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(soft instrumental music)
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- The nude is the most
enduring subject in art.
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For more than 20,000 years,
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images of the naked human body
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have been at the very center
of a long and complex saga.
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It's hard to understand
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any of the major developments in art
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without an understanding of the key role
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played by changing depictions
of naked men and women.
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In this series, I'm going to explore
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the ongoing significance of the nude,
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what it tells us about
various civilizations,
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and what it tells us about ourselves,
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and the world in which we live.
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(soft instrumental music)
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The story of modern art
begins with this great nude,
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"Olympia," painted by Edouard Manet,
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and shown in 1865,
causing an absolute furor.
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So much so that a rail
was built in front of it
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and two policemen were
put on permanent guard.
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Some critics said it was
beneath their dignity
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to even talk about it,
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but most of them went
absolutely off the deep end,
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said it make a mockery of
art, that it was depraved,
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and should never be shown.
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Why?
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Why were they getting so
hot under the collar though?
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'Cause when we look at this, I think,
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we see something that looks
rather classical in its pose,
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something that maybe is not so offensive.
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But look again, and you
realize there's a brashness
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and a confidence about this
painting that unnverves.
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The format is very classical,
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and in fact Manet had been to Venice,
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and seen Titan's great "Venus of Urbino,"
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and used that as the
format for this painting.
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But whereas Titan's Venus
and many other nudes
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painted in the history of art,
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the women look demure, they
looked away, they look chaste,
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Manet's figure is absolutely
there in our face.
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As we look at her, she looks back.
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More confident, she returns our gaze,
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she's absolutely unmoved.
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In fact, she has a beauty and a sexuality
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that she's confidently flaunting at us.
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And the Parisians of the day
who saw this, saw a prostitute.
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They saw a woman of a
certain social class,
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who brashly knew what she
was and proclaimed it.
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And prostitution was legal
in Paris, but hypocritically,
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people tried to push it under the carpet.
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Manet brought it out into the open.
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And as a consequence of this painting,
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Manet became a rebel, a reluctant one,
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but nevertheless, a figurehead for a group
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of radical young artists,
the Impressionists,
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who later became the
touchstone, if you like,
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or the trigger for modern art.
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But it all begins here.
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(romantic violin music)
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- The usual way for artists of the period
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was to give it a sort of golden glow,
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and paint it in a way that we would seem
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as rather a sort of
chocolate box type image.
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The way Manet painted had
that rawness of reality,
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which was what he was trying to reflect,
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so the critics were
horrified by how rawly,
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how raw the paint was applied,
as well as being horrified
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by the very modern nature
of the subject matter.
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- 20th century art was dominated
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by two towering and contrasting geniuses,
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who both used the nude
as the central subject
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for developing their radial approaches
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to painting and sculpture.
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The Spanish-born Pablo Picasso,
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and the Frenchman, Henri Matisse.
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(upbeat orchestral music)
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This painting is, for many,
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the most dramatic image
that Matisse ever produced.
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A pulsating picture of five naked figures
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cavorting with total abandonment,
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and called "The Dance."
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Matisse sprang to prominence
in Paris, in 1905,
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when a series of dazzling
Mediterranean landscapes,
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and idyllic beach scenes
depicting languid nude bathers
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startled viewers and led one critic,
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a man called Louis Vauxcelles,
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to describe the work of
Matisse and his friends
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as "An orgy of colors," and
likening them to wild beasts,
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les fauves, in French,
and it was from this term
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that Fauvism was born, as the
first radical art movement
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of the 20th century.
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What Fauvism embodies,
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and what Matisse's art above all embodies,
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is color in un-modulated exuberant,
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expressive, dynamic power,
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and here in "The Dance,"
that's supremely evident.
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The picture is life-sized,
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but the nudes aren't naturally painted.
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They're an intense blaze of orangey-pink,
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perfectly balanced by the background
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of complementary blue and green,
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to create a vivid but harmonious image.
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Matisse's image of the nude is expressive,
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imaginative, idealized,
and totally hedonistic.
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A celebration of humanity, liberated,
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and totally alive.
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And an image which incites
us to feel the same.
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Even more immediate and
radical in its impact
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was this painting, called
"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,"
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by Matisse's friend, but
great artistic rival,
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Pablo Picasso.
