Episode 2 Your Paintings

MUSIC, SINGING IN FRENCH

'Ladies and gentlemen, the gallery is now closed.

'Please make your way to the nearest exit.'

That's not yours, is it?

Thought not. It's amazing what people leave behind, though.

I saw someone drop a pair of sunglasses earlier.

Wonder where they've got to.

Hmm.

Eh? Mmmh.

What am I meant to do with this in here?

Eileen Agar would have had an idea.

She was always finding objects.

That's because she was always looking.

She kept her eyes wide open wherever she went.

One of her favourite places to go was the beach.

And in 1979, at the age of 80,

she painted this picture...

..called Bride of the Sea.

Maybe it was a way of remembering

all the great times she'd spent exploring by the seashore.

She'd walked along the magic line on the beach

where the tide washes up shoes, fish, bottles,

mysteriously-shaped stones,

shells, coloured paper,

anything you can imagine.

She'd take lots of the objects home with her

to use as ideas for her paintings.

Perhaps one day she saw a little boat, like the one in this picture,

washed up among the pebbles.

Looks like a nice day out for sailing.

I think I'll jump aboard.

SEABIRDS CRY

I love the sea air.

Now I can be captain of my own ship.

This massive fish wasn't here.

And if the fish is this big,

I don't want to see the size of the fisherman.

I wish I could figure out which one of these sails I should be using.

And how did this netting get so big?

A minute ago, I was in charge of this ship,

and now I've been caught like a lobster.

WOODEN THUMP

OK.

Well, at least I can be sure that this is the edge of the boat.

Or not?

Maybe it's the reflections of the water.

But in any case, how am I supposed to sail my boat

with this giant woman's head in the way?

I should have known this would have been nothing like I expected.

Eileen Agar didn't paint things in a normal way.

One of the ideas she was interested in was called surrealism.

The surrealists thought normal was boring.

They ignored the ideas of what could really happen

and instead, they used their pictures

to paint all sorts of strange images together in the same place.

It's a bit like the mixture of objects washed up by the sea.

One surrealist said,

"Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction."

Eileen Agar agreed. There's not one way to think about an image.

Thinking isn't a straight line.

You can even think lots of different things all at the same time.

So she painted images

in unusual sizes, shapes, colours and patterns,

and put them side-by-side

to surprise us

and to make us look at them in a new way.

Now, the tide takes all the objects floating in the sea

and organises them in a line along the beach.

Eileen needed a way to join up her images too,

so she decided to use the technique called collage.

Taking shapes of paper, we place them in layers over each other,

sometimes cutting through them...

..to reveal other shapes and patterns underneath them.

Eileen learned to do this as a young girl.

It's like sewing together a colourful patchwork quilt.

This is a painting, but it's been made in the style of a collage,

which is why all these objects feel connected.

But I can't tell you where one begins and another ends.

What do you see in these connected shapes?

Reflections in the water?

Pebbles on the beach?

Other faces?

Do you think we're inside the mind of the woman?

Is she the Bride of the Sea?

You can probably find things in the picture

that even Eileen Agar didn't know about.

Because remember, our thoughts can change direction

and so, to see the world a bit more like Eileen Agar did,

you just need to use your imagination.

I found a few uses for this after all.

CLOCK TICKS

So keep your eyes wide open.

And see what you can find to paint in a completely different way.

CLOCK CHIMES

Oh, brilliant! You came back.

Oh! Your legs start aching

when you've been standing up all day.

Ooh! This one's too cold!

RASPBERRY-LIKE BURBLE

HEAVY NASAL SNORING

This one's too annoying.

I know the perfect place to sit down.

Say hello to the painter Vincent van Gogh.

OK. I know it just looks like a chair

and it is a chair.

In fact, the picture's even called Van Gogh's Chair

but actually, it's a kind of self-portrait.

Van Gogh wanted to tell us something about himself

but instead of painting his face

or his favourite view, he picked this.

So if you want to get to know a bit about Vincent van Gogh...

