staying behind. I've been waiting all day to talk to someone.

Anyone other than Lord Bellyache over here.

All day, loads of different people stare at me,

but none of them say hello - not even a whisper.

But then, I suppose it can be difficult to get to know people,

especially in a big crowd.

Do all the hundreds of people in this picture known each other?

It's called Britain At Play.

A man called LS Lowry painted it when, actually, Britain was at war.

There wasn't always much money about and times were hard for these people,

who worked in factories and cotton mills.

Lowry decided to paint them on their day off,

here in this park called Angel Fields in Manchester.

I fancy going to say hello to a few of them.

MUFFLED VOICES IN BACKGROUDN

It is pretty busy around here, isn't it?

That's because Lowry tried to cram an entire community into his paintings.

Sorry!

HE GRUMBLES UNDER HIS BREATH

Lowry didn't just paint. He had a job, too,

which included walking the streets

and collecting rent from people's houses.

That must have been a lonely thing to do.

But while he was out, he would draw all the characters he saw

on old scraps of paper or envelopes

and they would end up in his paintings.

No-one was left out.

Dogs, children, gossiping housewives,

families out for a stroll.

Oh!

He really needs to look where he's going.

And you can imagine the noise.

Church bells, boots clacking on the cobblestones, shouting crowds,

the whole life of the street.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

Lowry understood how important entertainment was

for bringing people together.

Look at this huge crowd here!

It's like a pop concert, but with trumpets and tubas!

And I've realised why it's so cold here.

There aren't any shadows, and that means you can't imagine the sun.

What you can feel everywhere, though, is the smoky air

and the dark, heavy clouds.

That's because Lowry had his own style of painting.

All of his pictures are made using just five colours.

Ivory black, vermillion red, Prussian blue, yellow ochre,

and finally, flake white,

which he would spread in thick layers to make the background.

He knew the surface would turn creamy as the years went by,

and the skies would get dirtier.

Lowry used these simple colours to paint his simple-looking people.

He wanted just a few quick brushstrokes

to show us how fragile they are,

and without shadows, their thin bodies stand out even more.

And Lowry didn't just work with brushes.

He used cloths, penknives, fingertips and even nails!

Oh!

And all Lowry's people share their world with something else -

the factories.

No matter where you look in the painting,

your eyes always end up rising to the smoking chimneys on the horizon.

It must've been how the people felt, too.

Even when they were playing on their days off,

these big buildings kept towering over them.

Maybe that's why Lowry makes the people feel so tiny and lost

underneath them, like helpless little ants.

Walking the streets, collecting rent, Lowry saw what it was like

to feel lonely and lost, even when you were in a big crowd.

That's why it's important to look out for people and say hello.

Come on. This way.

Although Lowry's picture shows a little area of Manchester,

he called the painting Britain At Play.

Because he wanted us to think about all our towns, communities and high streets.

I wonder what all the people are doing where you live today.

Oh! You're just in time. This is my favourite part of the day.

Everyone's gone.

They turn out the lights, and I can look up through the windows

at the stars and planets, moving across the sky.

It must've been amazing when scientists first started discovering everything up there.

In space.

You don't get much of that in older paintings.

It's probably because for ages, artists were told to stay away from science

and stick to painting historical stories or landscapes or people,

like old Sir Winbag here.

A man called Wright thought this was totally wrong.

Everyone ended up calling this man Joseph Wright of Derby

because, guess what, he was from Derby.

He painted this picture in 1766.

Wright loved science.

And he loved giving long names to his paintings.

This one's called...

A Philosopher Giving That Lecture On The Orrery In Which A Lamp Is Put In Place Of The Sun.

I know about lamps and the sun, but I've no idea what an orrery is.

I reckon I should probably go join in the talk.

Ooh!

Ooh! Sorry!

I think that might have been someone's toes.

It's a bit dark in here.

OK.

I can just about see some bookshelves,

which makes me think we're in the library of someone's house,

and that man in the red jacket,

painted to look so big and impressive, is the scientist.

And this must be the orrery that he's showing the group.

Let's see if I can get a closer look.

Oh! Now I see.

That golden ball in the middle is the sun,

and all the other planets have been placed around it.

There's a handle that sends all the planets on their different orbits.

Wow!

There's Earth with our moon, and there's Mercury, closest to the sun,

which the scientist has decided to show with a burning hot lamp.