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It was painted around 1907,
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a couple of years before "The Dance,"
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but not seen publicly for a few years,
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because even the bold Picasso
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couldn't quite come to terms
with what he'd produced.
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It also features five nude female figures,
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painted in striking pinks,
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but there's nothing
celebratory about the picture.
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It's set in a brothel called The Avignon,
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in the city of Barcelona,
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where Picasso had lived at
the beginning of the century
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before moving to Paris.
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The women stare at the viewer,
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rather as Manet's Olympia had done,
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but this time much more confrontationally,
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and with violent and erotic undertones.
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The faces of the nude
figures are soulless, empty,
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like masks, and in fact,
Picasso had looked at
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various African and Iberian
masks for inspiration.
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This idea of using non-Western
or so-called primitive art
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was very important in
the birth of modern art.
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Picasso tried to use tribal art
as a way of starting afresh,
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as if from some primordial source.
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Likewise, the nude body was humankind
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in its most primitive state.
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But the real power and shock
of this painting, still,
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is in the way that Picasso
(melancholy music)
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has pulled the bodies
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of the figures apart, ripping them around
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in contorted poses in a
way that's both violent,
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and profoundly important
in the history of art.
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Instead of showing a body
from one fixed viewpoint,
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which Western art had done for centuries,
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Picasso shatters that convention,
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and gives us a multiperspectival
view of the human body,
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as if we or the figures have
been in constant motion.
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And it was here, in this
monumental nude painting,
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with its fractured bodies and background,
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that what became known as Cubism was born.
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Arguably the most radical
approach to picture-making
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over the last 1,000 years,
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and certainly one which
shatters most of the conventions
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which govern how pictures are painted
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and how figures are represented.
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"The Demoiselles
d'Avignon" is still hailed
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as the most important
painting of the 20th century,
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the place where the
experimental obsessions
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of 20th century art really begin,
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and where the shock of the nude
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is so much more profound
than its sexuality.
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(upbeat orchestral music)
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What we're witnessing with
this procession of ism's,
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Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism,
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is artists coming to terms with
the realism of photography.
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Painters and sculptors,
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in very different and individual ways,
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now sought to show new kinds of reality.
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The nude was at the forefront
of this experimentation,
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this reinvention and reexamination
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of the very purpose of art.
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European art changed dramatically
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after the Second World War,
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and the nude was center stage.
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The Swiss-born sculptor Alberto Giacometti
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had been a surrealist in the 1920s.
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He'd made cage-like sculptures,
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but in the middle of the 1930s,
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he decided to work from the model again.
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He booked a model to come to his studio
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in Paris for a week,
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and ended up working with her every day
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for the next five years.
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Now what we see when we look
at Giacometti's sculptures,
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particularly these in the
aftermath of the Second World War,
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these, in fact, are from the late '50s,
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but the style had been established
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by 1948, '49,
(eerie instrumental music)
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is Giacometti's way of seeing the world.
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You can't get away from
the fact, looking at these,
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that the surface is extraordinarily
violent, it's gnarled.
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He works with wet clay, he
gouges with his fingers,
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he scapes with a knife, the
eyes seem almost poked out,
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and the woman's sex is almost denied.
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Women are very passive in
Giacometti's sculpture.
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Men walk and point.
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Women stand hieratically like goddesses,
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and Giacometti said
that he wanted to depict
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an image of woman as potentially fertile,
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and the redemptive force,
if you like, for humanity,
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whereas man had been
responsible as the active being
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for the cataclysm that had just happened.
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Giacometti was very close
to writers like Jean Genet,
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and philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre,
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in Paris on the Left Bank,
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where the philosophy of existentialism
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was being put forward.
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Essentially, a Godless view of the world,
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where man was isolated, alienated.
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It was pessimistic view.
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But also, one can't get away from the fact
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that these were produced in
the late '40s and early '50s,
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in the aftermath of the most
horrendous human conflict.
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And although Giacometti
denied it, these works,
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it seems to me, and they
were certainly be read
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by many people at the time,
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are an extraordinary indictment
of humanity post-Holocaust.
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The bleak view of humanity
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found in the sculpture
of Alberto Giacometti,
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had parallels in the
painting of Francis Bacon.
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He often worked in triptych form.
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In other words, three panels,
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that echoed the altarpieces
in medieval cathedrals.