..all you need to do

is spend a few minutes sitting in his chair.

Mmmh?

INSECTS CHIRP

Van Gogh loved nature.

And so in 1888,

he moved to the countryside of the South of France.

This is the kitchen of the yellow house,

where he lived.

He once wrote to his brother and best friend Theo,

"What colour is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life,"

and he had so much enthusiasm for life while he lived here

that his pictures exploded with colour.

The sun here was brighter than he had ever seen before.

These floor tiles might be rough and battered,

but all Van Gogh saw were the deep reds and pinks catching the sunlight.

And here is the sun,

in his favourite colour, yellow,

shining off the wooden chair legs.

And the straw seat.

I wonder if the straw is from the wheat fields nearby.

Van Gogh is probably painting in those fields right now.

But I'm sure he'll be home soon

because there are some onions in a box down here.

Probably for dinner.

And back then, Van Gogh wouldn't have known smoking's bad for you...

..so he left his pipe and his tobacco for when he returns.

CHAIR CREAKS

This chair isn't very comfortable.

Or well-made, to be honest.

But then, that's how Van Gogh saw himself. No luxuries.

It's a simple picture

to show the simple way of life that he loved

and that's why the whole painting is about one chair.

For a while, another artist called Paul Gauguin

came to stay here with Van Gogh.

They would sit in their chairs and talk about art,

but soon, their talks turned to arguments.

Van Gogh got so upset after one of them

that he cut off a piece of his own earlobe.

He was suffering from an illness that meant that sometimes

he couldn't control all of the different,

powerful emotions he was feeling.

Perhaps he couldn't always control them,

but he could try to show them in his pictures.

Van Gogh painted this one on Jute,

a rough, woven fabric which Gauguin had brought with him.

He already liked to spread the paint thickly,

but now he had to use even more layers to soak into the fabric,

so he did thick, criss-cross patterns for the background

and he used strong lines for surfaces

like the wood or the straw on the chair.

The colours were put on quickly with a brush or a palette knife,

or just straight from the tube,

one wet paint going straight onto another.

It's not precise, but it's full of energy.

Knowing some of the colours he was using would fade over time,

Van Gogh painted them even brighter.

And to make the yellow really pop out on the chair legs,

he swooshes a big blue line around it,

because he didn't want to paint colours exactly as they were.

He wanted to paint the colours, and emotions, that he felt.

During Van Gogh's life,

lots of people didn't understand what he was feeling.

It took time for them to see the world the way that he did.

Full of bright colours and beauty.

WHISTLING

I think he's coming back. Ooh!

WHOOSH

So now you can say you've met Vincent van Gogh,

because this chair, a simple chair,

painted in an honest and passionate way, can tell us so much about him.

CLOCK TICKS

So if you were going to paint one object,

to tell people about you, what would it be?

BELL RINGS

Oh! Thanks for sticking around! Now it's quiet,

I was just trying out some different ways of looking at the world.

Because there's more than one way, you know.

Just ask the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky.

Late one night in 1908, he was walking through his studio,

and he saw an incredible picture.

It was just a collection of coloured shapes.

He didn't know what it meant, but he loved it.

And then he suddenly realised it was one of his own paintings

hanging upside-down!

A bit like this.

And he knew immediately that he liked it better that way.

Kandinsky spent the rest of his life

trying to get that feeling into his paintings.

Like this one, which he painted in 1925.

It's called Schaulken, which in English means Shaking.

CORD CREAKS

I think I'll try and hitch a ride.

WHOOSHING AND WHIRRING

Oh!

For years, Kandinsky had been painting horses and castles.

Fields and mountains and boats. The usual stuff.

But now that things got turned upside-down,

he couldn't do that any more.

Instead of painting things as he actually saw them...

he used shapes and colours to show how he felt about life.

Because the world could be tough.

Oh!

It could be exciting. It could be sad. It could be happy.

And it could be all of these things, all at the same time.

With these ideas, Kandinsky helped to create

a whole new type of painting, called abstract art.

