A major exhibition of the lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) at London’s Royal Academy is the starting point for a programme on one of the most colourful figures in late nineteenth-century art, famous for his pictures of Parisian dance halls and cabarets. Artists, scholars and admirers are invited to comment on their choice of work from the exhibition.
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (1910-1992) is widely regarded as the greatest British painter of the twentieth century. He took the human figure as his main subject, painting distorted bodies that sit or lie alone in empty rooms. This programme follows Bacon from his studio, where he began work at dawn every day, to his favourite drinking club and gambling Joint in London’s Soho, and explores the way in which the life he led affected his vision of the world.
Edouard Manet
Edouard Manet war ein Flaneur im Paris des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zu Hause im Großbürgertum und befreundet mit Zolá und Baudelaire, wandte er sich von der Historienmalerei zunehmend Szenen des urbanen Lebens zu. Ein Leben lang sehnte er sich nach Anerkennung, doch Werke wie Frühstück im Freien und Olympia lösten nur heftige Skandale aus. Provokante Momentaufnahmen des Alltags schienen zudem nur halbfertig gemalt. Das beeindruckte jene Künstler, die später Impressionisten
genannt wurden. Der Film erzählt von der bewegten Zeit und dem Wirken Manets – eines Wegbereiters der Moderne.
Design
Design is all-pervasive in the man-made environment: it helps shape the society in which we live and influences our desires and aspirations. This series examines its impact on diverse and surprising aspects of contemporary life. Six films pivot on portraits of individual designers, but also place them in the context of their rivals and contemporaries. Car design, advertising, environmental design, communications, status symbols, even fantasy are brought into focus. Contributors include Ferdinand Porsche, Muriel Cooper of M.I.T’s Media Lab, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Giorgio Armani and special effects man Bran Ferren.
Jackson Pollock
Pollock (1912-56) was always controversial: hisfamous ‘drip’ paintings earned him notoriety and abuse, an added pressure on his life-long struggle with alcoholism. Despite his personal torments, he produced a body of work which helped forge the first great American art movement – Abstract Expressionism. This portrait mixes the reminiscences of his contemporaries with archive film and the testimony of his work to explore the legends which ding to him.
Terence Conran
Terence Conran opened the first Habitat store in the early 1960s and single-handedly changed the face ot home style. In this programme he talks about his life, elaborates on his missionary vision of “good design for all” and shows viewers round his own home. The film demonstrates how a typical 1950s living room was transformed by Conran’s innovative ideas, and a Habitat product is followed from conception to completion.
Andy Warhol
Warhol’s death in 1987 was the end of a classic American rags-to-riches story. Born in the slums of Pittsburgh, he grew up dreaming of Hollywood stars and eventually became a cult hero himself, famous for his Pop Art, his bizarre Underground films and simply for being a celebrity. This film looks at the whole range of his creativity and focuses on his unique understanding of mass culture, using archive and newsreel footage, extracts from his movies and interviews with many of his closest associates.
Peter York
In this television lecture, style guru Peter York faces an audience of media folk – experts on fashion, journalism, interiors and exteriors – and gives his lively assessment of
British design.
J. M. W. Turner
Master of the landscape genre and one of the finest painters Britain has ever produced, Turner (1775-1851) bequeathed a huge body of his work to the nation. In 1987, a permanent Turner exhibition finally went on display, in a newly-built wing, at London’s Tate Gallery. An exclusive preview of this collection forms the framework for this celebration of the artist’s life and work, which includes contributions from critics and painters – Patrick Heron, Howard Hodgkin and Peter Blake among them.
Fay Godwin
No photographer has captured such a complete portrait of rural Britain in the late twentieth century as Fay Godwin, using a camera rather than a brush to continue a centuries-old British tradition of landscape artistry. This programme travels with her as she charts her personal vision of the British countryside – one that finds beauty not only in the grandeur of mountains and mists but also in the bleak landscape surrounding a nuclear power station.