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And here, in this work, done in 1972,
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that religious triptych is taken on board,
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but it's very much a
personal image, this picture,
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because in fact, Bacon's
had another triumphant show,
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in Paris, at the Grand
Palais, but his boyfriend,
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and his model of the previous seven years,
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a man called George Dyer, dies.
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Bacon comes back to London,
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is distraught by the death of his friend,
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and paints a series of
images that commemorate
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and ruminate on the death of Dyer,
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and this is the first,
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and in some ways, the most monumental.
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Critics have said that
the black background
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is symbolic of death, but Bacon says,
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"It's also the best way of showing
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"the forms in the foreground."
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On the left, the figure
is clearly recognizable
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as Dyer himself, but we see,
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almost as if his flesh is melting.
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There's an image of
humanity and the human body
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in constant mutation.
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On the right hand side,
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the panel is sometimes
thought to be Francis Bacon,
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and sometimes thought to be Dyer.
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I read it as a fusion of the two,
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and I think that image is amplified
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by this central panel,
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00:12:05,766 --> 00:12:09,520
where there are clearly
two male figures entwined.
253
00:12:09,520 --> 00:12:10,730
Bacon also said,
254
00:12:10,730 --> 00:12:12,898
it's an image that came
from his unconscious.
255
00:12:12,898 --> 00:12:15,485
In other words, through
the application of paint,
256
00:12:15,485 --> 00:12:19,238
which Bacon did using house brushes, rags,
257
00:12:19,238 --> 00:12:21,407
combs, sometimes he threw it,
258
00:12:21,407 --> 00:12:24,326
sometimes he made wild
gestures, sometimes the paint,
259
00:12:24,326 --> 00:12:27,121
as here with the white,
is mixed with sand,
260
00:12:27,121 --> 00:12:29,916
but somehow losing a
certain amount of control
261
00:12:29,916 --> 00:12:32,960
means that images from the
depths of our unconscious
262
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,130
sometime come to the fore.
263
00:12:35,130 --> 00:12:38,382
I think this is clearly sexual,
and I think in some ways,
264
00:12:38,382 --> 00:12:41,260
it's Bacon reminiscing or luxuriating
265
00:12:41,260 --> 00:12:44,222
in the sexual relationship
that he's had with Dyer.
266
00:12:44,222 --> 00:12:47,266
A fusion, if you like, of the
two figures on either side.
267
00:12:50,436 --> 00:12:53,064
Bacon's image of the human
body is often described
268
00:12:53,064 --> 00:12:55,816
as violent and sexually charged,
269
00:12:55,816 --> 00:12:58,318
and that's because his own
sexual makeup was violent.
270
00:12:58,318 --> 00:13:01,864
He was a sadomasochist,
and in his chaotic studio,
271
00:13:01,864 --> 00:13:04,908
he had images of decaying
and diseased human bodies
272
00:13:04,908 --> 00:13:06,326
pinned to the wall.
273
00:13:06,326 --> 00:13:10,873
In some ways, he's a man who
luxuriates in putrefaction.
274
00:13:10,873 --> 00:13:14,085
There's almost a stench of
the human flesh decaying
275
00:13:14,085 --> 00:13:16,462
in these paintings, but at the same time,
276
00:13:16,462 --> 00:13:17,881
I think there's great beauty.
277
00:13:17,881 --> 00:13:19,966
He luxuriates in human flesh.
278
00:13:19,966 --> 00:13:22,301
He finds it very tactile and conveys that
279
00:13:22,301 --> 00:13:25,388
by the way that he smears
paint onto the canvas.
280
00:13:25,388 --> 00:13:27,432
And my own personal opinion is
281
00:13:27,432 --> 00:13:29,893
that he's without doubt
the most powerful painter
282
00:13:29,893 --> 00:13:32,519
of human flesh in the 20th century.
283
00:13:40,569 --> 00:13:42,821
The Yorkshire-born sculptor, Henry Moore,
284
00:13:42,821 --> 00:13:44,783
had a more defiant, redemptive view
285
00:13:44,783 --> 00:13:47,326
of the human figure in the postwar period.
286
00:13:47,326 --> 00:13:50,955
In works like this, called
"Reclining Figure Number 3,"
287
00:13:50,955 --> 00:13:55,084
he shows the human form
fused with that of landscape
288
00:13:55,084 --> 00:13:56,169
Now, when you first look at this,
289
00:13:56,169 --> 00:13:58,670
it's not immediately
apparent it's a human figure.