So why did they want to sit around watching this?

Well, we know lots about the planets now,

but that's only because people like this clever-clog scientist

found out about them.

We've got films and computers to show us all of space,

but at the time of this painting,

the orrery was the best way to show the universe in action.

Perhaps these are the people that Wright saw

when he went to one of these talks.

A woman deep in thought,

a man scribbling loads of notes,

and children trying to get as close as they can.

In fact, they're peering at Saturn, the furthest planet from the sun.

Hang on. What about Uranus and Neptune and Pluto?

Oh.

They hadn't been discovered yet in 1766,

so we are a little bit cleverer than him after all.

Wright wants us to see how exciting this new science is,

so he shows us everyone gathered together in the dark.

Now, a painter... Ooh, done it again!

Now, a painter uses the lamp just like the flash on a camera,

with the sun coming in through a window to light up objects in the dark.

Artists like Wright knew that a face or a scene could look different

depending on where the light source is coming from.

The front, the side...

From underneath. Look how everything's changing.

Our eyes can only see where the light falls,

and we have to imagine everything else.

For this painting, Wright knew exactly where he should put the lamp.

In the centre.

Like the sun at the centre of the universe,

with everyone leaning out of the dark to see the light,

and the light is science,

helping people to see and understand new things in the world.

If I told those two kids that now we're flying robots to Mars,

I don't think they'd believe me.

Imagine all the modern discoveries you could put in a picture

that those kids haven't even dreamed of.

I wonder which one you'll paint for them first.

Has everyone else gone?

I was just getting five minutes' sleep.

It's hard to get any sleep here in the day. Too noisy.

There's a story I know about a girl who used to live in Portugal.

She could never get to sleep. During the day, she was fine.

All she wanted to do was sit on the floor and draw,

and she would hum to herself while she made her pictures.

But at night, she became scared because she was afraid of the dark.

She would lie awake while a very old woman sat on the edge of her bed,

and told her stories about magical animals and strange places.

The girl loved hearing these tales each night,

and as they finished, she forgot about the dark and fell asleep.

That little girl's name was Paula Rego,

and she grew up to be one of the most exciting and important people painting today.

Often, she still sits on her floor and hums

while she makes her pictures, like this one, called Sleeping.

I wonder what story this painting could tell.

I wonder if this is Paula Rego.

Asleep on the floor after finishing one of her paintings.

When Paula was older, she left Portugal to live in England.

She never forgot how, when she was very young,

she loved to hear those stories.

And now she paints stories of her own.

To do this, Paula Rego collects all sorts of toys and creatures and costumes,

which she gets her friends to try on in lots of different poses...

..until...

she gets a moment, or a feeling...

..that creates the start of a story.

I don't think so.

It's all about getting the right mix of ingredients.

Sorry.

Ingredients like a rake, berries, perhaps,

a turtle,

and a pelican.

Why not?

Paula Rego takes all these ingredients and glues them together

with her imagination in the painting

because she's not trying to be a camera, taking an exact picture.

She wants to show the world more like it was in her childhood stories.

Larger-than-life, magical.

So in Paula Rego's world, people come in all shapes and sizes,

painted with big, solid colours and large shadows.

If I'm a character that's walked hundreds of miles,

perhaps my feet and legs will be painted in bright colours.

They'll be made stronger, larger than usual,

or perhaps my feet are larger because I'm angry,

and I'm about to stamp them again and again.

The story about these people is more important than how real they look,

so if they're sleeping, we want to see their big faces

with large, tired eyes, or perhaps a long, heavy neck.

The paint in this picture makes me feel how tired they really are.

But why are they sleeping?

Well, we're the storytellers.

So, are the berries magic?

Have they put the two people into a deep sleep?

Or perhaps a spell has been put on them? By who?

The pelican?

Is this friend begging him to wake the other two up?

Or perhaps she's just offering him some crumbs?

He's just a pelican, after all.

Or maybe they're all tired after a long day in the sun,

except this last person, turning away,

coming up with this secret plan,

to steal the turtle while no-one is looking.

Run while you can!

Paula Rego says she loves it

when people stand in front of one of her paintings and tell a story.

Well, now I know the story I'd tell about that picture.

What would yours be?

Subtitling by Red Bee Media Ltd