But all those other painters,

who'd spent years learning how to draw horses and castles,

felt like their heads were going to explode.

"How could something have any meaning," they shouted,

"if it didn't look like anything?"

Well, have you ever felt so happy you might burst?

What did that feeling look like? Like this?

And if you're feeling really tired,

what does that tired feeling look like?

Like this? Or this?

Are green and brown a little lonely?

Do red and yellow shake the most?

Are some shapes hard and tough? Are others warm?

These were the questions Kandinsky kept asking

because he wanted to paint the emotions inside us.

And he had another idea too.

Because one day, when he was listening to music,

he saw colours and lines flying right in front of his face.

And he realised he didn't just see colour, he could hear it too.

So what sound do you think yellow is?

Kandinsky thought it was a high sound.

And blue, that could be deep and low.

While red might be strong and sharp.

Kandinsky thought his paint box was like a keyboard

and the artist was the hand that played it.

He even called some of his pictures Compositions,

because he felt he was composing them.

They had the rhythm and movement of a song,

and every one of the colours was a musical note.

Wow! So this...hmm...

..this is how Kandinsky saw the world.

Definitely different.

WHOOSH

But I bet you see the world in your own way, don't you?

Everyone does. Ooh!

Ohhh! Hrrmph!

CLOCK TICKS

My head's spinning too after all that.

I feel excited and exhausted and wide awake and sleepy.

I wonder how you paint all that.

BELL RINGS

PING

Glad it's you and not that horrible security guard.

You know, earlier, I heard him say I was JUST a bronze statue.

I'm much more than that.

But it did get me thinking. Who am I?

Who are you? What makes you you?

Is it where you're born? Where you live? What you look like?

Or is it all about where your parents are from,

like my pal the Duke of Grumpyshire?

Ohhh!

Well, I think it's all of those things. And more.

But definitely none of us is just one thing.

The man who did this painting, Yinka Shonibare,

was born in England in 1962, grew up in Nigeria in West Africa,

and then moved back to live in London.

So he knows all about how one person

can have lots of different parts to their life.

Shonibare is a conceptual artist,

which means he starts his work with a question or a concept,

and then looks for images or objects to help us think about that idea.

This picture is called Line Painting.

Looks so beautiful and bright, doesn't it?

And if this is the answer, I want to know what his question was.

WHOOSHING AND WHIRRING

AFRICAN MUSIC PLAYS

Before making this work, Shonibare had been wondering

what images people thought about when they imagined Africa.

He remembered the traditional African fabrics

for sale in his local market in London, and he bought some.

These fabrics were traditionally made

by creating patterns on cotton with wax,

which was then dyed and coloured.

The designs were bright and eye-catching,

some bold and strong, some delicate with tiny details.

Everywhere in the world,

West African men and women were known for using these fabrics

to make dresses, hats, shirts and trousers.

So Shonibare was sure that he'd found an image

that was 100% African, right?

Wrong.

He soon discovered -

"Made in Holland"?

So these fabrics weren't just about one story either.

Because they're not just African.

They're Indonesian too.

Loads of these patterns and fabrics were first created there,

but when Holland was in charge of Indonesia,

the Dutch people started borrowing the patterns,

and making them back at home.

Some people even started calling them "Dutch wax fabrics".

So they're Dutch.

Oh, and they're British too,

because we started producing them in Manchester.

The Dutch tried selling them back to the Indonesians,

but they liked their own fabrics, thank you very much.

So, around 100 years ago,

the British and Dutch traders took their boats to West Africa instead.

The fabrics were a big hit there.

The boats kept coming and going.

In countries like Ghana and Nigeria,

these bright, confident designs were what everyone wanted.

Soon, West Africans were making these fabrics too,

and wearing them all over the world.

So perhaps that's why this picture's called Line Painting,

because although we can't see them,

there are lines joining up all of these different cultures,

and the end result is these complicated and colourful patterns.

Some of the patterns might look very old, others very new,

but each one is unique.

Some have got symbols on them,

like this one for European money, or this animal.