290
00:13:58,670 --> 00:14:00,464
But look closely, there's the head,
291
00:14:00,464 --> 00:14:04,135
it has these curves, the fertile
curves of the female body.
292
00:14:04,135 --> 00:14:07,931
But the crucial thing of course,
is that it's in two parts.
293
00:14:07,931 --> 00:14:08,973
It's abstracted.
294
00:14:08,973 --> 00:14:10,933
It's the human figure, abstracted,
295
00:14:10,933 --> 00:14:13,687
but it's also fused with
the idea of the landscape.
296
00:14:13,687 --> 00:14:16,481
There's something ancient
and primordial about this.
297
00:14:16,481 --> 00:14:18,525
And Henry Moore is a great assimilator.
298
00:14:18,525 --> 00:14:20,484
He fuses the nudes
299
00:14:20,484 --> 00:14:22,861
of the past three, four, 5,000 years.
300
00:14:22,861 --> 00:14:26,240
In fact, he goes back to
ancient fertility goddesses,
301
00:14:26,240 --> 00:14:28,785
he looks at the art of Mexican goddesses,
302
00:14:28,785 --> 00:14:31,453
he looks at the classical
reclining figures,
303
00:14:31,453 --> 00:14:34,665
and then he fuses it all in a modern way.
304
00:14:34,665 --> 00:14:37,376
He works in plaster,
in the postwar period,
305
00:14:37,376 --> 00:14:39,838
originally he'd carve
directly into wood and stone,
306
00:14:39,838 --> 00:14:41,840
but here, you can see
the way he's hacked away
307
00:14:41,840 --> 00:14:43,091
at the surface of the plaster,
308
00:14:43,091 --> 00:14:45,051
and then he cast it in bronze.
309
00:14:45,051 --> 00:14:47,219
And bronze can be done
in a number of editions.
310
00:14:47,219 --> 00:14:49,471
Most of his works were
done in editions of six,
311
00:14:49,471 --> 00:14:52,100
which meant that they could
be put in public places,
312
00:14:52,100 --> 00:14:56,062
like this housing estate in
Suffolk, in South London.
313
00:14:56,062 --> 00:14:58,230
And the idea is that the nude human form,
314
00:14:58,230 --> 00:15:00,941
or the reclining human form, somehow,
315
00:15:00,941 --> 00:15:02,943
is there as a decorative embellishment.
316
00:15:02,943 --> 00:15:05,655
It is a way of staving off
the isolation of modern life.
317
00:15:05,655 --> 00:15:06,905
For some though, of course,
318
00:15:06,905 --> 00:15:09,283
this figure reinforces that isolation.
319
00:15:09,283 --> 00:15:13,121
(dramatic orchestral music)
320
00:15:40,022 --> 00:15:42,317
Also here, if you want
to be Freudian about it,
321
00:15:42,317 --> 00:15:43,651
this could almost be the womb,
322
00:15:43,651 --> 00:15:45,819
but it's a space into which
you can project yourself.
323
00:15:45,819 --> 00:15:47,364
You can go, you can feel,
324
00:15:47,364 --> 00:15:49,449
but you have to complete the body.
325
00:15:49,449 --> 00:15:52,827
The reclining figure is
finished off in your mind.
326
00:15:52,827 --> 00:15:54,788
Some said that this idea of fragmentation
327
00:15:54,788 --> 00:15:57,247
was a violent way of
showing the human body,
328
00:15:57,247 --> 00:15:58,625
but I think in the end, now,
329
00:15:58,625 --> 00:16:02,586
we see Moore having anticipated
the way that art and society
330
00:16:02,586 --> 00:16:05,506
became fragmented at the
end of the 20th century.
331
00:16:27,445 --> 00:16:28,863
Over the past three or four decades,
332
00:16:28,863 --> 00:16:31,282
there's been no one dominant style in art,
333
00:16:31,282 --> 00:16:33,618
just as there hasn't
been in music or fashion,
334
00:16:33,618 --> 00:16:36,621
and that's made very evident
here in North London,
335
00:16:36,621 --> 00:16:39,666
in the gallery of Charles
Saatchi, the advertising mogul,
336
00:16:39,666 --> 00:16:41,960
who's collected voraciously
international art
337
00:16:41,960 --> 00:16:44,337
in the last two decades, but particularly,
338
00:16:44,337 --> 00:16:46,046
he's put British art on the map,
339
00:16:46,046 --> 00:16:47,923
contemporary young British art.
340
00:16:47,923 --> 00:16:50,593
And here, there are
numerous examples of how
341
00:16:50,593 --> 00:16:54,012
different artists approach
the subject of the nude.
342
00:16:54,012 --> 00:16:57,099
This work is by Ron Mueck,
who began his career
343
00:16:57,099 --> 00:17:00,102
as a model maker for
advertising and television,
344
00:17:00,102 --> 00:17:03,063
and then he became a sculptor,
and this is the result.
345
00:17:04,149 --> 00:17:06,483
(soft jazz music)
346
00:17:06,483 --> 00:17:09,695
Mueck's skill is supreme, but what we see
347
00:17:09,695 --> 00:17:12,823
is not the cherub of
a Rubens or a Raphael,
348
00:17:12,823 --> 00:17:14,908
or even the Heavenly host of Giotto.
349
00:17:14,908 --> 00:17:17,745
We see the angel as the man next door,
350
00:17:17,745 --> 00:17:20,331
as grumpy or as pissed
off as the rest of us.
351
00:17:40,517 --> 00:17:42,770
Another example is the
young Scottish-born painter,
352
00:17:42,770 --> 00:17:45,898
Jenny Saville, who paints
voluptuous, in fact,
353
00:17:45,898 --> 00:17:48,650
blatantly fat female figures.
354
00:17:48,650 --> 00:17:50,611
For Jenny Saville, fat
is a feminist issue,
355
00:17:50,611 --> 00:17:53,447
but she's also interested
in extreme bodies,
356
00:17:53,447 --> 00:17:54,782
and she had a mother and daughter,
357
00:17:54,782 --> 00:17:57,367
who were the two bottom
figures in this painting,
358
00:17:57,367 --> 00:17:59,661
trussed up and lying on top of each other.
359
00:17:59,661 --> 00:18:02,873
She photographed them, then
she photographed herself,
360
00:18:02,873 --> 00:18:05,584
and she's the third figure at the top.
361
00:18:09,422 --> 00:18:11,925
Now, in fact, Jenny
Saville isn't fat at all,
362
00:18:11,925 --> 00:18:13,593
but she's distorting herself,
363
00:18:13,593 --> 00:18:15,220
she's playing with her own body,
364
00:18:15,220 --> 00:18:17,179
in some ways, in the manner
of a plastic surgeon,
365
00:18:17,179 --> 00:18:18,723
but also a fantasist.
366
00:18:18,723 --> 00:18:22,017
But what you really notice
about Saville's work
367
00:18:22,017 --> 00:18:24,311
is the extraordinary way it's painted.
368
00:18:24,311 --> 00:18:27,649
Paint is this voluptuous
stuff, it's the stuff of flesh,
369
00:18:27,649 --> 00:18:30,402
and as you get close up, it becomes paint,
370
00:18:30,402 --> 00:18:32,444
sometimes splattered, blood-like,
371
00:18:32,444 --> 00:18:36,365
and as you move further away,
the nude becomes clear again.
372
00:18:54,676 --> 00:18:57,262
This work is by the most
celebrated enfant terrible
373
00:18:57,262 --> 00:18:59,222
in British art, Damien Hirst.
374
00:18:59,222 --> 00:19:01,683
He's worked with animals,
but he's never shown us
375
00:19:01,683 --> 00:19:04,561
an almost fully-formed
human being in his work.
376
00:19:04,561 --> 00:19:08,398
This piece is a 20-foot
giant monument in bronze,
377
00:19:08,398 --> 00:19:10,983
that's a scaled-up
version of a 10-inch tall,
378
00:19:10,983 --> 00:19:13,236
anatomical toy made for children,
379
00:19:13,236 --> 00:19:15,113
to teach them and to entertain them.
380
00:19:18,825 --> 00:19:21,452
What Hirst shows us is a
partially flayed figure,
381
00:19:21,452 --> 00:19:24,121
with its guts and intestines
and the workings of its body
382
00:19:24,121 --> 00:19:26,415
fully evident, although
they're simplified.
383
00:19:26,415 --> 00:19:27,542
And of course, this goes back
384
00:19:27,542 --> 00:19:29,960
to 18th century anatomical drawings,
385
00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:32,254
and also back to Leonardo da Vinci.
386
00:19:32,254 --> 00:19:33,589
It's also very playful.
387
00:19:33,589 --> 00:19:37,176
It has this list of different
references and layers,
388
00:19:37,176 --> 00:19:38,385
although sometimes looking at it,
389
00:19:38,385 --> 00:19:40,888
I'm reminded of one of Hirst's
more celebrated remarks,
390
00:19:40,888 --> 00:19:43,183
"That sometimes," he says,
"I have nothing to say,
391
00:19:43,183 --> 00:19:45,852
"and I spend a lot of time
trying to express that."
392
00:19:55,277 --> 00:19:57,655
This work is by the bad
girl of British art,
393
00:19:57,655 --> 00:20:00,491
Sarah Lucas, who produces a self-portrait,
394
00:20:00,491 --> 00:20:03,286
half-nude and half toilet.
395
00:20:03,286 --> 00:20:05,163
Sarah Lucas has produced a number of works
396
00:20:05,163 --> 00:20:06,663
that deal with the subject of the nude,
397
00:20:06,663 --> 00:20:10,334
but she uses objects, like
fried eggs, or cucumbers,
398
00:20:10,334 --> 00:20:13,713
or kebabs, or kippers,
to suggest genitals.
399
00:20:13,713 --> 00:20:15,923
And what she's doing is re-appropriating
400
00:20:15,923 --> 00:20:18,635
laddie or macho humor and prejudice
401
00:20:18,635 --> 00:20:20,720
and throwing it back in our faces.
402
00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:22,639
She's an artist for whom comedy
403
00:20:22,639 --> 00:20:24,681
and knockabout humor are very important,
404
00:20:24,681 --> 00:20:27,726
but she's also doing something
more interesting or profound.
405
00:20:27,726 --> 00:20:29,646
For the whole course of this series,
406
00:20:29,646 --> 00:20:31,980
and for the past two and a
half thousand years and more,
407
00:20:31,980 --> 00:20:36,693
in art, the nude has been
produced mainly by men, for men.
408
00:20:36,693 --> 00:20:39,405
A reflection of a male view of the world.
409
00:20:39,405 --> 00:20:42,032
Finally, at the beginning
of the 21st century,
410
00:20:42,032 --> 00:20:44,703
women in the international
mainstream of art,
411
00:20:44,703 --> 00:20:45,954
are fighting back.
412
00:20:49,457 --> 00:20:51,251
I just wonder in the
future, in 100-years time,
413
00:20:51,251 --> 00:20:54,628
or 2,000-years time, what
people might learn about us
414
00:20:54,628 --> 00:20:57,507
from the images of the
nude that we produce.
415
00:20:57,507 --> 00:21:00,050
- I would imagine, for
people looking back,
416
00:21:01,844 --> 00:21:03,763
they would probably think we're coming out
417
00:21:03,763 --> 00:21:07,224
of a slightly repressed era, if you like,
418
00:21:07,224 --> 00:21:11,438
where nudity was seen as something
that could only be female
419
00:21:13,064 --> 00:21:16,693
and was very, kind of,
narrow in its definition
420
00:21:16,693 --> 00:21:18,737
of how it could be seen
and who could see it,
421
00:21:18,737 --> 00:21:21,156
and I think, you know,
the late 20th century,
422
00:21:21,156 --> 00:21:24,159
going to 21st century, is
definitely a period of,
423
00:21:24,159 --> 00:21:27,412
you know, far wider and
greater proliferation
424
00:21:27,412 --> 00:21:29,288
of images of nudity.
425
00:21:29,288 --> 00:21:32,708
- What strikes one, I
think, is the movement away
426
00:21:32,708 --> 00:21:36,671
from God at the center
of the image of man.
427
00:21:36,671 --> 00:21:40,050
In Classical Greece, one
saw in those male nudes
428
00:21:40,050 --> 00:21:42,843
something of the divine, beyond.
429
00:21:42,843 --> 00:21:44,804
God was still at the center, too,
430
00:21:44,804 --> 00:21:47,723
of the Medieval and the Renaissance nude.
431
00:21:47,723 --> 00:21:50,142
Not so much a celebration of humanity,
432
00:21:50,142 --> 00:21:54,439
but a reminder of humanity's
falling away from God.
433
00:21:54,439 --> 00:21:56,608
The 20th century and the modern nude,
434
00:21:56,608 --> 00:21:59,652
God appears to be almost absent.
435
00:21:59,652 --> 00:22:02,654
Absent from the way in which
one might look at the image,
436
00:22:02,654 --> 00:22:06,910
and absent, too, as a force
that might cause society
437
00:22:06,910 --> 00:22:11,038
to cohere, to stay
together as a community.
438
00:22:11,038 --> 00:22:14,000
The modern nude represents the atomization
439
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:18,462
of the individual, in a world
not concerned with community,
440
00:22:18,462 --> 00:22:20,715
in a world that's moved away from God
441
00:22:20,715 --> 00:22:23,550
and sees its disintegration written
442
00:22:23,550 --> 00:22:26,429
on the naked human form itself.
443
00:22:26,429 --> 00:22:28,764
- The fact is that the nude is central,
444
00:22:28,764 --> 00:22:31,517
and I think that the nude
will always be central,
445
00:22:31,517 --> 00:22:34,145
whatever people do, and
however people react
446
00:22:34,145 --> 00:22:36,106
against the classical tradition,
447
00:22:36,106 --> 00:22:38,482
I personally don't see
how art can get away
448
00:22:38,482 --> 00:22:41,610
from the central aspect
of the human figure,
449
00:22:41,610 --> 00:22:43,238
and in particular, the nude.
450
00:22:43,238 --> 00:22:46,198
(soft jazz music)
451
00:23:00,379 --> 00:23:02,506
- Over the past 25,000 years,
452
00:23:02,506 --> 00:23:06,177
the nude has evolved as a
mirror of human society.
453
00:23:06,177 --> 00:23:08,095
We've moved a long way from the idea
454
00:23:08,095 --> 00:23:10,557
as the nude as an idealized form,
455
00:23:10,557 --> 00:23:13,016
and yet vestiges of that still remain.
456
00:23:13,016 --> 00:23:15,477
In this piece here, called "Quantum Cloud"
457
00:23:15,477 --> 00:23:18,857
by Antony Gormley, slap-bang
next to the Millennium Dome
458
00:23:18,857 --> 00:23:20,358
on the river in London,
459
00:23:20,358 --> 00:23:23,819
we see a very faintly
discernible human nude
460
00:23:23,819 --> 00:23:27,574
at the center of a series
of welded steel clutter.
461
00:23:27,574 --> 00:23:31,702
This in a way, is a
colossus, 21st-century style.
462
00:23:31,702 --> 00:23:33,412
It's based on the classical model,
463
00:23:33,412 --> 00:23:35,999
and it also stems from
Antony Gormley's obsessions
464
00:23:35,999 --> 00:23:38,876
with casting his own nude body.
465
00:23:38,876 --> 00:23:41,045
Gormley explores the
space of what it's like
466
00:23:41,045 --> 00:23:43,590
to be inside a body, and
how that body relates
467
00:23:43,590 --> 00:23:45,091
to the world around it.
468
00:23:45,091 --> 00:23:47,886
And in a sense what we
have here in this piece,
469
00:23:47,886 --> 00:23:50,805
"Quantum Cloud," is a perfect metaphor,
470
00:23:50,805 --> 00:23:53,807
an emblem, of where the
nude is today in art,
471
00:23:53,807 --> 00:23:55,518
and in the world at large.
472
00:23:55,518 --> 00:23:57,978
It's still broadly at
the center of things.
473
00:23:57,978 --> 00:23:59,438
It's still broadly the way
474
00:23:59,438 --> 00:24:02,524
in which we measure most
things, but at the same time,
475
00:24:02,524 --> 00:24:04,651
it's difficult sometimes to see it,
476
00:24:04,651 --> 00:24:07,362
surrounded as it is by the clutter,
477
00:24:07,362 --> 00:24:10,784
the chaos, the confusion,
and the complexity
478
00:24:10,784 --> 00:24:12,202
of the contemporary world.
479
00:24:13,285 --> 00:24:16,914
(soft instrumental music)
38712
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