Looks like a lion to me. What do you think?

Perhaps every one of these circles is like a country,

each full of their own different traditions.

And is this bigger circle like the world, holding them all together?

Or maybe a big bowl where everything gets mixed up?

Each person who looks at a piece of conceptual art

will see something different.

I think it's great that Shonibare asked a question

and went to his local market,

because now I've discovered that African fabric

isn't just African after all.

In the same way, I'm not just a bronze statue.

I'm a statue made from copper and tin in Cornwall,

melted together in London.

I'm also a big fan of art.

I also love custard.

I'm also running late!

CLOCK TICKS

So there must be loads of different things that make you you.

How would you put them all together in a painting?

CLOCK CHIMES

PING!

SHE EXHALES

I thought they'd never leave!

Have you got time to help me out?

Thing is, every picture in this room's

got an amazing story to tell...

..and the best bit is trying to figure out what that story is.

This one over here is still a bit of a mystery to me.

It was painted in 1434.

That's nearly 600 years ago,

and people still can't agree exactly what it's about.

So here's what I've discovered so far.

It's called The Arnolfini Portrait,

and it was painted in Bruges, a city in Belgium,

by a man called Jan Van Eyck.

So it looks pretty simple, doesn't it?

It's just two people standing in a room holding hands.

But if you look really hard,

you realise there's a lot more going on.

Luckily, Van Eyck painted plenty of clues.

Time to do some detective work.

So this is Arnolfini, who the painting's named after.

And this is his wife.

Now, I definitely detect money here.

The fancy fur-lined clothes are a big clue.

And look at all this green cloth she has for her dress.

In those days, the more cloth you had, the more money you had.

And then there's this brass candelabra,

this beautiful carpet,

the mirror and the four-poster bed.

All very expensive.

And...just as I suspected.

look very closely -

oranges.

Might look like Old Big Hat here's just left some fruit lying around.

But, in fact, oranges were a luxury then,

so really, he's showing off.

Now, she looks like she's pregnant, doesn't she?

And the carving over on the bedpost is of St Margaret,

the patron saint of childbirth.

But actually, this woman isn't about to give birth.

It was just the fashion then to have big, round tummies.

So, what are they both doing here?

Well, from the way they're holding hands,

it looks like they could be getting married.

Hm!

Sorry(!)

No shoes. That could be a clue.

Because if a wedding were happening here,

the room would be made into a holy place,

and, as a sign of respect, people would remove their shoes.

I guess I'd better do the same.

And what about their pet?

The common dog name "Fido" comes from the Latin word for "trust",

so if this is a marriage,

then the dog represents faithfulness.

But what if it's not a wedding?

Some people think the lit candle means life,

and since there's not a candle above the woman,

maybe she's not still alive,

so the painting is a way of remembering her.

Whatever the answer, it's a good job Van Eyck had oil paints

to create all these incredible details,

because for a long time,

painters had been mixing their pigments with egg yolks.

But eggs dry very quickly,

so Van Eyck started using oil,

which dries slowly,

and this gave him more time to create realistic textures

like the fur of the dog,

the flesh of the fruit,

the folds of the cloth,

the shining brass,

the leaves on the trees,

the lace, the beads,

and here, beautiful writing painted on the wall.

It's in Latin, and it means "Jan Van Eyck was here, 1434".

It's a weird place to put your signature.

But hold on - look in the reflection.

It's so tiny.

I can just about see the backs of Arnolfini and his wife,

and then behind them, two figures.

I think one of them might be Van Eyck.

I think he really was here,

perhaps simply to paint a happy moment for two friends.

Maybe Old Big Hat is waving at Van Eyck.

I can imagine him right here in front of me,

working away at this beautiful picture.

I'd better go before he paints me into it.

Whoever you both are,

I hope you had a great life together.

This painting's still quite a mystery...

..for the more you look, the more you'll find in a picture.

I'm sure I missed some vital clues, though.

Perhaps you'll find them.

CLOCK TICKS

CLOCK CHIMES

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd