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In 1865, a wealthy doctor
turned banker, George Witt,

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offered his collection of more than
400 objects from all over the world

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to the British Museum.

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They were, he said, symbols
of the early worship of mankind.

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I don't exactly know how much
they had to do with religion,

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not even of the fertility
cult variety.

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They looked more like what we would
call a collection of soft porn.

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It was an awkward moment
for the museum management,

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but in the end they decided
to accept the gift.

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There was absolutely no way,
though, that it was going to go

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on public display.

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Their solution was to make sure

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the collection
was carefully catalogued

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and then to put it away
in a secret museum within the museum

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as a whole or, as they disguised
in Latin, a Secretum.

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You only got to see the stuff
if you were posh or a professor -

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a male one, that is.

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Today, the Secretum no longer
exists, or not literally,

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but there's still plenty of art
that most of us, for all sorts

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of reasons, don't get to see,

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whether because we're
not allowed to,

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or maybe because we decide not to.

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And that's been true as long
as people have been making art.

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Some of it has always
been off limits to someone.

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There's always been
a virtual Secretum.

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In this series, I'm exploring
how what is and is not

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forbidden has changed.

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I'm not thinking here about
the extreme hardcore...

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..but ideas of what should or
should not be on show have altered

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over the centuries,

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and I'm wondering why.

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I think, the more we encounter death
head on, the less frightening it is.

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So it's something
we should be looking at?

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Yes.

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Is it actually one point of art
to show the unshowable?

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If I go through hell, I'll
make paintings about hell.

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But I don't look for that hell.
I'll be considering what,

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if anything, really does go too far.

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VOMITING
Oh!

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You're not supposed to
show people vomiting,

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so that's a good reason to do it!

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I'm not assessing quality,
or at least I won't be arguing

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that a work's more
acceptable if we judge it

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good rather than bad art.

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This is about what art gets
forbidden, why and how,

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who gets to see what
and who decides.

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And I don't just mean outright bans.

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I also mean that, if we think harder
about what we can't look at or

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what we choose not to,

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maybe we'll learn a bit more
about the nature of art itself

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and about ourselves.

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The human body.

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Its pleasures, pains and the
business of living in it

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has inspired some of the most
controversial works of art.

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And that's what I'm exploring
in this programme.

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I want to start with a little-known
story of old-fashioned

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censorship from the 1960s.

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This was the decade Britain let
its hair down, loosened its morals

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and generally lightened up.

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Or so the cliche goes.

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It wasn't actually like
that for quite a lot of us.

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And there was definitely
another side to it.

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That's nicely captured in a
case of obscenity that came before

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the local court
in Leeds in 1966.

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In the dock was artist and
art teacher Stass Paraskos,

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and the main object at issue
was a painting he'd recently shown

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in a local exhibition.

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And the big problem was
in the bottom left-hand corner

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and with what exactly the woman
was doing with her hand

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on the man's penis.

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The case provoked a whole range of
arguments. The magistrates wondered

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about its tendency to deprave.

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Meanwhile, a galaxy of art experts
were bussed in to argue

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that it was the artist's
privilege, even his right,

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to challenge us like this.

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None of it convinced the
magistrates. Paraskos was found

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guilty and fined £10 plus £21 costs.

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But maybe times really were changing
because this was the last occasion

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in Britain that a painter
was successfully

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prosecuted for obscenity.

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Nearly 60 years on, viewers
don't exactly find it much

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of a problem.

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OK.

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That man on the right, is he naked?

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Yeah, I think everyone's naked.
Everyone's naked.

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Some sort of sex party,

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it looks like. Yeah, kind of.

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Maybe it's an orgy.

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An orgy?

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It doesn't look obscene.

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I would say softcore at the most.

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I think we're very used to seeing
nudity and things like that.

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It seems fairly innocent.
In this day and age,

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nothing like that would shock
anybody, to be honest with you.

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And I just don't think
it's that obscene, really,

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especially with today's standards.

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If a jigsaw was on sale with
that as the main picture,

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I think I'd buy it.

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But have we simply become
more tolerant of art since 1966?

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I'm not so sure.

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We have to be careful before
we imagine the triumph of some

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"anything goes" kind of culture
because the fact is

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anything does not go.

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The focus of our anxieties
about art may have changed,

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but the anxieties remain.

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And even though the role of the law
has become more limited,

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we have other ways of regulating
what is seen and not seen.

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Back in the British Museum,

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we can get a glimpse of how
tastes and boundaries can change

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radically over the centuries.

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And I've picked out a couple
of objects showing a scene

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once popular in the art of
the ancient Romans.

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SHE CHUCKLES

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Thank you.

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These are two sculptures showing
the mythical creature Pan

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having sex with a she-goat,

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in different positions,
you might say.

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They are both versions or variations
on an even more striking sculpture

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dug up from a luxury Roman
villa near Naples.

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It became one of the most
notoriously forbidden objects

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in the 17- and 1800s.

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Well, this is a little
terracotta copy of it

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made in the 18th century.

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And you can see that the goat is
resting her feet, or her hooves,

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perhaps we should say,
on Pan's shoulder.

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And Pan is almost, kind of,
tickling her little goatee beard.

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And here is an original Roman piece.

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And this was probably
the prized possession of

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some rather posh Roman.

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Now, I think that the very idea

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that a larger marble version of this
could be the centrepiece in

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the decor of a very rich Roman house

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marks the difference between
Roman ideas of acceptability

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and our own.

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I mean, we may not be quite
as shocked by this image as people

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were just after it was discovered,

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but I still don't imagine that many
people would choose this theme

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to plunk in the middle of
their living room.

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That said, it's not quite clear
what it really meant for Romans.

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I mean, was it just
a bit of raunchy erotica?

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Or maybe it was a kind of joke.

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Pan, we mustn't forget, was himself
half-man and half-goat.

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So, this is a half-goat having sex
with a whole goat, if you like.

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For decades after their discovery,
the ancient statues were kept away

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from the public gaze
in the Secretum,

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whether in Italy or Britain.

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You had to apply formally to see
them, and stood no chance at all

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if you were a woman or, in Italy,
a Catholic priest.

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Even the miniature copy ended up
under the same restrictions.

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Today, those have gone - or almost.

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When the Naples version
came here about ten years ago,

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it was put in its own room with a
content warning at the entrance.

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Why is it we find it still
somewhat uncomfortable?

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I mean, I think it's more than
just the bestiality.

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I mean, for me, what's difficult
about this one is the way that

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the goat has been humanised,

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that Pan is making love to
the goat in a human way.

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It's as if this is a sculpture
which doesn't just break the rules,

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but it breaks the boundaries between
what we expect of animals,

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and what we expect of human beings.

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To put that another way,
it disturbs because it mixes

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basic categories, violating
the rightful order.

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It's easy to assume, though, that
it's scenes of sex in particular -

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illicit, subversive, graphic,
unregulated -

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that moralists have been keenest
to keep from our sights.

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Henri Gervex's 1878 work Rolla
was excluded from the Paris Salon

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for so overtly depicting
a prostitute.

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In 1917, a Paris gallery
full of Modigliani's nudes

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was closed down on account of
their obscene pubic hair.

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And in 1973,
this take on male anatomy

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by Austrian Renate Bertlmann was
banned from a show of feminist art.

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But there's more to it than that.

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It's not just genitalia and
copulation that makes

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an image problematic.

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And something doesn't have to be
explicitly banned for us somehow

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to cease to look at it.

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Today, I've asked York Art Gallery
to bring out of their storeroom

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one painting that's
really disconcerting -

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and, in this case, more so now than
a couple of hundred years ago.

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There's an elderly man
here in shackles,

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suckling at a young woman's breast.

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It's based on a classical story
which explains she's doing this

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because he's in prison and starving.

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It's an allegory of human kindness.

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But there's a killer fact.

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The woman is the old man's daughter.

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There is more than a hint here
of an erotic relationship.

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It's as if we're looking at
what's almost a scene of incest.

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And you might want to say,

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00:14:08,020 --> 00:14:12,460
"Well, look, we only see the
eroticism here because we've lost

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00:14:12,460 --> 00:14:15,420
"that kind of sense of the
allegorical symbol."

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It was treated at the time as,
in a sense, the classic example

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of how devoted a daughter could
and should be to her father.

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00:14:28,540 --> 00:14:31,380
That said...

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00:14:31,380 --> 00:14:36,900
..the painter has clearly
more than hinted that this is

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00:14:36,900 --> 00:14:39,900
a dangerously erotic scene.

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00:14:39,900 --> 00:14:44,980
She's anxious, her breasts
and shoulders are highlit.

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00:14:44,980 --> 00:14:49,060
And it also turns out that we're not
the only voyeurs at this scene,

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00:14:49,060 --> 00:14:51,060
because up in that corner,

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there's someone peering at it
through the window.

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This painting is by
a little-known Dutch artist,

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but it isn't a one-off.

203
00:15:11,580 --> 00:15:14,020
You may be surprised to learn that

204
00:15:14,020 --> 00:15:17,500
there are more than
300 versions of this subject,

205
00:15:17,500 --> 00:15:19,860
commonly known as Roman Charity,

206
00:15:19,860 --> 00:15:22,180
in collections around the world.

207
00:15:25,420 --> 00:15:29,860
I have to say, I find it very
hard not to see

208
00:15:29,860 --> 00:15:33,300
a kind of dark reading here,

209
00:15:33,300 --> 00:15:38,860
that the painter is suggesting
to us that the line between

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the love of a daughter for her
father and erotic incest

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00:15:44,700 --> 00:15:49,260
is actually much finer than we
would like to think it was.

212
00:15:49,260 --> 00:15:54,060
One of the reasons that this is an
unfamiliar scene to us is that most,

213
00:15:54,060 --> 00:15:59,580
not all, but most of these paintings
are actually hidden away,

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00:15:59,580 --> 00:16:04,500
well looked after in museum
stores and basements,

215
00:16:04,500 --> 00:16:06,340
so we don't see them.

216
00:16:06,340 --> 00:16:10,100
Forbidden art isn't all forbidden
because somebody has said,

217
00:16:10,100 --> 00:16:13,220
"You're not going to look at this".

218
00:16:13,220 --> 00:16:14,980
It's not all controversial.

219
00:16:14,980 --> 00:16:18,740
Some of it is just what we have

220
00:16:18,740 --> 00:16:22,580
all agreed, sort of, collusively

221
00:16:22,580 --> 00:16:25,700
that would be better off
out of sight.

222
00:16:32,220 --> 00:16:36,100
I'm not sure that these images
were ever entirely innocent,

223
00:16:36,100 --> 00:16:38,300
whatever the moral story
behind them.

224
00:16:39,940 --> 00:16:43,220
But now that allegory
is little known...

225
00:16:43,220 --> 00:16:45,060
Well, that's interesting.

226
00:16:45,060 --> 00:16:48,100
..modern viewers struggle
to make sense of what

227
00:16:48,100 --> 00:16:49,900
they might be looking at.

228
00:16:49,900 --> 00:16:51,740
OK.

229
00:16:51,740 --> 00:16:54,580
We can be shocked at
the forbidden subject,

230
00:16:54,580 --> 00:16:58,100
but still try to justify it,
or at least to process it.

231
00:16:58,100 --> 00:17:00,220
I think he's sucking on her nipple?

232
00:17:01,460 --> 00:17:03,380
OFF CAMERA: He is a prisoner.

233
00:17:03,380 --> 00:17:04,940
He's starving.

234
00:17:04,940 --> 00:17:06,740
And that's actually his daughter.

235
00:17:06,740 --> 00:17:09,580
Oh, God! That's gross.
SHE LAUGHS

236
00:17:09,580 --> 00:17:12,260
Erm...OK.

237
00:17:12,260 --> 00:17:15,540
I mean, now that you've said that,
it's just grim.

238
00:17:15,540 --> 00:17:17,380
Wow.

239
00:17:17,380 --> 00:17:19,380
Was not expecting that at all.

240
00:17:19,380 --> 00:17:22,500
The concept itself, yeah, makes me
feel uncomfortable, for sure.

241
00:17:22,500 --> 00:17:26,060
If I were a father,
I wouldn't want to be doing that.

242
00:17:26,060 --> 00:17:27,900
When you understand what that is,

243
00:17:27,900 --> 00:17:30,780
you might feel a little bit,
erm, troubled by it.

244
00:17:30,780 --> 00:17:33,540
But then, thinking of the story
and what it's about,

245
00:17:33,540 --> 00:17:34,980
it's practical, it's clever.

246
00:17:34,980 --> 00:17:37,540
I don't think it's anything sexual.

247
00:17:37,540 --> 00:17:40,860
Even though some people will be
like, "Oh, this is incestuous,"

248
00:17:40,860 --> 00:17:45,180
she's doing everything that
she can to keep her dad alive.

249
00:17:45,180 --> 00:17:47,780
If you are starving,
would you do that?

250
00:17:47,780 --> 00:17:49,220
Like, probably? Yeah.

251
00:17:49,220 --> 00:17:52,260
And if it was commonly done
at the time, then...

252
00:17:52,260 --> 00:17:53,900
Sign you up?
SHE LAUGHS

253
00:18:00,420 --> 00:18:03,580
Roman Charity might well
disquiet us,

254
00:18:03,580 --> 00:18:09,140
but our virtual Secretum is no
longer dominated by sexual images.

255
00:18:11,140 --> 00:18:15,420
Their place has been taken by
other themes and subjects.

256
00:18:21,540 --> 00:18:25,380
One of those is the art that
dares to show us what

257
00:18:25,380 --> 00:18:27,420
the end of life might look like.

258
00:18:30,060 --> 00:18:33,500
ALL PRAYING

259
00:18:34,740 --> 00:18:38,380
Hundreds of years ago, people in
Britain would have been far less

260
00:18:38,380 --> 00:18:41,220
estranged from death and
the moment of dying.

261
00:18:43,620 --> 00:18:45,900
Most of us would have died at home.

262
00:18:45,900 --> 00:18:48,540
We'd have been used to open coffins,

263
00:18:48,540 --> 00:18:51,500
and might even have had death masks
made of our relatives.

264
00:18:53,820 --> 00:18:56,940
And, though often milked for all
the sentimentality you could

265
00:18:56,940 --> 00:18:59,620
wring from it, the deathbed scene

266
00:18:59,620 --> 00:19:01,340
was popular with artists.

267
00:19:06,780 --> 00:19:12,700
Now, it's not just that death itself
has become more medicalized,

268
00:19:12,700 --> 00:19:15,940
behind curtains, in private,

269
00:19:15,940 --> 00:19:22,260
but the representation of death has
also become forbidden territory.

270
00:19:22,260 --> 00:19:27,740
We have put it into the private
realm, not to be looked at.

271
00:19:36,500 --> 00:19:41,140
One of the few artists who have
confronted this is Daphne Todd.

272
00:19:45,100 --> 00:19:48,260
In 2010, she won the National
Portrait Gallery

273
00:19:48,260 --> 00:19:51,180
Annual Portrait Award for a painting

274
00:19:51,180 --> 00:19:53,340
of a 100-year-old woman half-naked

275
00:19:53,340 --> 00:19:56,380
and recently deceased.

276
00:19:56,380 --> 00:19:57,460
Right.

277
00:19:59,020 --> 00:20:02,660
The thing to know here is
that it is her own mother.

278
00:20:17,660 --> 00:20:19,700
How did you go about it?

279
00:20:19,700 --> 00:20:21,980
And what was the practicality of it?

280
00:20:21,980 --> 00:20:28,140
I wept, grabbed the nurse,
erm, and said, erm,

281
00:20:28,140 --> 00:20:30,700
"Actually, I do want
to paint my mother.

282
00:20:30,700 --> 00:20:32,420
"How am I going to go about it?"

283
00:20:32,420 --> 00:20:36,660
And she recommended a funeral
director who'd been very, very

284
00:20:36,660 --> 00:20:39,300
understanding about
various people's requests.

285
00:20:39,300 --> 00:20:42,140
And so, he made a chapel
of rest available.

286
00:20:42,140 --> 00:20:45,340
And so, in the chapel of rest,
you propped her up?

287
00:20:45,340 --> 00:20:47,660
I asked them to
prop her up like that.

288
00:20:47,660 --> 00:20:50,660
In fact, actually, I mean,
I first thought I might, sort of,

289
00:20:50,660 --> 00:20:53,260
have her laid out as though
she was on the slab.

290
00:20:53,260 --> 00:20:56,020
And they did that for me,
and I thought,

291
00:20:56,020 --> 00:20:57,700
"I can't cope with this".

292
00:20:57,700 --> 00:21:01,260
The, sort of, nether ends I didn't
really want to be dealing with.

293
00:21:01,260 --> 00:21:04,660
And how many days altogether? Three.

294
00:21:04,660 --> 00:21:07,300
It'd just about be comfortable
if I had one more.

295
00:21:07,300 --> 00:21:09,900
But I was getting uncomfortable
myself because she was

296
00:21:09,900 --> 00:21:12,340
beginning to change colour,

297
00:21:12,340 --> 00:21:16,220
and the fluid was flowing down
into these parts of her arm.

298
00:21:16,220 --> 00:21:18,820
It was dripping out
a little bit down here, too.

299
00:21:18,820 --> 00:21:20,700
And her hand changed.

300
00:21:20,700 --> 00:21:24,780
I mean, because I was painting it,
you know, I could see this gap,

301
00:21:24,780 --> 00:21:27,780
because the hand was gradually
turning towards me,

302
00:21:27,780 --> 00:21:32,060
and I didn't want it to get
to a point where...

303
00:21:32,060 --> 00:21:34,420
..where there was a smell,
I suppose. Yeah.

304
00:21:34,420 --> 00:21:37,140
I mean, this might seem
a stupid question,

305
00:21:37,140 --> 00:21:39,340
but why did you want to do it?

306
00:21:42,460 --> 00:21:43,860
I just thought I might.

307
00:21:43,860 --> 00:21:46,220
I don't know why I thought that,
particularly.

308
00:21:46,220 --> 00:21:51,140
I just thought it would be,
er, a new experience.

309
00:21:51,140 --> 00:21:53,420
I don't think she'd have liked
this painting, actually,

310
00:21:53,420 --> 00:21:55,100
obviously, I mean, who would?

311
00:21:55,100 --> 00:21:58,540
But she had said,
"Yes, you can do what you like."

312
00:21:58,540 --> 00:22:01,100
But there's a magnificence
about death.

313
00:22:01,100 --> 00:22:04,780
Somebody once asked me
to explain that, and I can't.

314
00:22:04,780 --> 00:22:07,340
I hope I've got a bit of it
in there, but there's

315
00:22:07,340 --> 00:22:09,620
something really compelling.

316
00:22:09,620 --> 00:22:12,820
I mean, you wouldn't be able
to walk past a dead body, would you?

317
00:22:12,820 --> 00:22:15,300
No. I'm not sure I've seen
a dead body.

318
00:22:15,300 --> 00:22:17,060
Not ever? Not ever?

319
00:22:17,060 --> 00:22:19,380
I suppose I saw my parents,

320
00:22:19,380 --> 00:22:23,020
but both well-covered
in a hospital bed. Not...

321
00:22:23,020 --> 00:22:25,380
Yes. ..you know,
almost unrecognisable.

322
00:22:25,380 --> 00:22:28,100
I mean, it's fascinating
in itself...

323
00:22:28,100 --> 00:22:30,540
But isn't it distressing for you?

324
00:22:31,980 --> 00:22:34,100
Once I was painting, no. Right.

325
00:22:34,100 --> 00:22:37,100
Funnily enough -
that's odd, isn't it?

326
00:22:37,100 --> 00:22:39,100
But, no.

327
00:22:39,100 --> 00:22:41,540
It's now here in your studio.

328
00:22:41,540 --> 00:22:43,900
It's not on public display.

329
00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:45,740
What plans have you got for it?

330
00:22:45,740 --> 00:22:48,260
I've tried to give it away twice.

331
00:22:48,260 --> 00:22:50,860
The first time,
to Girton College, Cambridge,

332
00:22:50,860 --> 00:22:53,660
but they were quite concerned
that this particular painting

333
00:22:53,660 --> 00:22:55,300
would upset the students.

334
00:22:55,300 --> 00:22:57,580
And it was understandable,
in a way.

335
00:22:57,580 --> 00:23:02,460
But also, slightly odd that
academics, all of whom are adults,

336
00:23:02,460 --> 00:23:04,620
are going to be hurt by it.

337
00:23:04,620 --> 00:23:08,940
Anyway, a year or two later, I asked
if my local church would like it.

338
00:23:08,940 --> 00:23:11,540
But sadly, they turned it down.

339
00:23:11,540 --> 00:23:14,460
So, I cannot give it away.
THEY CHUCKLE

340
00:23:14,460 --> 00:23:17,900
I think the more we
encounter death head-on,

341
00:23:17,900 --> 00:23:19,540
the less frightening it is,

342
00:23:19,540 --> 00:23:21,540
and that means we can live
our lives.

343
00:23:21,540 --> 00:23:25,100
So, it's something we
should be looking at? Yes.

344
00:23:25,100 --> 00:23:29,060
I mean, it is distressing,
but I think it's...

345
00:23:29,060 --> 00:23:32,020
It makes me feel that I
want to look at it.

346
00:23:32,020 --> 00:23:37,580
And if that means that that's
uncomfortable, then I think

347
00:23:37,580 --> 00:23:39,940
you should be looking at things
that are uncomfortable.

348
00:23:39,940 --> 00:23:42,060
Yes, as long as
they're beautiful, as well,

349
00:23:42,060 --> 00:23:43,900
because the truth is beautiful.

350
00:23:51,020 --> 00:23:56,100
I'm not quite so sure that
the truth is necessarily beautiful,

351
00:23:56,100 --> 00:23:59,340
or that it offers such a simple
solution to the problem

352
00:23:59,340 --> 00:24:01,780
of forbidden art.

353
00:24:01,780 --> 00:24:06,060
But Daphne's extraordinary painting
certainly exposes the forbiddenness

354
00:24:06,060 --> 00:24:09,260
of death in modern Western cultures.

355
00:24:09,260 --> 00:24:12,180
It's not always the same elsewhere.

356
00:24:15,180 --> 00:24:18,820
I've come to the
Wellcome Collection, in London,

357
00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:23,700
to confront some Eastern art that
looks forensically at the breakdown

358
00:24:23,700 --> 00:24:25,980
of the body when life ends -

359
00:24:25,980 --> 00:24:31,020
testing Daphne's belief in
the beauty of truth to the limit.

360
00:24:41,580 --> 00:24:43,860
This is a rather shocking sight.

361
00:24:50,100 --> 00:24:52,540
It's a series of watercolours

362
00:24:52,540 --> 00:24:57,020
belonging to a Japanese Buddhist
tradition of image-making

363
00:24:57,020 --> 00:25:00,060
going back to the 13th century.

364
00:25:00,060 --> 00:25:03,100
This is just one example
out of many.

365
00:25:07,180 --> 00:25:14,420
What they show is the stages in the
decomposition of the human body.

366
00:25:14,420 --> 00:25:18,580
The series starts when
the dead woman is still alive,

367
00:25:18,580 --> 00:25:24,020
but most of the rest of the series
shows what happens to her body next.

368
00:25:24,020 --> 00:25:27,660
Here, the colour's
beginning to change.

369
00:25:27,660 --> 00:25:29,340
It's distending.

370
00:25:29,340 --> 00:25:34,980
It starts to go horribly blotchy
and to ooze blood.

371
00:25:34,980 --> 00:25:38,860
And basically, this is
putrefaction in action.

372
00:25:40,100 --> 00:25:45,580
And at this point, the birds and
the animals have come to eat

373
00:25:45,580 --> 00:25:47,580
the flesh that remains.

374
00:25:49,420 --> 00:25:53,060
And now, all she is, really,
is bones.

375
00:25:53,060 --> 00:25:56,900
And here, just a little
pile of bones,

376
00:25:56,900 --> 00:26:00,180
which end up in her
last resting place here

377
00:26:00,180 --> 00:26:02,700
under the sign of the Buddha.

378
00:26:07,540 --> 00:26:11,340
Images like this, still with a
place in Japanese culture,

379
00:26:11,340 --> 00:26:15,620
were originally made to remind
contemplative Buddhist monks of

380
00:26:15,620 --> 00:26:18,460
the impermanence of the human body,

381
00:26:18,460 --> 00:26:21,460
and the foulness of female
flesh in particular.

382
00:26:25,180 --> 00:26:28,660
Well, I suppose I manage
to take them on board

383
00:26:28,660 --> 00:26:30,740
in a religious context.

384
00:26:30,740 --> 00:26:34,900
But what happens when we take them
out of that religious context?

385
00:26:34,900 --> 00:26:37,340
I think there'll be a lot of people,

386
00:26:37,340 --> 00:26:41,300
me included, who really would
not want to look at them.

387
00:26:41,300 --> 00:26:44,260
There would be quite a lot
of people who'd say,

388
00:26:44,260 --> 00:26:46,380
"These should not be on show".

389
00:26:52,180 --> 00:26:55,780
However much they would prefer
not to look at images of

390
00:26:55,780 --> 00:26:57,780
dead and oozing bodies,

391
00:26:57,780 --> 00:27:00,860
I don't think many people would
see them as unethical,

392
00:27:00,860 --> 00:27:02,740
morally out-of-bounds.

393
00:27:05,580 --> 00:27:09,860
Works that show the living body
in pain take these issues

394
00:27:09,860 --> 00:27:11,260
a whole step further.

395
00:27:12,580 --> 00:27:15,340
Since the 1960s especially,

396
00:27:15,340 --> 00:27:20,820
various artists have traded
in images of violence and distress.

397
00:27:23,340 --> 00:27:28,340
Austrian Herrmann Nitsch has spent
years leading ritualised actions,

398
00:27:28,340 --> 00:27:30,900
disembowelling animal carcasses,

399
00:27:30,900 --> 00:27:35,620
and dousing naked performers
in blood, urine, and more.

400
00:27:39,940 --> 00:27:43,220
In 1974, American Chris Burden

401
00:27:43,220 --> 00:27:46,620
had himself crucified on
a Volkswagen Beetle.

402
00:27:50,820 --> 00:27:55,980
And in 2000, Israeli artist
Sigalit Landau filmed herself

403
00:27:55,980 --> 00:28:00,220
performing a naked hula dance
with a ring of barbed wire.

404
00:28:02,260 --> 00:28:06,340
But debates about the ethics
of looking at scenes of suffering

405
00:28:06,340 --> 00:28:07,740
are far older.

406
00:28:11,980 --> 00:28:17,900
They were kick-started by reactions
to a single ancient Roman statue.

407
00:28:17,900 --> 00:28:22,380
A much later bronze copy of it,
installed in the 18th century,

408
00:28:22,380 --> 00:28:26,020
stands in pride of place
at Houghton Hall, in Norfolk.

409
00:28:29,060 --> 00:28:32,900
One of the most admired works
in the Renaissance,

410
00:28:32,900 --> 00:28:37,980
it now seems like a standard
set piece of classical sculpture.

411
00:28:40,060 --> 00:28:45,340
It shows the Trojan priest
Laocoon, who warned his comrades

412
00:28:45,340 --> 00:28:49,780
that the great wooden horse the
Greeks had left them was a trick.

413
00:28:49,780 --> 00:28:54,260
He was right, but his foresight
was punished by the gods,

414
00:28:54,260 --> 00:28:59,340
who sent two vile serpents
to kill not only Laocoon himself,

415
00:28:59,340 --> 00:29:01,140
but his two sons.

416
00:29:01,140 --> 00:29:03,180
And that's the moment
we are witnessing.

417
00:29:05,500 --> 00:29:10,740
Once it had been rediscovered in
1506, there was hardly an artist

418
00:29:10,740 --> 00:29:14,380
who didn't copy it and re-copy it,

419
00:29:14,380 --> 00:29:19,260
and attempt to analyse the real
power of this work of art.

420
00:29:20,260 --> 00:29:24,540
They looked at the twisting torso,
the tilt of the head,

421
00:29:24,540 --> 00:29:28,380
these extraordinarily taut legs.

422
00:29:28,380 --> 00:29:32,380
It was the emotional power of agony.

423
00:29:32,380 --> 00:29:35,380
It was a template
for how to show pain.

424
00:29:36,700 --> 00:29:39,980
But, by the time it got to Houghton,

425
00:29:39,980 --> 00:29:42,820
some other questions
were being raised.

426
00:29:46,460 --> 00:29:50,340
In the 18th century,
the most pressing controversy became

427
00:29:50,340 --> 00:29:54,540
how could we admire a scene
of torture like this?

428
00:29:58,220 --> 00:30:01,700
There wasn't even the religious
justification here

429
00:30:01,700 --> 00:30:05,580
that you might find for a
particularly gory crucifixion.

430
00:30:09,140 --> 00:30:11,460
So, what was the point?

431
00:30:11,460 --> 00:30:16,740
What was the visual pleasure that
you got out of looking at this scene

432
00:30:16,740 --> 00:30:20,420
of agonising death and pain?

433
00:30:20,420 --> 00:30:24,660
Well, some people tried to argue
that this was the scene of a man

434
00:30:24,660 --> 00:30:29,140
who was triumphing over
his suffering with dignity.

435
00:30:29,140 --> 00:30:33,180
And they particularly pointed
to his mouth.

436
00:30:33,180 --> 00:30:35,780
This man is just groaning.

437
00:30:35,780 --> 00:30:41,900
That, for many, was the point -
he had managed to control his pain.

438
00:30:43,100 --> 00:30:47,420
But others still argued
that the body in pain

439
00:30:47,420 --> 00:30:49,740
was an ugly disfigurement.

440
00:30:51,700 --> 00:30:56,180
Now, when we look at him,
I think, for us, he's mostly lost

441
00:30:56,180 --> 00:30:59,180
any of that kind of edginess.

442
00:30:59,180 --> 00:31:02,300
He's retreated, really,
into the category

443
00:31:02,300 --> 00:31:04,860
of "famous classical masterpiece".

444
00:31:06,900 --> 00:31:08,540
But I can't help thinking,

445
00:31:08,540 --> 00:31:12,180
maybe we should try to bring back
some of the controversy,

446
00:31:12,180 --> 00:31:14,420
and to remember the edginess.

447
00:31:17,860 --> 00:31:23,620
We have no idea if the original
ancient artist considered any of

448
00:31:23,620 --> 00:31:28,740
the issues that preoccupied critics
all those centuries later.

449
00:31:28,740 --> 00:31:33,780
But those debates point to the way
other artists since have signalled

450
00:31:33,780 --> 00:31:38,180
the difficulties of representing
violence, pain, and suffering.

451
00:31:41,420 --> 00:31:46,500
In the early 1800s, the Spaniard
Francisco Goya was perhaps the first

452
00:31:46,500 --> 00:31:51,420
artist to take, as his subject,
the ugly reality of warfare

453
00:31:51,420 --> 00:31:55,860
in a set of engravings now
known as The Disasters of War.

454
00:32:00,540 --> 00:32:04,780
They were never published by Goya
himself and unseen by the public

455
00:32:04,780 --> 00:32:07,460
until 35 years after his death.

456
00:32:10,780 --> 00:32:14,140
They raise even bigger questions

457
00:32:14,140 --> 00:32:16,780
about how and why you might
represent suffering,

458
00:32:16,780 --> 00:32:20,020
and what the responsibility
of the artist is.

459
00:32:24,820 --> 00:32:29,980
Goya produced more than 80 prints
of scenes from the wars in Spain

460
00:32:29,980 --> 00:32:31,940
in the early 19th century.

461
00:32:31,940 --> 00:32:35,860
And I've picked out two
from the series.

462
00:32:35,860 --> 00:32:40,380
The first one shows
a couple of men running away,

463
00:32:40,380 --> 00:32:43,180
a mother scooping up her kids.

464
00:32:43,180 --> 00:32:47,660
And we know that something is going
on off to the right of the image,

465
00:32:47,660 --> 00:32:49,300
but we can't see it.

466
00:32:49,300 --> 00:32:53,340
And it's quite a nasty tease
of this whole series that

467
00:32:53,340 --> 00:32:55,580
we see the frightened people,

468
00:32:55,580 --> 00:32:58,620
but we don't quite see what
they're frightened of.

469
00:33:00,460 --> 00:33:03,180
The other one is, perhaps,
even starker.

470
00:33:03,180 --> 00:33:06,340
There's a group of men,
women, and children,

471
00:33:06,340 --> 00:33:09,020
and they're cowering in a cave.

472
00:33:09,020 --> 00:33:13,060
And there you do see just
the tips of the bayonets

473
00:33:13,060 --> 00:33:14,780
that are coming to get them.

474
00:33:14,780 --> 00:33:19,140
And none of these people can
really bear to look at

475
00:33:19,140 --> 00:33:20,820
what's coming for them.

476
00:33:20,820 --> 00:33:24,420
And, in fact, this person here
has covered themselves up,

477
00:33:24,420 --> 00:33:27,460
so they cannot see -
not just turning away,

478
00:33:27,460 --> 00:33:30,220
but shrouding their face.

479
00:33:30,220 --> 00:33:34,980
But it's the captions that give
them something extra, I think.

480
00:33:34,980 --> 00:33:40,060
Goya's caption on this one,
in Spanish, is, "I saw this".

481
00:33:41,500 --> 00:33:45,700
And, on the other,
it's "one can't look at this".

482
00:33:45,700 --> 00:33:51,220
Now, in many ways,
those captions together capture

483
00:33:51,220 --> 00:33:57,340
the ethical dilemmas of looking
at other people's pain.

484
00:33:57,340 --> 00:34:03,260
The artist, in a sense, is saying
that he is obliged to represent

485
00:34:03,260 --> 00:34:07,380
what he sees in the world,
however unpleasant.

486
00:34:07,380 --> 00:34:11,940
For the viewer, well,
they're caught, in a way.

487
00:34:11,940 --> 00:34:18,060
It is almost wrong for us to get
visual pleasure out of looking at

488
00:34:18,060 --> 00:34:20,100
the pain of these poor people.

489
00:34:20,100 --> 00:34:25,100
And yet, it would be irresponsible
of us not to recognise that

490
00:34:25,100 --> 00:34:27,820
that is going on in the world
about us,

491
00:34:27,820 --> 00:34:29,220
as shown to us by the artist.

492
00:34:36,620 --> 00:34:41,620
For me, what is so important about
these images is the way they make us

493
00:34:41,620 --> 00:34:46,700
face up to what you or the artist
can or can't look at.

494
00:34:53,580 --> 00:34:57,860
These themes of looking,
not looking, and, in a sense,

495
00:34:57,860 --> 00:35:01,820
the dangers of looking have a
history that again can be traced

496
00:35:01,820 --> 00:35:04,940
indirectly, at least,
back to the ancient world.

497
00:35:11,420 --> 00:35:15,460
At London's National Gallery,
there's a chilling cautionary tale

498
00:35:15,460 --> 00:35:17,380
from Greek mythology,

499
00:35:17,380 --> 00:35:22,380
painted by the Italian artist
Luca Giordano, around 1616.

500
00:35:26,900 --> 00:35:31,380
It shows a wedding reception
that's going horribly wrong.

501
00:35:42,660 --> 00:35:45,380
This here, in the blue outfit -

502
00:35:45,380 --> 00:35:49,060
that's the groom, the hero Perseus.

503
00:35:49,060 --> 00:35:53,140
But his festivities
have been interrupted

504
00:35:53,140 --> 00:35:56,100
by the bride's ex, over here,

505
00:35:56,100 --> 00:35:59,620
Phineas, who's come with
the boys to make trouble.

506
00:35:59,620 --> 00:36:03,260
And you can see that
everything is in disarray.

507
00:36:03,260 --> 00:36:08,340
The table has been overturned,
there are bodies all over the place.

508
00:36:08,340 --> 00:36:12,420
And Perseus has got out
his secret weapon,

509
00:36:12,420 --> 00:36:18,500
which is the snaky-locked
head of the Gorgon Medusa.

510
00:36:18,500 --> 00:36:20,740
It's a weapon,

511
00:36:20,740 --> 00:36:26,660
because the mere sight of Medusa
will turn anybody to stone.

512
00:36:26,660 --> 00:36:31,100
You see that Perseus is very,
very carefully looking away

513
00:36:31,100 --> 00:36:33,060
from Medusa's head.

514
00:36:33,060 --> 00:36:36,380
But the intruders aren't
being so careful.

515
00:36:36,380 --> 00:36:39,900
And Phineas here, the ex,

516
00:36:39,900 --> 00:36:44,300
is already turning into
a marble statue.

517
00:36:44,300 --> 00:36:47,260
And I think that,
as we look at this,

518
00:36:47,260 --> 00:36:49,380
I think it's hard not to say,

519
00:36:49,380 --> 00:36:52,500
"So, where does that leave me,
the viewer?

520
00:36:52,500 --> 00:36:55,140
"I'm not turning away like Perseus.

521
00:36:55,140 --> 00:36:57,700
"Will I be turned to stone, too?"

522
00:37:05,220 --> 00:37:09,100
The image of the deadly Gorgon's
head, held up by Perseus,

523
00:37:09,100 --> 00:37:12,140
has been represented
thousands of times,

524
00:37:12,140 --> 00:37:14,340
from ancient Greece
to the present day.

525
00:37:17,220 --> 00:37:20,100
And it always puts us on the spot,

526
00:37:20,100 --> 00:37:24,300
sometimes joking or teasing us
about getting a peek at

527
00:37:24,300 --> 00:37:26,340
what we shouldn't see.

528
00:37:26,340 --> 00:37:31,260
Sometimes challenging or frightening
us with the consequences of looking

529
00:37:31,260 --> 00:37:33,860
at what we should not look at.

530
00:37:33,860 --> 00:37:36,220
To put that the other way round,

531
00:37:36,220 --> 00:37:41,780
artists have always claimed the
right to represent the forbidden.

532
00:37:45,740 --> 00:37:48,500
It's what I call
"the Medusa problem",

533
00:37:48,500 --> 00:37:52,740
and it's the heart of the practice
of art and the practice of looking.

534
00:37:52,740 --> 00:37:56,820
Artists have repeatedly put
before us sights that are,

535
00:37:56,820 --> 00:38:00,660
in some sense, disturbing
and even dangerous to us.

536
00:38:00,660 --> 00:38:03,940
Sometimes we're seduced into gazing.

537
00:38:03,940 --> 00:38:08,740
Other times, we are too disgusted
or terrified to look.

538
00:38:13,700 --> 00:38:17,540
You can see all this at work
to harrowing effect

539
00:38:17,540 --> 00:38:20,180
in a painting from the end
of the 20th century.

540
00:38:22,420 --> 00:38:26,620
In 1993, Scottish artist
Peter Howson was commissioned by

541
00:38:26,620 --> 00:38:31,340
the Times newspaper and the
Imperial War Museum to go to Bosnia

542
00:38:31,340 --> 00:38:33,180
as an official war artist.

543
00:38:38,660 --> 00:38:43,340
Of all the works he produced,
a scene of sexual assault was,

544
00:38:43,340 --> 00:38:47,060
for me and many others,
particularly troubling.

545
00:38:56,740 --> 00:38:58,580
When I first saw this painting,

546
00:38:58,580 --> 00:39:01,620
I found it almost impossible
to look at.

547
00:39:01,620 --> 00:39:05,380
It's a scene of a woman being raped,

548
00:39:05,380 --> 00:39:08,740
with her head down the
bowl of a lavatory.

549
00:39:08,740 --> 00:39:12,300
What makes it, I think,
more upsetting is the hints of

550
00:39:12,300 --> 00:39:15,900
the domestic environment
in which this is happening.

551
00:39:15,900 --> 00:39:20,300
The guy at the top is supporting
himself with his hand against

552
00:39:20,300 --> 00:39:22,780
one of her family pictures.

553
00:39:22,780 --> 00:39:25,260
But it's also voyeuristic.

554
00:39:25,260 --> 00:39:27,900
You can just see above his arm...

555
00:39:27,900 --> 00:39:30,340
..someone's looking in and watching,

556
00:39:30,340 --> 00:39:33,820
either in pleasure or in horror,
at what they're seeing.

557
00:39:37,780 --> 00:39:40,420
This painting was exhibited,

558
00:39:40,420 --> 00:39:44,900
but it was then, controversially,
not chosen to enter the permanent

559
00:39:44,900 --> 00:39:47,340
collection at
the Imperial War Museum.

560
00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:54,420
Some felt it had been judged
just too much to look at.

561
00:39:54,420 --> 00:39:57,900
But, when pressed,
the museum's director argued,

562
00:39:57,900 --> 00:40:02,620
echoing the Goya line, that it had
been excluded because Howson

563
00:40:02,620 --> 00:40:05,180
hadn't actually witnessed the scene.

564
00:40:07,940 --> 00:40:11,180
Howson's response was to say,
of course he hadn't witnessed this.

565
00:40:11,180 --> 00:40:14,700
I mean, how could anyone have
ethically witnessed that?

566
00:40:14,700 --> 00:40:20,580
But he had drawn on
his conversations with some of the

567
00:40:20,580 --> 00:40:25,460
many women who'd been the victims
of sexual violence in this war.

568
00:40:25,460 --> 00:40:29,380
And he added that many of the most
influential pieces of war art

569
00:40:29,380 --> 00:40:31,580
were done by people who hadn't
witnessed the scenes

570
00:40:31,580 --> 00:40:32,900
that they were showing.

571
00:40:32,900 --> 00:40:36,140
Picasso had not seen
the disaster at Guernica.

572
00:40:37,340 --> 00:40:41,620
I think for me, there's also
a bigger issue here.

573
00:40:41,620 --> 00:40:47,460
We now know that one of the most
terrible defining features

574
00:40:47,460 --> 00:40:52,780
of the Bosnian War was that it
systematically weaponised

575
00:40:52,780 --> 00:40:55,460
the rape of women.

576
00:40:55,460 --> 00:41:02,100
If we start to apply the criterion
of eyewitnessing what we're shown

577
00:41:02,100 --> 00:41:08,980
in paintings too literally,
we're going to end up not seeing

578
00:41:08,980 --> 00:41:15,260
or not being shown images
that we really should be

579
00:41:15,260 --> 00:41:16,980
keeping in our sights.

580
00:41:22,620 --> 00:41:26,260
There's a strong case to be made
that it's the cultural job

581
00:41:26,260 --> 00:41:31,260
of the artist to show us dangerous
truths and make us confront

582
00:41:31,260 --> 00:41:32,940
what we don't want to acknowledge.

583
00:41:35,820 --> 00:41:39,020
One in particular has certainly
done that extensively

584
00:41:39,020 --> 00:41:40,660
and single-mindedly,

585
00:41:40,660 --> 00:41:45,340
drawing so many usually
private ordeals into public view

586
00:41:45,340 --> 00:41:47,380
over 30 years of making art.

587
00:41:51,940 --> 00:41:56,100
People say that my work's
tediously narcissistic.

588
00:41:56,100 --> 00:41:57,540
They don't like my attitude.

589
00:41:57,540 --> 00:42:00,580
And guess what? I'm not making
my work for them, anyway.

590
00:42:06,180 --> 00:42:08,860
Tracey Emin's themes are not unique,

591
00:42:08,860 --> 00:42:13,380
but few artists have created such
a graphic body of work,

592
00:42:13,380 --> 00:42:20,780
dealing with sexual assault,
abortion, masturbation, grief, and,

593
00:42:20,780 --> 00:42:23,420
most recently,
her own cancer treatment.

594
00:42:29,020 --> 00:42:31,660
I met Tracey at her London studio.

595
00:42:38,380 --> 00:42:42,780
Tracey, do you think that
you have helped the people

596
00:42:42,780 --> 00:42:45,460
who look at what you do

597
00:42:45,460 --> 00:42:48,580
think about things they perhaps
don't want to think about,

598
00:42:48,580 --> 00:42:53,380
see things that they would
perhaps rather not see?

599
00:42:53,380 --> 00:42:55,140
I actually don't think that.

600
00:42:55,140 --> 00:42:59,260
I'd like that to happen,
but I think what actually happens

601
00:42:59,260 --> 00:43:02,500
is I reaffirm things for people who

602
00:43:02,500 --> 00:43:07,860
maybe don't have, or don't feel
they can express themselves.

603
00:43:07,860 --> 00:43:10,380
They're already thinking
like I'm thinking,

604
00:43:10,380 --> 00:43:13,300
but they actually don't know
how to express it.

605
00:43:13,300 --> 00:43:16,100
So, like, with My Bed, for example,
they say,

606
00:43:16,100 --> 00:43:19,780
"Yeah, I've been there.
I know how that feels."

607
00:43:19,780 --> 00:43:22,020
And it's just a matter of fact.

608
00:43:23,460 --> 00:43:26,500
So if I've been raped
and I say, "I've been raped,"

609
00:43:26,500 --> 00:43:31,820
I'm not admitting I've been raped.
It's a fact that I was raped.

610
00:43:31,820 --> 00:43:37,740
Or if I have an abortion, I'm not
to be made to feel ashamed of this,

611
00:43:37,740 --> 00:43:42,020
I'm not admitting something
or confessing anything.

612
00:43:42,020 --> 00:43:45,180
This is what I did
and this is what happened.

613
00:43:45,180 --> 00:43:48,820
Yeah, I mean, I suppose I think that
in a slightly different way from,

614
00:43:48,820 --> 00:43:52,340
in terms of writing, because, oh,
it must be over 20 years ago

615
00:43:52,340 --> 00:43:55,700
I wrote about being raped.
It didn't seem a confession,

616
00:43:55,700 --> 00:43:59,460
it just seemed that it was
kind of important to say,

617
00:43:59,460 --> 00:44:02,260
"This is what happened.
This is telling it straight."

618
00:44:02,260 --> 00:44:05,060
Yeah, but it's a bit like
falling over and then saying,

619
00:44:05,060 --> 00:44:08,100
"Oh, I'm fine, I'm OK."
Well, you're not.

620
00:44:08,100 --> 00:44:09,980
You just fell over.

621
00:44:09,980 --> 00:44:12,820
And when something awful
has happened to you in your life,

622
00:44:12,820 --> 00:44:16,260
you need to have a chance
for reflection.

623
00:44:16,260 --> 00:44:18,740
And often, society won't
let you have that

624
00:44:18,740 --> 00:44:21,340
because you're supposed to just
pick yourself up and brush...

625
00:44:21,340 --> 00:44:22,780
"Everything's OK."

626
00:44:22,780 --> 00:44:25,940
But obviously, it's not OK.
It's not all right.

627
00:44:33,940 --> 00:44:37,100
I'm still not sure I can work out
what's happening.

628
00:44:37,100 --> 00:44:39,220
Erm... Does it look like...

629
00:44:40,420 --> 00:44:42,260
..a person that's bleeding?

630
00:44:50,820 --> 00:44:52,860
Yeah, it's quite shocking
in its rawness.

631
00:44:52,860 --> 00:44:54,220
Er...

632
00:44:54,220 --> 00:44:58,100
It looks to me like she's having
some sort of miscarriage.

633
00:45:00,260 --> 00:45:02,220
Or she might have aborted a baby.

634
00:45:02,220 --> 00:45:04,780
There's a lot of people, I guess,
who have gone through that

635
00:45:04,780 --> 00:45:06,260
and they see that and think,

636
00:45:06,260 --> 00:45:09,500
"That's an experience
I wouldn't want to live again."

637
00:45:09,500 --> 00:45:11,300
Maybe a way for the artist
to process

638
00:45:11,300 --> 00:45:14,180
what she's been through as well.

639
00:45:14,180 --> 00:45:16,780
I think it's a very honest depiction
of how a woman might feel

640
00:45:16,780 --> 00:45:18,620
if she's just miscarried,
or a woman in pain.

641
00:45:18,620 --> 00:45:22,100
This is the reality that women face.

642
00:45:22,100 --> 00:45:24,420
It's not shocking, it just triggers
a lot of emotion,

643
00:45:24,420 --> 00:45:27,020
cos a lot of people
bottle things inside.

644
00:45:28,780 --> 00:45:32,500
It's quite a painful thing, and...

645
00:45:35,060 --> 00:45:36,740
..I suppose it's a way to grieve.

646
00:45:44,620 --> 00:45:50,940
Works of art that people
would have just wanted to ignore,

647
00:45:50,940 --> 00:45:55,540
you kind of made them un-ignorable,
I think. Hm.

648
00:45:55,540 --> 00:46:00,460
Would there be some things
that you think you could or would

649
00:46:00,460 --> 00:46:02,900
or should not ever represent?

650
00:46:02,900 --> 00:46:06,380
Yeah, definitely, without doubt.
Lots of things.

651
00:46:06,380 --> 00:46:10,020
People think that dangerous images
have to be violent

652
00:46:10,020 --> 00:46:12,260
or they have to be frightening,
or they have to be scary,

653
00:46:12,260 --> 00:46:14,300
or they have to be,
you know, whatever.

654
00:46:14,300 --> 00:46:16,940
But one of the most frightening
things I think at the moment

655
00:46:16,940 --> 00:46:20,580
is Instagram, where people
can morph their faces

656
00:46:20,580 --> 00:46:26,060
because it's...creating this
parallel world which people live in.

657
00:46:26,060 --> 00:46:31,140
And then the real world is perceived
as being ugly and not very nice.

658
00:46:31,140 --> 00:46:34,580
Yeah. For me, art is like
a real thing

659
00:46:34,580 --> 00:46:37,500
because I feel the emotion
come through it from the artist.

660
00:46:37,500 --> 00:46:41,860
And so there would be no picture,
let's say, no painting on display

661
00:46:41,860 --> 00:46:44,100
in the National Gallery
that you think,

662
00:46:44,100 --> 00:46:46,460
"I really don't think we ought
to be looking at this"?

663
00:46:46,460 --> 00:46:49,420
No, absolutely not. No.

664
00:46:49,420 --> 00:46:53,100
But I saw... It was years,
years ago - about 20 years ago -

665
00:46:53,100 --> 00:46:57,220
there was a film by Otto Muehl,
and it was a performance work

666
00:46:57,220 --> 00:47:01,220
where there's lots of people fucking
and doing stuff.

667
00:47:01,220 --> 00:47:04,620
And there was some women having a
rolling pin pushed up their vaginas

668
00:47:04,620 --> 00:47:06,780
and it was really over the top.

669
00:47:06,780 --> 00:47:09,500
And then this chicken...
TRACEY CLUCKS

670
00:47:09,500 --> 00:47:11,540
Otto Muehl picks the chicken up.

671
00:47:11,540 --> 00:47:13,780
And then I can't remember if
he actually bites its head off

672
00:47:13,780 --> 00:47:17,140
or breaks his neck. I might be
exaggerating, but the point is, I...

673
00:47:17,140 --> 00:47:22,060
When I saw this film, I screamed and
ran all around the gallery floor,

674
00:47:22,060 --> 00:47:25,380
screaming and hyperventilating.
It was too much for me.

675
00:47:25,380 --> 00:47:28,100
And now it's like
if I curated a show now,

676
00:47:28,100 --> 00:47:30,500
that's the number one work
that I would put in.

677
00:47:30,500 --> 00:47:33,940
It was so shocking.
It was so terrible.

678
00:47:33,940 --> 00:47:37,980
How many things in the world
make you feel like that...

679
00:47:39,620 --> 00:47:41,620
..that are inside a gallery?

680
00:47:41,620 --> 00:47:43,780
And that's the kind of thing
which, at one level,

681
00:47:43,780 --> 00:47:45,500
I think was pretty amazing.

682
00:47:45,500 --> 00:47:48,900
Another level, I think should never
be seen and never been made

683
00:47:48,900 --> 00:47:50,380
and never exist.

684
00:47:50,380 --> 00:47:55,340
Your kind of dilemma, presumably,
is that there was something

685
00:47:55,340 --> 00:47:59,220
about the film with the chicken's
head, that it was shocking,

686
00:47:59,220 --> 00:48:01,340
but it was sort of real.

687
00:48:01,340 --> 00:48:03,980
Yeah. If it's real, it's here,
and we have to accept it

688
00:48:03,980 --> 00:48:05,180
and we have to look at it.

689
00:48:05,180 --> 00:48:09,060
It wasn't invented.
It wasn't created. It is here.

690
00:48:13,460 --> 00:48:16,980
Tracey's philosophy sounds easy
to get behind,

691
00:48:16,980 --> 00:48:20,020
and part of me really is behind it.

692
00:48:20,020 --> 00:48:22,300
But is it too easy?

693
00:48:22,300 --> 00:48:25,540
Are there some human experiences,
even everyday ones,

694
00:48:25,540 --> 00:48:30,180
that are arguably beyond - or
possibly beneath - the realm of art?

695
00:48:31,820 --> 00:48:35,140
I'm about to fulfil a bit of
an ambition of mine,

696
00:48:35,140 --> 00:48:39,380
getting a good look around what's,
for me, forbidden territory.

697
00:48:44,820 --> 00:48:48,260
For most of us nowadays,
in Western culture and beyond,

698
00:48:48,260 --> 00:48:52,500
some bodily functions
are not for public show.

699
00:48:54,500 --> 00:48:57,180
But going right back to
the ancient world,

700
00:48:57,180 --> 00:49:01,140
there have been paintings,
sculptures and prints of people -

701
00:49:01,140 --> 00:49:03,700
men in particular - peeing.

702
00:49:11,220 --> 00:49:15,980
This is a pair of images,
and we've blown them up really big,

703
00:49:15,980 --> 00:49:19,980
because in the original, they're
only about three inches tall.

704
00:49:19,980 --> 00:49:22,820
And they're by the great
Dutch artist Rembrandt,

705
00:49:22,820 --> 00:49:25,420
done in the 1630s.

706
00:49:25,420 --> 00:49:27,940
They're, in a way, part of a bit
of a vogue

707
00:49:27,940 --> 00:49:30,180
for pissing images at the time.

708
00:49:30,180 --> 00:49:33,380
But Rembrandt's versions are
actually beautifully drawn.

709
00:49:33,380 --> 00:49:35,780
They're really top-of-the-range.

710
00:49:35,780 --> 00:49:39,860
This figure, in some ways,
is quite typical of the genre.

711
00:49:39,860 --> 00:49:44,100
You can see the stream of pee's
raising the dust from the ground,

712
00:49:44,100 --> 00:49:47,940
and it's as if he's saying to you
as you look at him,

713
00:49:47,940 --> 00:49:51,780
"I don't care if you look at me
peeing," or even, almost,

714
00:49:51,780 --> 00:49:54,060
"I'm pissing on you, mate."

715
00:49:54,060 --> 00:49:58,940
But that looks a bit different
when you put it together

716
00:49:58,940 --> 00:50:00,580
with the woman peeing.

717
00:50:00,580 --> 00:50:04,420
And she's crouching, she's hitched
her skirt up behind.

718
00:50:04,420 --> 00:50:08,140
You can see the pee coming out here,
but she's also pooing.

719
00:50:08,140 --> 00:50:12,140
But I think even more important
is the way she's looking around.

720
00:50:12,140 --> 00:50:16,020
She's wanting to check that
no-one's looking at her.

721
00:50:16,020 --> 00:50:18,820
And, of course,
what she's forgotten, in a way,

722
00:50:18,820 --> 00:50:21,140
is that we're looking at her.

723
00:50:21,140 --> 00:50:25,540
And you get the sense that
that guy's quite happy for us

724
00:50:25,540 --> 00:50:28,380
to be looking at what he's doing.

725
00:50:28,380 --> 00:50:31,020
We don't think we really
should be watching her.

726
00:50:41,300 --> 00:50:44,420
Rembrandt reminds us that
Marcel Duchamp,

727
00:50:44,420 --> 00:50:47,260
with his famous Fountain,

728
00:50:47,260 --> 00:50:50,340
and Piero Manzoni and his tins
of Artist's Shit

729
00:50:50,340 --> 00:50:54,380
were not the first, even if some
of the more memorable, artists

730
00:50:54,380 --> 00:50:58,060
to insist that what we by now
generally did in the bathroom

731
00:50:58,060 --> 00:51:00,700
could explicitly be referenced
in art.

732
00:51:02,420 --> 00:51:06,980
More recently, from
Helen Chadwick's Piss Flowers

733
00:51:06,980 --> 00:51:11,460
to Gilbert & George's
Naked Shit Pictures, artists have,

734
00:51:11,460 --> 00:51:15,340
for all sorts of reasons,
asked us to linger on subjects

735
00:51:15,340 --> 00:51:20,020
that usually make most of us
just go "Yuck!"

736
00:51:24,780 --> 00:51:28,540
But none of these works
make us really digest

737
00:51:28,540 --> 00:51:31,780
what goes on beneath
our sanitised exteriors

738
00:51:31,780 --> 00:51:34,820
as much as some created
15 years ago.

739
00:51:36,820 --> 00:51:40,420
I'm about to meet up with an artist
and sit down with him

740
00:51:40,420 --> 00:51:45,380
to watch two of his short films -
Shit and Sick.

741
00:51:45,380 --> 00:51:48,620
That's basically what they're
called. And it's not a metaphor.

742
00:51:48,620 --> 00:51:50,180
That's what they show.

743
00:51:57,380 --> 00:52:02,020
Martin Creed has famously affronted
many of the art-loving public

744
00:52:02,020 --> 00:52:07,140
since 2001, when he won
the Turner Prize for pieces

745
00:52:07,140 --> 00:52:11,540
including Work No 227:
The lights going on and off.

746
00:52:12,780 --> 00:52:18,900
I can't explain it, except to say
that the lights are definitely

747
00:52:18,900 --> 00:52:20,260
going on and off.

748
00:52:20,260 --> 00:52:24,980
Is the light bulb, really, a case of
the emperor's new clothes

749
00:52:24,980 --> 00:52:27,500
for the chattering classes?

750
00:52:27,500 --> 00:52:29,380
Yeah...
APPLAUSE

751
00:52:34,140 --> 00:52:35,860
Like Creed's lights,

752
00:52:35,860 --> 00:52:39,220
these works feature something
that occurs all the time.

753
00:52:39,220 --> 00:52:42,220
But in this case, he crossed a line.

754
00:52:44,300 --> 00:52:48,940
Many people would think this is
about as pointlessly shocking

755
00:52:48,940 --> 00:52:50,860
as it gets...

756
00:52:52,620 --> 00:52:56,060
..so I wanted to ask the sartorially
eccentric artist,

757
00:52:56,060 --> 00:52:58,300
who also wrote and performed
the soundtrack,

758
00:52:58,300 --> 00:53:00,940
what on earth he was trying to do.

759
00:53:08,700 --> 00:53:12,900
There's no question that
these ordinary human functions

760
00:53:12,900 --> 00:53:19,220
are excruciatingly hard to look at
when seen starkly on film.

761
00:53:20,260 --> 00:53:23,300
It's that moment when it actually
comes out - that's the moment

762
00:53:23,300 --> 00:53:24,820
when I gag slightly.

763
00:53:24,820 --> 00:53:26,140
# B

764
00:53:28,020 --> 00:53:29,940
# B-sharp

765
00:53:32,140 --> 00:53:34,540
# B-flat... #

766
00:53:34,540 --> 00:53:37,820
It's triumphantly holding the stage.

767
00:53:37,820 --> 00:53:40,140
HE LAUGHS

768
00:53:40,140 --> 00:53:41,940
You filmed this in Los Angeles?

769
00:53:41,940 --> 00:53:44,820
Yeah. So, they're on their own
in the studio?

770
00:53:44,820 --> 00:53:47,380
Well, there was one woman
who was operating the camera

771
00:53:47,380 --> 00:53:50,220
who was in the room. But could
you watch what was happening?

772
00:53:50,220 --> 00:53:52,740
Yeah, we had a kind of little
video monitor. Right.

773
00:53:52,740 --> 00:53:55,580
Cos I was very worried -
cos it's like, "What am I...?"

774
00:53:55,580 --> 00:53:57,860
What am I doing?!
Aye, what am I doing?

775
00:53:57,860 --> 00:54:00,940
Which is why I ask myself
a lot, really.

776
00:54:08,180 --> 00:54:10,660
Many artists use their own body,

777
00:54:10,660 --> 00:54:14,100
and yet...did you not think
that YOU ought to be shitting?

778
00:54:14,100 --> 00:54:16,740
It's funny that you put it that way
round, cos a lot of the time,

779
00:54:16,740 --> 00:54:19,940
I actually think I shouldn't be
doing this,

780
00:54:19,940 --> 00:54:23,740
in the sense that I should get
out of my own work -

781
00:54:23,740 --> 00:54:26,260
because of your own narcissism.

782
00:54:29,500 --> 00:54:32,580
So you're caught between voyeurism
and narcissism?

783
00:54:32,580 --> 00:54:34,780
Very much, yeah.

784
00:54:36,420 --> 00:54:40,660
Creed has also made a companion
piece to his Shit Film,

785
00:54:40,660 --> 00:54:43,980
which I found even harder
to stomach.

786
00:54:48,900 --> 00:54:51,340
WOMAN RETCHES

787
00:54:52,620 --> 00:54:55,500
MARY GROANS

788
00:54:55,500 --> 00:54:58,740
SHE RETCHES, LAUGHS

789
00:54:58,740 --> 00:54:59,780
Do you gag at this?

790
00:55:01,020 --> 00:55:05,060
Well, not any more.
I'm just so muted.

791
00:55:05,060 --> 00:55:09,620
This is the cinema version,
where there's ten scenes,

792
00:55:09,620 --> 00:55:12,780
and from the person coming on stage
to them vomiting

793
00:55:12,780 --> 00:55:14,620
becomes faster and faster.

794
00:55:22,180 --> 00:55:24,340
HE GROANS, RETCHES

795
00:55:25,380 --> 00:55:28,220
Ooh! Oh!

796
00:55:28,220 --> 00:55:30,260
VOMIT SPLASHES, MARY GROANS

797
00:55:31,860 --> 00:55:34,700
This film came out of doing talks,

798
00:55:34,700 --> 00:55:38,780
and I kept thinking that working
was like vomiting.

799
00:55:38,780 --> 00:55:40,980
It's like, you've got to get
this stuff out

800
00:55:40,980 --> 00:55:43,020
and it makes you feel better
if you get it out.

801
00:55:43,020 --> 00:55:46,220
And because I kept thinking
about that, I thought,

802
00:55:46,220 --> 00:55:49,460
"Wait a minute. If that is such
a good metaphor,

803
00:55:49,460 --> 00:55:52,540
"why don't I try and film
people vomiting?"

804
00:55:52,540 --> 00:55:55,940
MAN SNIFFLES, GROANS

805
00:55:55,940 --> 00:55:58,260
Both Sick and Shit
make me think. Mm-hm.

806
00:55:58,260 --> 00:56:03,500
These are everyday, ordinary bits
of bodily function,

807
00:56:03,500 --> 00:56:07,460
so why do I feel such discomfort?

808
00:56:07,460 --> 00:56:10,180
Cos we do look at this sort
of stuff,

809
00:56:10,180 --> 00:56:12,820
comedy and pantomime and carnival.

810
00:56:12,820 --> 00:56:16,540
Ancient Greek pottery has got
people vomming over it. Aye.

811
00:56:16,540 --> 00:56:18,980
Aye, but maybe a lot of that
is people basically doing

812
00:56:18,980 --> 00:56:20,500
what they're not supposed to do.

813
00:56:20,500 --> 00:56:22,700
You know, it's like being naughty
or whatever.

814
00:56:22,700 --> 00:56:26,660
You know, you're not supposed
to show people vomiting,

815
00:56:26,660 --> 00:56:29,460
so that's a good reason to do it.
HE LAUGHS

816
00:56:29,460 --> 00:56:31,740
You know? I mean, I think
there's something

817
00:56:31,740 --> 00:56:33,260
about the kind of ooziness.

818
00:56:33,260 --> 00:56:36,780
It's the idea that the body
is oozing stuff all the time -

819
00:56:36,780 --> 00:56:39,980
you know, sweat and blood and snot.

820
00:56:39,980 --> 00:56:43,180
And it's reminding you
that you're living a lie

821
00:56:43,180 --> 00:56:47,500
when you think the body is curated
and bounded and civilised

822
00:56:47,500 --> 00:56:52,100
and not oozy. It's saying,
"Remember, you're messy."

823
00:56:52,100 --> 00:56:54,740
Well, I mean, that's the way I feel!
THEY LAUGH

824
00:56:54,740 --> 00:56:57,020
WOMAN COUGHS

825
00:57:05,060 --> 00:57:08,460
I'm sure that a lot of people
will not be convinced

826
00:57:08,460 --> 00:57:14,380
that these works are, well,
worth it, but that's OK.

827
00:57:14,380 --> 00:57:17,660
There'd be something the matter
if we didn't disagree

828
00:57:17,660 --> 00:57:19,820
about art like Creed's.

829
00:57:22,180 --> 00:57:24,820
The questions that
all these works raise -

830
00:57:24,820 --> 00:57:29,700
about what it is to be a body, to
have a body and to look at bodies -

831
00:57:29,700 --> 00:57:32,540
are ones that we're bound
to clash over.

832
00:57:32,540 --> 00:57:37,820
And we have to be careful
not to sneer at prudish censors,

833
00:57:37,820 --> 00:57:41,900
as if they were simply repressive
or a bit unsophisticated.

834
00:57:43,700 --> 00:57:46,580
The truth is, we are all censors.

835
00:57:46,580 --> 00:57:50,420
There's nobody who thinks
that everything should be on show

836
00:57:50,420 --> 00:57:52,700
and there never has been.

837
00:57:52,700 --> 00:57:55,100
Anyway, it's not the art,

838
00:57:55,100 --> 00:57:58,140
it's not the block of marble,
a sludge of paint

839
00:57:58,140 --> 00:58:01,580
or a strip of celluloid
that we're arguing about.

840
00:58:01,580 --> 00:58:04,020
It's ourselves.

841
00:58:04,020 --> 00:58:07,860
What we really needed to be asking
is where each of us

842
00:58:07,860 --> 00:58:11,540
draws our own boundaries and why.

843
00:58:14,740 --> 00:58:17,220
Next time, I'm going beyond
the body...

844
00:58:17,220 --> 00:58:18,580
Drop it!

845
00:58:18,580 --> 00:58:23,020
..looking at forbidden art
addressing politics and religion,

846
00:58:23,020 --> 00:58:25,980
history and humanity.

847
00:59:05,700 --> 00:59:11,360
We live in hazardous times for art,
especially for statues.

848
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:15,440
A plinth is a dangerous
place to be.

849
00:59:16,800 --> 00:59:18,800
It might raise you up...

850
00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:20,480
Black lives matter.

851
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:24,680
..but I can tell you,
it makes you jolly vulnerable.

852
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:30,200
You're easy to topple.

853
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:35,280
There are big conflicts here.

854
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:40,400
A clash between those who are hurt
by the statues they see

855
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:44,760
in places of honour, and those
who value them as part of history,

856
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:47,880
however flawed that history is.

857
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:52,440
So pull it down
or retain and explain?

858
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:55,800
To see or not to see?

859
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:04,520
I want to look at the wider picture
to include all sorts of contested

860
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:08,000
art and ideas that many
find offensive

861
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:10,560
and feel should be forbidden.

862
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:17,680
When it became a bit of a circus,
I was almost sort of blamed

863
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:20,000
for trying to find a way
of monetising this thing

864
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:22,000
without any kind of moral
perspective.

865
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:24,440
I'm talking politics and religion,

866
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:28,880
asking about the relationship
between art, artists,

867
01:00:28,880 --> 01:00:30,960
and authorities of all sorts.

868
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:32,320
Drop it.

869
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:37,680
I want people to understand and to
think about their history more,

870
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:40,920
and I want us to
confront the past.

871
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:45,920
And I'm digging deeper into the long
history of what we've wanted

872
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:49,640
to look at and
what we've wanted to hide.

873
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:53,480
You've got eight or nine foot
paintings telling you all the stuff

874
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:56,880
that the tabloids would like you
to think is disgusting and vile.

875
01:00:59,040 --> 01:01:02,840
It's about history and hysteria,

876
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:05,880
division and dissent,

877
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:10,200
and about art's role in some
of the greatest social, political,

878
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:14,680
and religious conflicts
of our times, or of any.

879
01:01:32,480 --> 01:01:37,160
In the 21st century, all kinds
of artistic images have raised

880
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:41,440
the temperature of debates about
what should or should not be seen.

881
01:01:45,360 --> 01:01:49,440
In 2017, many people,
especially in America,

882
01:01:49,440 --> 01:01:55,440
thought one image featuring the US
comedian Kathy Griffin went too far.

883
01:02:11,880 --> 01:02:13,280
Is that Donald Trump?

884
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:17,760
That's Trump head?
Yeah, it looks like it.

885
01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:20,200
She's clearly not a Trump voter.

886
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:22,080
It's quite bloody, isn't it?

887
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:25,680
She's clearly trying to say
that the world would be better off

888
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:27,960
if he was dead.

889
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:30,200
It's deliberately offensive.

890
01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:33,400
It's barbaric, in a sense,
cutting people's heads off.

891
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:35,880
I think she went a step too far,

892
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,920
irrespective of your feelings
or opinions about Donald Trump.

893
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:46,800
You could see it as a riff on the
Greek myth of the hero Perseus,

894
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:50,240
slicing off the head
of the terrifying Medusa.

895
01:02:52,360 --> 01:02:57,000
But classical reference or not,
Griffin received death threats,

896
01:02:57,000 --> 01:03:01,240
of course, was investigated
by the FBI on suspicion

897
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:03,880
of threatening the president's
life, and was dropped

898
01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:05,520
by all her employers.

899
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:17,680
The man behind the camera
had a reputation

900
01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:20,240
for creating controversial images.

901
01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:28,240
But nothing Tyler Shields had done
before had inflamed so many people.

902
01:03:29,880 --> 01:03:32,080
Epic interview, take one.

903
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:33,160
BACKGROUND LAUGHTER

904
01:03:33,160 --> 01:03:36,800
I talked to the rather irreverent
photographer at home in LA

905
01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:40,360
to discover why he thought
this picture crossed

906
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:44,680
some people's boundaries
and how he and Kathy devised it.

907
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:47,320
We were already doing another shoot

908
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:50,120
and we had kind of
finished that shoot,

909
01:03:50,120 --> 01:03:51,880
and Kathy looks at me and goes,

910
01:03:51,880 --> 01:03:54,200
"I'd like to do something
political".

911
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:56,280
She said, "I want to do something
about Trump."

912
01:03:56,280 --> 01:04:01,200
And so the first thing that popped
into my head was this biblical image

913
01:04:01,200 --> 01:04:04,800
of a beheading,
followed by Greek mythology,

914
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:09,080
followed by kind of all these kind
of epic beheading paintings

915
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:11,160
and sculptures throughout history.

916
01:04:11,160 --> 01:04:14,640
And so we kind of make this mask
and it looks horrible.

917
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:17,600
And, you know, they fashion a wig
onto it, and I'm like,

918
01:04:17,600 --> 01:04:19,640
oh, this looks just god awful.

919
01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:22,240
And so I said,
"Let's cover it in blood."

920
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:24,440
This is fake blood,
just so you know.

921
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:27,200
I won't give away what we're doing,
but Tyler and I

922
01:04:27,200 --> 01:04:29,840
are not afraid to do
images that make noise.

923
01:04:29,840 --> 01:04:32,400
So I hold it back here.
Same exact...

924
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:33,920
That's it. OK.

925
01:04:33,920 --> 01:04:37,720
Rotate a little bit.
That's it right there. Pull it up.

926
01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:43,640
Drop it.

927
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:49,320
When I first saw the photograph,

928
01:04:49,320 --> 01:04:53,760
the image that came to mind
was the mythical scene

929
01:04:53,760 --> 01:04:56,640
of the Greek hero Perseus.

930
01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:59,800
But more than that, it was
the figure of Perseus,

931
01:04:59,800 --> 01:05:04,280
with the head of Trump holding up
a severed head

932
01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:06,400
with the features
of Hillary Clinton.

933
01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:09,520
And what then is kind
of surprising to me,

934
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:14,120
people looked at that Trump PR,
and some people,

935
01:05:14,120 --> 01:05:18,200
quite a lot of people said it wasn't
very nice, but it didn't cause

936
01:05:18,200 --> 01:05:20,200
this kind of outcry.

937
01:05:20,200 --> 01:05:25,400
Why do you think it was that
your and Kathy's photograph

938
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:28,680
just went...viral?

939
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:31,320
That's part of the power
of a photograph.

940
01:05:31,320 --> 01:05:35,600
If you do it as a painting,
it doesn't have the reality to it.

941
01:05:35,600 --> 01:05:37,360
I think that was a huge part of it.

942
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:39,920
There's also something
about the photograph.

943
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:43,360
You know, the fact that it looks
like a rubber mask with tomato

944
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:48,040
ketchup on it, means it doesn't get
the protection of any pretence

945
01:05:48,040 --> 01:05:50,080
at "great art".

946
01:05:50,080 --> 01:05:54,320
Absolutely. And I think, look,
photographs have only been

947
01:05:54,320 --> 01:05:58,200
considered "fine art"
since probably the '80s or '90s.

948
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:02,440
So, yeah, photography does not
have the same, as you said,

949
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:04,800
protection that paintings have.

950
01:06:04,800 --> 01:06:08,720
I mean, it angered people
like nothing I've ever seen,

951
01:06:08,720 --> 01:06:10,960
but worth it, all worth it.

952
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:13,040
Wouldn't change a thing.

953
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:18,360
Do you think that images
can go too far?

954
01:06:18,360 --> 01:06:20,040
Erm...

955
01:06:20,040 --> 01:06:22,080
I don't know, that's a tough one.

956
01:06:22,080 --> 01:06:26,840
It's tough to say because
I'm sure the first time there was

957
01:06:26,840 --> 01:06:30,480
a nude photograph taken,
people were like, "This is too far,"

958
01:06:30,480 --> 01:06:35,000
you know, cut to you've got a
comedian beheading a president

959
01:06:35,000 --> 01:06:37,200
and then people are like,
that's too far.

960
01:06:37,200 --> 01:06:41,280
If you look at all of history,
there would be so many examples

961
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:46,560
of a time where something comes out
and people are absolutely appalled

962
01:06:46,560 --> 01:06:49,880
by it, only to then
later celebrate it.

963
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:03,000
As Tyler says,
the public's opinions about art

964
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:06,000
can change radically
across generations.

965
01:07:08,120 --> 01:07:10,760
Works can go in both directions,

966
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:12,880
from loathed to loved

967
01:07:12,880 --> 01:07:15,520
and from loved to loathed.

968
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:17,760
OVER TANNOY: Black lives matter.

969
01:07:19,560 --> 01:07:23,200
As we see in our own era's
statue wars.

970
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:29,200
It's wrong to desecrate a
statue of Winston Churchill.

971
01:07:29,200 --> 01:07:33,360
But ours are not
the first of these wars.

972
01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:36,640
Art has been weaponised
in ideological conflicts before.

973
01:07:36,640 --> 01:07:37,880
HUBBUB

974
01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:47,800
In 1930s Germany, the Nazis toured
a blockbuster exhibition

975
01:07:47,800 --> 01:07:50,920
showcasing many of the
great modernist masters

976
01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:53,160
of the early 20th century.

977
01:07:53,160 --> 01:07:54,760
But with a twist.

978
01:07:56,120 --> 01:07:59,240
The aim was not to
celebrate their genius,

979
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:01,480
but to expose their depravity.

980
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:09,640
That included the works
of Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall

981
01:08:09,640 --> 01:08:14,080
and Paul Klee, and whole
artistic movements

982
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,920
like Dadaism and Cubism
or Primitivism.

983
01:08:20,560 --> 01:08:23,920
Now, of course, the Nazis
were caught in the trap that many

984
01:08:23,920 --> 01:08:27,440
censors are caught in,
that if you want to show people

985
01:08:27,440 --> 01:08:30,480
what they shouldn't look at
and enjoy, then you actually

986
01:08:30,480 --> 01:08:33,400
have to show it to them first.

987
01:08:33,400 --> 01:08:37,760
And they even produced a kind
of commemorative brochure

988
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:41,680
of what was called
"degenerate kunst".

989
01:08:41,680 --> 01:08:44,120
Kunst there - art.

990
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:47,800
It's written in kind of red crayon
and put in inverted commas

991
01:08:47,800 --> 01:08:50,360
so you knew that it wasn't
art, really.

992
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:53,080
And on the first page
of illustrations,

993
01:08:53,080 --> 01:08:57,960
there's a portrait by the Jewish
artist, Marc Chagall, of a rabbi.

994
01:08:58,960 --> 01:09:04,360
But it isn't only the horribly
predictable targets

995
01:09:04,360 --> 01:09:06,480
of Jews and Bolshevists.

996
01:09:06,480 --> 01:09:10,560
What the campaign
against degenerate art is going for

997
01:09:10,560 --> 01:09:13,600
is anything that appears
to undermine

998
01:09:13,600 --> 01:09:18,040
German cultural traditions, the
traditions of German artistic

999
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:22,120
realism or German morality.

1000
01:09:31,480 --> 01:09:35,480
One of the main culprits on show
was Otto Dix.

1001
01:09:42,640 --> 01:09:47,760
His determinedly unheroic depiction
of the German First World War

1002
01:09:47,760 --> 01:09:52,200
trenches was something
the Nazis wanted verboten.

1003
01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:04,480
They're an extraordinarily
powerful collection

1004
01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:09,200
of what was often seen as very
aggressively anti-war images.

1005
01:10:13,360 --> 01:10:17,320
Perhaps my kind of,
it's hard to say, favourite,

1006
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:22,680
this image of two skulls, teeth
partly, they're partly fallen out,

1007
01:10:22,680 --> 01:10:25,480
eye sockets oozing away.

1008
01:10:25,480 --> 01:10:27,520
And they're about as far from human

1009
01:10:27,520 --> 01:10:30,240
as you can imagine a human being
could get,

1010
01:10:30,240 --> 01:10:32,960
except that just underneath
one skull,

1011
01:10:32,960 --> 01:10:36,800
there is his name tag with his name
- Muller.

1012
01:10:45,160 --> 01:10:49,880
In the Nazis' exhibition, the work
of Dix and his fellow degenerates

1013
01:10:49,880 --> 01:10:54,960
was displayed crammed together,
surrounded by defamatory slogans.

1014
01:10:56,320 --> 01:11:02,240
Everything possible was done
to say that this was not art.

1015
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:07,120
And the organisers
claimed it a success.

1016
01:11:07,120 --> 01:11:09,440
They boast that in Munich alone,

1017
01:11:09,440 --> 01:11:12,240
over two million people
came to see it.

1018
01:11:15,160 --> 01:11:17,280
But I can't help thinking
that propaganda like this

1019
01:11:17,280 --> 01:11:19,280
is never quite so simple,

1020
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:23,960
and there will have been some people
who'll have gone away from here

1021
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:27,880
and couldn't help but be affected

1022
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:32,920
by the way that war
is shown for what it is,

1023
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,720
as the disintegration
of the human being.

1024
01:11:36,720 --> 01:11:41,400
And that, like all attempts
to censor or to remove things

1025
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:44,360
from our vision,
it always risks backfiring.

1026
01:11:50,440 --> 01:11:55,200
One irony here is that Dix
and many of the other banned artists

1027
01:11:55,200 --> 01:11:59,560
have since become some of the most
revered and expensive in the West.

1028
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:05,640
Tables are often turned like this,

1029
01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:08,920
with artists demanding
we look at subjects

1030
01:12:08,920 --> 01:12:11,960
that first defy
the orthodoxy of the day

1031
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:14,240
but, in time, are highly acclaimed.

1032
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:22,720
That might be Anselm Kiefer
in the 1960s performing the banned

1033
01:12:22,720 --> 01:12:26,880
Nazi salute to challenge Germans
to face up to their history.

1034
01:12:31,960 --> 01:12:35,200
Or Jean-Michel Basquiat
in 1980s America,

1035
01:12:35,200 --> 01:12:37,560
marking the death of a black man

1036
01:12:37,560 --> 01:12:40,120
after a confrontation
with the US police.

1037
01:12:46,240 --> 01:12:49,840
Or one gay artist in 1990s Britain

1038
01:12:49,840 --> 01:12:53,480
challenging prejudice
around homosexuality and Aids

1039
01:12:53,480 --> 01:12:56,200
with a disconcerting frankness.

1040
01:12:59,480 --> 01:13:02,520
I found this Christ in
the gift shop in Hastings,

1041
01:13:02,520 --> 01:13:06,720
and the condom is exactly the same
colour as the flesh tints in there

1042
01:13:06,720 --> 01:13:08,200
with him.

1043
01:13:08,200 --> 01:13:11,880
And, I suppose, it's a comment
on the current Catholic practice

1044
01:13:11,880 --> 01:13:14,720
of condemning contraception,
which in terms of the spread

1045
01:13:14,720 --> 01:13:17,560
of the HIV virus,
is actually catastrophic.

1046
01:13:20,520 --> 01:13:22,960
Quiet everywhere.

1047
01:13:22,960 --> 01:13:26,920
Derek Jarman was a writer,
film-maker and artist.

1048
01:13:26,920 --> 01:13:30,640
MUSIC: How Soon Is Now?
by The Smiths

1049
01:13:30,640 --> 01:13:33,480
For years, he'd taken aim
at homophobia.

1050
01:13:33,480 --> 01:13:36,640
But with the Aids crisis,
and later his own diagnosis,

1051
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:38,640
it became his prime target.

1052
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:44,960
At the time, being HIV positive
was seen as a death sentence.

1053
01:13:46,480 --> 01:13:51,280
And for years, the tabloid press
had viciously reinforced prejudices

1054
01:13:51,280 --> 01:13:53,680
against same sex relationships.

1055
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:57,760
Fleet Street takes the view

1056
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:02,560
that homosexuality
is abnormal, unnatural, a bit evil.

1057
01:14:02,560 --> 01:14:04,200
It is a gay plague.

1058
01:14:04,200 --> 01:14:06,680
# How can you say

1059
01:14:06,680 --> 01:14:09,520
# I go about things the wrong way?

1060
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:12,800
# I am human and I need... #

1061
01:14:12,800 --> 01:14:17,680
In his final years, Jarman took
to huge canvases to make his themes,

1062
01:14:17,680 --> 01:14:21,320
then still treated as forbidden
by many in the mainstream,

1063
01:14:21,320 --> 01:14:23,760
unignorable.

1064
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:29,120
Today, these particular works
are rarely seen,

1065
01:14:29,120 --> 01:14:31,640
but Manchester Art Gallery gave me
a preview

1066
01:14:31,640 --> 01:14:34,000
shortly before a new exhibition.

1067
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:40,000
I met with writer Jon Savage,
a friend of Jarman's,

1068
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:42,040
to discuss their impact.

1069
01:14:47,760 --> 01:14:50,680
I can't remember where, but I do
remember seeing this one

1070
01:14:50,680 --> 01:14:52,600
and getting very upset by it.

1071
01:14:54,640 --> 01:14:59,640
It's actually an incredible picture
because it's obviously a pun.

1072
01:14:59,640 --> 01:15:02,040
It says, "Fuck me blind."

1073
01:15:02,040 --> 01:15:05,640
Yes, I was... Sorry!
..letting you say that, Mary!

1074
01:15:05,640 --> 01:15:08,480
I'll say it again,
"Fuck me blind."

1075
01:15:08,480 --> 01:15:12,880
But now I can kind of get
a dark humour out of it.

1076
01:15:12,880 --> 01:15:14,560
I just look at it and I think...

1077
01:15:14,560 --> 01:15:17,840
Well, I remember having a
conversation with Derek about this,

1078
01:15:17,840 --> 01:15:20,920
and I said, "Well, Derek, you know,
you've got HIV, this is pretty bad."

1079
01:15:20,920 --> 01:15:23,640
He said, "John, it's not great,
you're right.

1080
01:15:23,640 --> 01:15:26,000
"But you know what?
I had fun with my cock."

1081
01:15:26,000 --> 01:15:30,280
So I see it as a kind of
double meaning.

1082
01:15:30,280 --> 01:15:35,440
So the end of his life, he's also
saying, "I am going blind."

1083
01:15:35,440 --> 01:15:37,120
Yes.

1084
01:15:37,120 --> 01:15:40,080
Also what I get out of both
these pictures - anger.

1085
01:15:40,080 --> 01:15:42,880
A lot of anger. He was furious.

1086
01:15:42,880 --> 01:15:46,480
Those bits of red, that's the anger.

1087
01:15:46,480 --> 01:15:50,280
And also that's a kind of...blood.

1088
01:15:50,280 --> 01:15:52,440
And of course, his whole
body was a mess,

1089
01:15:52,440 --> 01:15:54,320
his whole system was a mess.

1090
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:56,960
And it is a kind of erasure, really.

1091
01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:00,760
It's saying, my powers are going,
I know they're going.

1092
01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:04,120
I mean, in a way, he's saying,

1093
01:16:04,120 --> 01:16:06,880
"I'm going to show you
Aids differently."

1094
01:16:06,880 --> 01:16:11,800
And if you come over to the other
one, you see that morphine here,

1095
01:16:11,800 --> 01:16:15,200
morphine written twice
across the painting,

1096
01:16:15,200 --> 01:16:20,440
is over tabloid filth, literally,

1097
01:16:20,440 --> 01:16:24,000
and, "Filth. Storm over EastEnder
rent boy." Scandal.

1098
01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:27,360
"Get this garbage off TV."

1099
01:16:27,360 --> 01:16:31,640
Well, in a very direct way, that's
his victory over the tabloids.

1100
01:16:32,840 --> 01:16:38,760
And these paintings are at,
you know, they're at big scale.

1101
01:16:38,760 --> 01:16:42,800
I mean, it's an insistence
on not being invisible, right?

1102
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,360
Yes, because you've got
eight or nine foot paintings

1103
01:16:45,360 --> 01:16:47,800
telling you what's going on
in his life.

1104
01:16:47,800 --> 01:16:51,040
Yeah. Telling you all the stuff
that the tabloids would

1105
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:53,280
like you to think is
disgusting and vile,

1106
01:16:53,280 --> 01:16:55,520
but is again a part of reality

1107
01:16:55,520 --> 01:16:59,560
and the reality for a lot of gay men
in particular

1108
01:16:59,560 --> 01:17:01,640
during that period.

1109
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:06,440
So, you know, these are,
they are telling a truth.

1110
01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:16,440
30 years on, Jarman's battles
have not entirely been won,

1111
01:17:16,440 --> 01:17:20,840
but by and large, it's the
homophobia he railed against

1112
01:17:20,840 --> 01:17:23,320
that's now, in Britain,
unacceptable.

1113
01:17:28,640 --> 01:17:32,640
But I'm struck that an image made
not long after Jarman's paintings,

1114
01:17:32,640 --> 01:17:36,320
also fingering the tabloid press,

1115
01:17:36,320 --> 01:17:41,120
is still one many feel should never
have been openly displayed.

1116
01:17:44,680 --> 01:17:49,520
In 1997, London's Royal Academy
staged a contemporary art show

1117
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:51,800
that's become legendary.

1118
01:17:51,800 --> 01:17:54,880
Provocatively titled Sensation,

1119
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:59,560
it showcased the collection of
advertising mogul and art collector

1120
01:17:59,560 --> 01:18:05,160
Charles Saatchi, who'd bought up
many works by young British artists.

1121
01:18:06,440 --> 01:18:10,280
Conceived and curated to draw
in the crowds, it featured

1122
01:18:10,280 --> 01:18:14,640
Marc Quinn's frozen cast of his
head filled with his own blood,

1123
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:18,400
Jake and Dinos Chapman's
child mannequins

1124
01:18:18,400 --> 01:18:21,520
with grotesque genitalia
on their faces,

1125
01:18:21,520 --> 01:18:25,320
Damien Hirst's
shark in formaldehyde,

1126
01:18:25,320 --> 01:18:29,920
and Tracey Emin's tent -
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With.

1127
01:18:36,080 --> 01:18:38,480
All of them were controversial.

1128
01:18:38,480 --> 01:18:40,760
But even before the show opened,

1129
01:18:40,760 --> 01:18:44,360
there were demands that one piece
in particular

1130
01:18:44,360 --> 01:18:46,560
should not be put on display.

1131
01:18:57,600 --> 01:19:00,760
TV NEWS PRESENTER: A picture of the
Moors murderer, Myra Hindley,

1132
01:19:00,760 --> 01:19:03,480
made with children's handprints
has been vandalised.

1133
01:19:03,480 --> 01:19:06,920
The painting, part of the Royal
Academy Sensation exhibition,

1134
01:19:06,920 --> 01:19:09,160
had paint and an egg thrown at it.

1135
01:19:11,400 --> 01:19:15,480
The protest group Mothers Against
Murder urged a boycott of the show.

1136
01:19:15,480 --> 01:19:17,880
The mother of one of
Hindley's victims said

1137
01:19:17,880 --> 01:19:19,880
the picture was disgusting.

1138
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:26,440
25 years later,
the portrait still divides us.

1139
01:19:28,760 --> 01:19:31,200
That's a creepy picture.

1140
01:19:31,200 --> 01:19:32,680
She's pretty.

1141
01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:36,520
Is this Myra Hindley?

1142
01:19:36,520 --> 01:19:39,640
Yes, she was an evil woman,
wasn't she?

1143
01:19:39,640 --> 01:19:42,880
She was, like, one of those
child killers,

1144
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:45,160
and I believe she was
from the 1960s?

1145
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:50,160
So these are, like, hands?

1146
01:19:51,720 --> 01:19:54,280
Yeah. Oh, that's, that's grim.

1147
01:19:54,280 --> 01:19:57,000
That's probably quite offensive
to victims.

1148
01:19:57,000 --> 01:19:59,320
Maybe a bit unnecessary.

1149
01:19:59,320 --> 01:20:01,360
That's his brush.

1150
01:20:01,360 --> 01:20:03,200
That's the artist's brush.

1151
01:20:03,200 --> 01:20:06,880
Wants to make a point
about this image, which is iconic,

1152
01:20:06,880 --> 01:20:09,640
and I don't think it's there to
shock. I think it's to reformat

1153
01:20:09,640 --> 01:20:13,240
the image in people's minds and make
them think about it again.

1154
01:20:13,240 --> 01:20:16,640
It almost seems like they're
kind of celebrating her.

1155
01:20:16,640 --> 01:20:18,680
If I was a parent of one
of the deceased children,

1156
01:20:18,680 --> 01:20:20,520
I definitely wouldn't want
to see this.

1157
01:20:21,600 --> 01:20:24,520
This is purely shock to sell.

1158
01:20:24,520 --> 01:20:29,320
Then people with money, like
Saatchi, buy it and then it becomes

1159
01:20:29,320 --> 01:20:32,400
a commodity to keep
because it's worth money.

1160
01:20:32,400 --> 01:20:37,160
If it was one of my children, I
would have ripped it down, I think.

1161
01:20:41,000 --> 01:20:44,400
Marcus Harvey, who created "Myra",

1162
01:20:44,400 --> 01:20:46,960
has rarely spoken publicly about it.

1163
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:52,160
But he agreed to talk to me
at his South London studio,

1164
01:20:52,160 --> 01:20:55,760
where he reflected on some of the
moral dilemmas about the piece.

1165
01:20:57,360 --> 01:21:00,040
I'd sort of been through all the
anxiety about whether I should be

1166
01:21:00,040 --> 01:21:02,120
playing with this subject,
had I any right to do that?

1167
01:21:02,120 --> 01:21:04,760
All that kind of stuff.
And it stayed in my studio

1168
01:21:04,760 --> 01:21:08,200
for a couple of years
under polythene,

1169
01:21:08,200 --> 01:21:11,280
accumulating this sort of dust,
fading.

1170
01:21:11,280 --> 01:21:16,440
And I think Saatchi saw
a transparency of it and said,

1171
01:21:16,440 --> 01:21:17,760
"Oh, I'll have that."

1172
01:21:17,760 --> 01:21:21,000
So its first display was
in the Sensation exhibition? Yeah.

1173
01:21:21,000 --> 01:21:25,680
You talk about feeling anxious
about the project... Mm-hm.

1174
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:27,720
..but what point
were you wanting to make?

1175
01:21:27,720 --> 01:21:30,160
That people would have to
acknowledge their own attraction

1176
01:21:30,160 --> 01:21:35,160
to the image, their own
excitement around the image,

1177
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:40,680
not just the revulsion and the
ease of its branding - evil,

1178
01:21:40,680 --> 01:21:42,760
don't like, lock it up.

1179
01:21:42,760 --> 01:21:46,560
And also, I understood
there was something

1180
01:21:46,560 --> 01:21:49,040
inappropriate about my...

1181
01:21:50,880 --> 01:21:55,520
..attachment to it, that there was
a sexual attachment on my behalf

1182
01:21:55,520 --> 01:21:58,800
towards the image
that was very uncomfortable.

1183
01:21:58,800 --> 01:22:02,960
And I'm sort of slightly
disturbed that it was in me,

1184
01:22:02,960 --> 01:22:07,040
but there was something quite
secretly stimulating,

1185
01:22:07,040 --> 01:22:09,760
attractive at some, on some level.

1186
01:22:09,760 --> 01:22:13,000
So there was a message about
the complacency and the hypocrisy

1187
01:22:13,000 --> 01:22:14,840
of consuming it.

1188
01:22:14,840 --> 01:22:17,520
But you don't choose to do this

1189
01:22:17,520 --> 01:22:21,360
with casts of children's hands

1190
01:22:21,360 --> 01:22:23,480
unless you're wanting
to say something.

1191
01:22:23,480 --> 01:22:27,960
There was something about, there
was something about that image

1192
01:22:27,960 --> 01:22:31,080
I felt was important to sort of
bring into conversation,

1193
01:22:31,080 --> 01:22:34,640
to sort of have the,
the humanity and the...

1194
01:22:36,000 --> 01:22:38,800
..the loss and the tragedy,

1195
01:22:38,800 --> 01:22:42,480
sort of, present, fizzing at the
same time as this thing that we'd

1196
01:22:42,480 --> 01:22:45,240
consumed by the metric tonne
for, like, decades

1197
01:22:45,240 --> 01:22:48,520
and decades, and millions
and millions of pounds made.

1198
01:22:48,520 --> 01:22:50,960
So in a sense, you're kind of,

1199
01:22:50,960 --> 01:22:54,120
you've got one eye on the tabloids
for profiting out of this.

1200
01:22:54,120 --> 01:22:57,080
Yeah, yeah. When there is a sort of
signal crime like this,

1201
01:22:57,080 --> 01:23:00,320
editors just get on their knees
and thank the sweet Lord God

1202
01:23:00,320 --> 01:23:04,000
for this kind of horror because
it's going to make them money.

1203
01:23:04,000 --> 01:23:06,840
They're not there to sort of
banish it and look after us,

1204
01:23:06,840 --> 01:23:10,560
they're there to sort of bring it on
and plenty of it, please.

1205
01:23:10,560 --> 01:23:14,520
But when an artist does it,
they try to kind of come over

1206
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:17,000
all kind of like the beadle
in Dickens

1207
01:23:17,000 --> 01:23:20,280
when Oliver Twist asks
for some more. "What?!"

1208
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:23,480
What would you say, though,
or what did you say,

1209
01:23:23,480 --> 01:23:26,680
to the objection

1210
01:23:26,680 --> 01:23:32,440
that this was so hurtful to the
parents of the murdered children,

1211
01:23:32,440 --> 01:23:35,840
that it should, you know, it should
not have been displayed like that?

1212
01:23:35,840 --> 01:23:37,520
Did you have an answer to that?

1213
01:23:37,520 --> 01:23:40,760
I had no hand in how it
was displayed or consumed.

1214
01:23:40,760 --> 01:23:44,880
I had hoped that this would find
a quiet place to be exhibited,

1215
01:23:44,880 --> 01:23:47,480
where it would be respectful.

1216
01:23:47,480 --> 01:23:51,320
So when it became a kind of bit
of a circus, I was almost sort of

1217
01:23:51,320 --> 01:23:54,240
blamed for trying to find a way
of monetising this thing

1218
01:23:54,240 --> 01:23:56,400
without any kind of
moral perspective.

1219
01:23:56,400 --> 01:24:01,080
If someone comes up to you and says,

1220
01:24:01,080 --> 01:24:04,680
"I looked at that Myra piece
and I felt really hurt,

1221
01:24:04,680 --> 01:24:09,800
"I felt offended and I felt upset",

1222
01:24:09,800 --> 01:24:11,800
what would you say to them?

1223
01:24:11,800 --> 01:24:15,880
I'd say, "Well, what exactly
upsets you about it?"

1224
01:24:15,880 --> 01:24:19,120
And I say, "I've lost a child."

1225
01:24:19,120 --> 01:24:21,000
Yeah, but...

1226
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:26,240
This isn't a celebration
of a...of that event.

1227
01:24:26,240 --> 01:24:29,720
This is drawing attention to
the gravity of that event,

1228
01:24:29,720 --> 01:24:33,680
and is not for a magazine
or a tabloid or even a TV programme,

1229
01:24:33,680 --> 01:24:36,360
where this image is widespread.

1230
01:24:36,360 --> 01:24:39,360
I make images of images, you know,

1231
01:24:39,360 --> 01:24:41,840
I'm not sort of witness
to the event.

1232
01:24:41,840 --> 01:24:47,800
I make images of images that have
sort of stained my memory.

1233
01:24:47,800 --> 01:24:50,320
So you're reminding us to think
about images in a new way?

1234
01:24:50,320 --> 01:24:53,400
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
I suppose it's my job as an artist.

1235
01:25:01,520 --> 01:25:06,880
Marcus is asking us to think
about what the power of an image is

1236
01:25:06,880 --> 01:25:08,720
and what it is for.

1237
01:25:08,720 --> 01:25:11,480
These are old
and important questions.

1238
01:25:12,680 --> 01:25:16,640
And it's been well beyond the
art world and the tabloid press

1239
01:25:16,640 --> 01:25:20,240
in a very different context
where the biggest battles

1240
01:25:20,240 --> 01:25:22,160
have been fought.

1241
01:25:22,160 --> 01:25:24,400
They've been about God.

1242
01:25:29,080 --> 01:25:32,920
In the City of London, in the
Chapel of the Mercers Company,

1243
01:25:32,920 --> 01:25:37,920
there is an extraordinarily rare
piece of once-forbidden sculpture.

1244
01:25:40,960 --> 01:25:44,080
A 500-year-old statue of Jesus.

1245
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:55,240
In the 1500s, the Protestant
state outlawed the display

1246
01:25:55,240 --> 01:25:57,040
of images like this.

1247
01:25:57,040 --> 01:26:01,080
So when the statue was
discovered in the 1950s,

1248
01:26:01,080 --> 01:26:03,520
it was a remarkable find.

1249
01:26:12,720 --> 01:26:15,440
This is a really emotive image.

1250
01:26:15,440 --> 01:26:19,400
Jesus is dead,
his head has fallen back,

1251
01:26:19,400 --> 01:26:22,560
his mouth is open.

1252
01:26:22,560 --> 01:26:26,160
What we can pick out
is the suffering, the wounds.

1253
01:26:26,160 --> 01:26:30,080
One of the thorns from the crown
of thorns has gone into his eyebrow,

1254
01:26:30,080 --> 01:26:34,280
and here, there's a really violent
gash in his side

1255
01:26:34,280 --> 01:26:36,640
and blood is streaming out of it.

1256
01:26:38,080 --> 01:26:43,320
But Jesus appears to have wounds
that go far beyond

1257
01:26:43,320 --> 01:26:45,160
what we read about in the Bible.

1258
01:26:45,160 --> 01:26:47,280
The whole crown of thorns has gone,

1259
01:26:47,280 --> 01:26:49,480
but that hand has gone,

1260
01:26:49,480 --> 01:26:52,920
this arm has gone,
and he has no feet.

1261
01:26:52,920 --> 01:26:56,560
It almost feels
as if he's been maimed.

1262
01:27:01,240 --> 01:27:05,920
This extra damage was almost
certainly inflicted in the

1263
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:10,600
mid-16th century statue wars
between Protestants and Catholics.

1264
01:27:14,840 --> 01:27:19,320
Tens of thousands of figurative
art works right across Europe

1265
01:27:19,320 --> 01:27:22,600
were destroyed or defaced
by Protestants

1266
01:27:22,600 --> 01:27:27,000
who saw this sort of sacred art
as idol worship.

1267
01:27:30,080 --> 01:27:33,360
It's easy to write this off
as a form of vandalism,

1268
01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:37,680
but actually, it was part of some
really important debates

1269
01:27:37,680 --> 01:27:42,440
about what religious images were for
and why they might be dangerous.

1270
01:27:45,200 --> 01:27:47,360
One central question was,

1271
01:27:47,360 --> 01:27:51,800
what were you doing when you
worshipped an image like this?

1272
01:27:51,800 --> 01:27:55,280
Were you seeing beyond
the image to God?

1273
01:27:55,280 --> 01:27:59,920
Or were you actually worshipping
a lump of limestone?

1274
01:28:03,400 --> 01:28:08,040
That's also part of an even
bigger debate

1275
01:28:08,040 --> 01:28:12,720
about how religions make God,
which is invisible,

1276
01:28:12,720 --> 01:28:15,400
visible to us?

1277
01:28:15,400 --> 01:28:18,440
And what's the role of the
artist in doing this?

1278
01:28:18,440 --> 01:28:21,680
There's hardly been a religion
in the history of the world

1279
01:28:21,680 --> 01:28:25,920
that hasn't argued and thought
about just that kind of question.

1280
01:28:37,720 --> 01:28:41,800
In recent years, it has often
been assumed that the sharpest focus

1281
01:28:41,800 --> 01:28:45,760
of these debates and the most
extreme form of prohibition

1282
01:28:45,760 --> 01:28:48,400
is and has been in Islam.

1283
01:28:50,720 --> 01:28:54,400
Its mosques don't feature
figurative art,

1284
01:28:54,400 --> 01:28:57,840
but often use elaborate calligraphy
as a form of decoration

1285
01:28:57,840 --> 01:29:00,760
and a way of representing
religious truth.

1286
01:29:05,720 --> 01:29:08,800
Meanwhile,
over the last few decades,

1287
01:29:08,800 --> 01:29:12,680
satirical cartoons of the Prophet
Muhammad published in Denmark

1288
01:29:12,680 --> 01:29:17,000
and France have provoked
protest and violence.

1289
01:29:19,360 --> 01:29:23,200
Many people imagine
that all images of the Prophet

1290
01:29:23,200 --> 01:29:25,880
have always been forbidden.

1291
01:29:26,920 --> 01:29:28,880
It's not that simple.

1292
01:29:32,200 --> 01:29:37,440
There is, in fact, a rich history
in parts of the Islamic world

1293
01:29:37,440 --> 01:29:42,360
of representing Muhammad, especially
in illustrated manuscripts.

1294
01:29:44,480 --> 01:29:48,440
The University of Edinburgh holds
one now rare set

1295
01:29:48,440 --> 01:29:51,880
made in the early 14th century at
the Mongol Court

1296
01:29:51,880 --> 01:29:54,320
in what's now Iran.

1297
01:29:55,480 --> 01:29:59,960
I met with Fozia Bora,
a specialist in Islamic history,

1298
01:29:59,960 --> 01:30:02,000
to explore them further.

1299
01:30:05,240 --> 01:30:08,800
So this is an image from the
life of the Prophet Muhammad

1300
01:30:08,800 --> 01:30:14,040
where, as a young man,
he's in a caravan with his uncle

1301
01:30:14,040 --> 01:30:15,920
travelling into Syria.

1302
01:30:15,920 --> 01:30:18,120
As you can see, everybody
in the image

1303
01:30:18,120 --> 01:30:20,200
is looking towards this figure.

1304
01:30:20,200 --> 01:30:24,200
Even the camels are looking
at Muhammad. Even the camels, yeah.

1305
01:30:24,200 --> 01:30:28,480
And this is an angel coming
down from heaven to, to anoint him?

1306
01:30:28,480 --> 01:30:30,200
That's right.

1307
01:30:30,200 --> 01:30:34,720
And these are not specifically
religious texts?

1308
01:30:34,720 --> 01:30:37,800
This, this is not
like an illustrated Koran?

1309
01:30:37,800 --> 01:30:40,600
No, it's a book of historiography,
so it's a chronicle.

1310
01:30:40,600 --> 01:30:43,080
It tells the story of the Mongols.

1311
01:30:43,080 --> 01:30:49,360
And the author, Rashid al-Din,
is a high official, a vizier.

1312
01:30:49,360 --> 01:30:52,600
The equivalent of a prime minister
today, perhaps.

1313
01:30:52,600 --> 01:30:57,120
And he has a strong mission
of public education.

1314
01:30:57,120 --> 01:31:01,040
Right. Now, if I can,
very carefully, move that,

1315
01:31:01,040 --> 01:31:05,760
we've got another image which looks
more complicated to me.

1316
01:31:06,840 --> 01:31:10,120
This is the story of the Prophet's
miraculous night journey,

1317
01:31:10,120 --> 01:31:13,320
and he rises to the heavens
on a steed.

1318
01:31:13,320 --> 01:31:15,760
So the horse has a human figure
at both ends.

1319
01:31:15,760 --> 01:31:19,640
That's right, and I think it shows
different aspects of the Prophet's

1320
01:31:19,640 --> 01:31:24,240
personality in being both a person
with warrior-like qualities,

1321
01:31:24,240 --> 01:31:26,640
but also a bringer of scripture.

1322
01:31:28,520 --> 01:31:32,440
Well, a lot of people now
would find this very surprising

1323
01:31:32,440 --> 01:31:36,520
because there is a stereotype
of Islam

1324
01:31:36,520 --> 01:31:40,760
as being opposed to images
of living things in general,

1325
01:31:40,760 --> 01:31:45,840
but absolutely forbidding images
of the Prophet.

1326
01:31:45,840 --> 01:31:49,480
These, in a sense, suggest that
isn't quite the case.

1327
01:31:49,480 --> 01:31:53,920
I mean, are these terribly
rare or a bit subversive?

1328
01:31:53,920 --> 01:31:55,840
Certainly not subversive.

1329
01:31:55,840 --> 01:32:00,720
Because the author of this text
and the kind of context

1330
01:32:00,720 --> 01:32:03,440
he's working in are very mainstream.

1331
01:32:03,440 --> 01:32:07,640
You find this kind of imagery
is acceptable in phases of

1332
01:32:07,640 --> 01:32:11,160
Sunni and Shi'i writing and artwork.

1333
01:32:11,160 --> 01:32:15,680
So you actually get these in the
two main branches of Islam.

1334
01:32:15,680 --> 01:32:18,880
It's not, it's not a divide?
Not absolutely.

1335
01:32:18,880 --> 01:32:22,240
In general, to be very broad brush,

1336
01:32:22,240 --> 01:32:25,040
Shi'i positions on the depiction
of the Prophet have been much

1337
01:32:25,040 --> 01:32:29,480
more accommodating than Sunni ones,
but this is a Sunni text. Right.

1338
01:32:29,480 --> 01:32:33,760
But the Prophet, after 1500,
his portrait tends to be veiled.

1339
01:32:35,200 --> 01:32:40,480
So there's a historical development
here, which tends to move away

1340
01:32:40,480 --> 01:32:43,920
from at least showing the features
of the Prophet. Yes.

1341
01:32:43,920 --> 01:32:48,600
But it's not so much something that
is legislated within Islamic law,

1342
01:32:48,600 --> 01:32:52,280
but there are discourses
around idolatry,

1343
01:32:52,280 --> 01:32:54,640
discourses around image making,

1344
01:32:54,640 --> 01:32:57,240
which could be seen
to be prohibitive.

1345
01:32:57,240 --> 01:33:00,760
But those are matters
of interpretation.

1346
01:33:00,760 --> 01:33:04,640
What's controversial is the modern
context in which they've come

1347
01:33:04,640 --> 01:33:07,040
to mean something quite different.

1348
01:33:07,040 --> 01:33:11,480
And the modern context
has been satiric,

1349
01:33:11,480 --> 01:33:16,200
conflictual, rather than
reverential. Absolutely.

1350
01:33:16,200 --> 01:33:19,600
In fact, as late as the 2000s,

1351
01:33:19,600 --> 01:33:26,080
the legal opinions of many scholars
were that an image of the Prophet,

1352
01:33:26,080 --> 01:33:31,240
whether in the form of a statue
or in the form of a painting,

1353
01:33:31,240 --> 01:33:35,320
that image's value and
permissibility depends on

1354
01:33:35,320 --> 01:33:38,760
what the image is used for,
not the image itself.

1355
01:33:38,760 --> 01:33:43,160
I think we should also stress
that the Prophet is embodied

1356
01:33:43,160 --> 01:33:46,880
or remembered in many different
ways, and it doesn't have to be

1357
01:33:46,880 --> 01:33:51,160
a depiction to be valid
or culturally useful. Yes.

1358
01:33:51,160 --> 01:33:55,320
So in some senses, our expectations
are perhaps

1359
01:33:55,320 --> 01:33:57,280
Eurocentric in that sense.

1360
01:33:57,280 --> 01:34:00,720
You know, we expect to see
iconography of certain kinds.

1361
01:34:00,720 --> 01:34:03,200
And so if we don't see that,
we feel something is lacking,

1362
01:34:03,200 --> 01:34:06,880
but that may not be how devotional
Muslims see the issue.

1363
01:34:11,200 --> 01:34:15,000
Fozia makes the important
observation that it is now

1364
01:34:15,000 --> 01:34:19,600
a very Western point of view
to imagine that figurative imagery

1365
01:34:19,600 --> 01:34:22,800
is somehow the gold standard
of religious representation.

1366
01:34:26,200 --> 01:34:30,840
With that in mind, it's worth
reassessing other certainties

1367
01:34:30,840 --> 01:34:35,640
about how we look
and the value we place on looking.

1368
01:34:39,720 --> 01:34:43,360
In a way, the merits
of showing and sharing

1369
01:34:43,360 --> 01:34:45,600
are written into the
English language.

1370
01:34:45,600 --> 01:34:48,840
We talk about things being
"better out than in",

1371
01:34:48,840 --> 01:34:51,520
of "getting them out into the open",

1372
01:34:51,520 --> 01:34:56,360
and we're always banging on about
the virtues of transparency.

1373
01:34:56,360 --> 01:35:00,040
But not all cultures
see it like that.

1374
01:35:00,040 --> 01:35:02,560
In fact, some privilege
the exact opposite.

1375
01:35:08,160 --> 01:35:12,640
The British Museum holds some
precious works

1376
01:35:12,640 --> 01:35:17,040
from the African Cote d'Ivoire
made by the Baoule people.

1377
01:35:18,080 --> 01:35:22,840
These pieces were once subject
to strict rules around who could

1378
01:35:22,840 --> 01:35:26,400
look at them,
like this ceremonial mask.

1379
01:35:28,160 --> 01:35:32,920
Gus, is it dangerous
for me to look at this?

1380
01:35:32,920 --> 01:35:37,160
It could be considered disrespectful
and it could diminish the power

1381
01:35:37,160 --> 01:35:39,280
of this to be impactful

1382
01:35:39,280 --> 01:35:43,240
unless you are part of a very
particular part of a community.

1383
01:35:43,240 --> 01:35:45,840
And when you did see them,

1384
01:35:45,840 --> 01:35:49,160
for many, you shouldn't
look at them directly.

1385
01:35:49,160 --> 01:35:52,200
And these are probably hugely heavy,

1386
01:35:52,200 --> 01:35:55,560
but it's not worn on the front
of the face, as one would imagine

1387
01:35:55,560 --> 01:35:57,480
a lot of masks in the West.

1388
01:35:57,480 --> 01:36:01,960
This is worn on the top of the head
and it would be worn with a raffia

1389
01:36:01,960 --> 01:36:07,040
cloak, palm fronds as well,
and it would be danced.

1390
01:36:07,040 --> 01:36:09,040
MUSIC PLAYS

1391
01:36:15,280 --> 01:36:19,320
So most of the community
don't really get to watch?

1392
01:36:19,320 --> 01:36:20,680
Absolutely not.

1393
01:36:20,680 --> 01:36:23,360
And there are those
who are pretty much

1394
01:36:23,360 --> 01:36:26,360
systematically excluded from seeing.

1395
01:36:26,360 --> 01:36:31,040
You know, they would be the young
and women who would be excluded.

1396
01:36:31,040 --> 01:36:36,320
But if you were to defy convention,
expectation

1397
01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:38,360
and just sort of look at it
as we are now,

1398
01:36:38,360 --> 01:36:40,560
there could be a price to pay.

1399
01:36:40,560 --> 01:36:43,600
Punishment.
Punishment, punishment, punishment.

1400
01:36:43,600 --> 01:36:45,640
Potentially even death.

1401
01:36:45,640 --> 01:36:48,080
So that's the mask.

1402
01:36:48,080 --> 01:36:50,880
What about the two figures
we've got out here?

1403
01:36:50,880 --> 01:36:55,800
These figures would be commissioned
as a way of being in contact

1404
01:36:55,800 --> 01:36:58,440
with your spirit lover.

1405
01:36:58,440 --> 01:37:03,080
This is someone who would be
partnered with you,

1406
01:37:03,080 --> 01:37:07,080
who resides in a kind of
parallel realm... Right.

1407
01:37:07,080 --> 01:37:10,240
..that can impact your life
in very real ways.

1408
01:37:10,240 --> 01:37:13,640
So you ignore them, and then,
you know, you'll notice

1409
01:37:13,640 --> 01:37:16,720
your luck isn't so good any more.

1410
01:37:16,720 --> 01:37:20,960
An object like this, you would
place it down in a corner somewhere,

1411
01:37:20,960 --> 01:37:22,760
probably wrapped.

1412
01:37:22,760 --> 01:37:26,280
And so, again, it's part
of a tradition

1413
01:37:26,280 --> 01:37:30,760
in which the more that people
who aren't meant to gaze upon this,

1414
01:37:30,760 --> 01:37:34,800
the more that its power,
its potency is diluted.

1415
01:37:34,800 --> 01:37:40,400
So the Western museum
overturns that,

1416
01:37:40,400 --> 01:37:45,760
it takes these objects, puts them
in a case, spotlights them,

1417
01:37:45,760 --> 01:37:49,400
encourages us all to look
as hard as we can.

1418
01:37:49,400 --> 01:37:51,480
Now, is that a problem?

1419
01:37:51,480 --> 01:37:55,120
Well, I mean, we're used to looking
in museums, we're used to

1420
01:37:55,120 --> 01:37:58,560
a particular way of thinking
about objects that we see there,

1421
01:37:58,560 --> 01:38:01,800
that the more we see of them,
the more we understand them.

1422
01:38:01,800 --> 01:38:06,880
But this is part of a tradition
in which respect and understanding

1423
01:38:06,880 --> 01:38:11,040
is actually connected
to not seeing, to the hidden. Yes.

1424
01:38:11,040 --> 01:38:14,840
The very thing that we're taught
to do in museums

1425
01:38:14,840 --> 01:38:20,080
is actually distancing us from an
understanding of what these objects

1426
01:38:20,080 --> 01:38:22,120
are meant to convey.

1427
01:38:30,120 --> 01:38:33,720
By taking a Baoule perspective,
Gus is reminding us

1428
01:38:33,720 --> 01:38:38,560
that looking and not looking can be
more complicated than they seem.

1429
01:38:38,560 --> 01:38:40,800
And he must be right.

1430
01:38:42,040 --> 01:38:45,520
Even with works we think
we understand, there are always

1431
01:38:45,520 --> 01:38:48,960
different ways of seeing,
which means thinking hard

1432
01:38:48,960 --> 01:38:52,000
about who's seeing them,
who's making them

1433
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:56,200
and how they're being shown
in different times and places.

1434
01:38:57,760 --> 01:39:01,240
And what we discover is
that the modern debates about some

1435
01:39:01,240 --> 01:39:05,800
of our most controversial images
run deeper than we might think.

1436
01:39:08,760 --> 01:39:12,560
There's one artwork,
public in the sense that we own it,

1437
01:39:12,560 --> 01:39:16,120
even if we can rarely see it,
that captures this better than most,

1438
01:39:16,120 --> 01:39:18,160
and in a surprising way.

1439
01:39:22,880 --> 01:39:26,680
It's a series of blatantly
imperialistic murals

1440
01:39:26,680 --> 01:39:30,800
on display here in the Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office

1441
01:39:30,800 --> 01:39:34,640
in Whitehall, designed
around the time of World War I

1442
01:39:34,640 --> 01:39:38,120
to decorate the grand
ceremonial staircase.

1443
01:39:38,120 --> 01:39:42,520
One scene in particular
has been the centre of controversy.

1444
01:39:42,520 --> 01:39:47,000
It's called, in Latin,
Britannia Pacificatrix -

1445
01:39:47,000 --> 01:39:49,840
Britannia the Peacemaker.

1446
01:39:49,840 --> 01:39:55,360
For some observers, politicians,
staff and visitors,

1447
01:39:55,360 --> 01:40:00,440
the view that it offers of the other
peoples and nations of the world

1448
01:40:00,440 --> 01:40:05,520
is not just outdated,
it's offensive and even upsetting.

1449
01:40:05,520 --> 01:40:09,640
A really good candidate
to take down or cover up.

1450
01:40:15,080 --> 01:40:19,160
We wanted to film these paintings,
but when we asked for permission,

1451
01:40:19,160 --> 01:40:22,560
the Foreign Office refused
and declined to give a reason.

1452
01:40:25,440 --> 01:40:30,160
These archive photographs, however,
show us the scene of a beneficent

1453
01:40:30,160 --> 01:40:34,840
Britannia surrounded by figures
representing world nations.

1454
01:40:36,400 --> 01:40:40,680
To one side, Japan,
Greece and France.

1455
01:40:40,680 --> 01:40:46,240
Below, scantily-clad Belgium,
Serbia and Montenegro,

1456
01:40:46,240 --> 01:40:50,000
seeking British protection.

1457
01:40:50,000 --> 01:40:53,480
And to the other side,
imperial subjects,

1458
01:40:53,480 --> 01:40:58,320
an Indian and Arabian man and,
most objectionable to us now,

1459
01:40:58,320 --> 01:41:01,200
a small Swahili boy
with a bowl of fruit,

1460
01:41:01,200 --> 01:41:04,560
infantilising the people
of colonial Africa.

1461
01:41:04,560 --> 01:41:07,360
It's a degrading, racist stereotype.

1462
01:41:13,600 --> 01:41:17,040
I genuinely think if I was in a
gallery and I walked past that,

1463
01:41:17,040 --> 01:41:19,560
I would probably just walk
past it. But it is interesting

1464
01:41:19,560 --> 01:41:21,680
because you probably walk past
these all the time

1465
01:41:21,680 --> 01:41:23,720
and you don't realise the
controversy of them.

1466
01:41:23,720 --> 01:41:26,920
Yeah, naturally, I would be offended
by it, but obviously taking time

1467
01:41:26,920 --> 01:41:29,640
to really understand
the time it was made,

1468
01:41:29,640 --> 01:41:32,680
I guess it more than made sense
to those people that, yeah,

1469
01:41:32,680 --> 01:41:34,480
like, Africa's just
some miniature place.

1470
01:41:34,480 --> 01:41:36,800
Like, they're just savages, etc.

1471
01:41:36,800 --> 01:41:39,560
I find it distasteful.

1472
01:41:39,560 --> 01:41:41,160
Times change.

1473
01:41:41,160 --> 01:41:42,800
Values change.

1474
01:41:42,800 --> 01:41:44,480
Paintings can change.

1475
01:41:44,480 --> 01:41:47,880
I think maybe it's time to swap
that out for another one.

1476
01:41:48,920 --> 01:41:51,960
Today, currently, it's unacceptable.

1477
01:41:51,960 --> 01:41:55,160
I refuse to accept that this
painting is hanging there for people

1478
01:41:55,160 --> 01:41:58,840
to keep seeing. No, it should have
been brought down a long time ago.

1479
01:42:01,520 --> 01:42:05,160
But there's a more complicated
story behind what looks like

1480
01:42:05,160 --> 01:42:10,000
a straightforward expression
of imperial and racial superiority.

1481
01:42:15,920 --> 01:42:19,880
The whole series is by
a now little known artist,

1482
01:42:19,880 --> 01:42:22,240
Sigismund Goetze.

1483
01:42:22,240 --> 01:42:26,480
In 1912, hearing that the drab
Foreign Office interiors

1484
01:42:26,480 --> 01:42:30,920
were in need of decoration, he
volunteered his services for free.

1485
01:42:34,000 --> 01:42:38,400
But as the work went on, it became
increasingly difficult to capture

1486
01:42:38,400 --> 01:42:42,920
the tragedy of the Great War
or to represent the new world order

1487
01:42:42,920 --> 01:42:47,800
that was emerging, and the final
scene of Britannia the peacemaker

1488
01:42:47,800 --> 01:42:49,360
was trickiest of all.

1489
01:42:51,280 --> 01:42:55,360
We now tend to concentrate
on the Swahili boy.

1490
01:42:55,360 --> 01:42:57,960
But at the time,
people were concerned

1491
01:42:57,960 --> 01:43:01,800
about the representation of Belgium
as a naked girl,

1492
01:43:01,800 --> 01:43:04,880
kneeling at the feet of Britannia.

1493
01:43:04,880 --> 01:43:08,920
And some British officials were
worried about the representation

1494
01:43:08,920 --> 01:43:11,240
of Japan as a Geisha.

1495
01:43:11,240 --> 01:43:15,240
But happily, they were able
to borrow from the Japanese Embassy,

1496
01:43:15,240 --> 01:43:18,600
a more formal, aristocratic,
ceremonial outfit

1497
01:43:18,600 --> 01:43:22,120
for Goetze to copy in doing
a revised version of it.

1498
01:43:24,640 --> 01:43:26,840
That wasn't the end of it, though.

1499
01:43:26,840 --> 01:43:30,080
Goetze was soon the victim
of racism himself,

1500
01:43:30,080 --> 01:43:34,480
when the murals were attacked
in the journal Plain English.

1501
01:43:36,760 --> 01:43:40,960
SHE READS: Who ordered them?
Painted by a man who is an alien

1502
01:43:40,960 --> 01:43:45,280
in common law, and a perpetual enemy
of the Christian Empire?

1503
01:43:46,280 --> 01:43:48,760
Where were our British artists?

1504
01:43:48,760 --> 01:43:54,040
Our Foreign Office is quite foreign
enough without the spacious

1505
01:43:54,040 --> 01:43:59,120
decorations of a foreign Jew at the
expense of the British taxpayer.

1506
01:44:01,120 --> 01:44:05,000
Goetze took them on, sued for libel,
and won his case

1507
01:44:05,000 --> 01:44:09,080
on the grounds that he'd worked
for free, he was British,

1508
01:44:09,080 --> 01:44:11,720
his family had been here
for more than a century,

1509
01:44:11,720 --> 01:44:13,480
and he was not Jewish.

1510
01:44:14,760 --> 01:44:19,600
For us, there are some sobering
parallels and a reminder

1511
01:44:19,600 --> 01:44:23,880
that with controversial works of
art, the controversies can go back

1512
01:44:23,880 --> 01:44:25,480
a long way.

1513
01:44:27,280 --> 01:44:31,640
He was not the last person
in this country to have to prove

1514
01:44:31,640 --> 01:44:35,680
that he belonged in a place that his
family had lived for generations.

1515
01:44:37,320 --> 01:44:42,400
And in a way, the prejudices
that Goetze faced

1516
01:44:42,400 --> 01:44:48,600
are uncannily similar to those that
we now detect in his paintings.

1517
01:44:52,680 --> 01:44:57,200
Recently, one work of art
in particular has opened eyes

1518
01:44:57,200 --> 01:45:02,080
to these dilemmas, and especially
to the challenge posed by statues

1519
01:45:02,080 --> 01:45:04,400
in public places.

1520
01:45:08,440 --> 01:45:10,800
SHOUTING

1521
01:45:14,080 --> 01:45:17,760
COMMENTARY: For centuries, he took
pride of place in Bristol.

1522
01:45:17,760 --> 01:45:21,800
Celebrated as a merchant,
politician and philanthropist.

1523
01:45:23,040 --> 01:45:26,240
Now, reviled for his part
in the slave trade.

1524
01:45:28,080 --> 01:45:30,960
The latest demonstrations came
13 days after the killing

1525
01:45:30,960 --> 01:45:33,800
of George Floyd by US police.

1526
01:45:33,800 --> 01:45:36,840
The monument to Edward Colston,
which had stood in the city centre

1527
01:45:36,840 --> 01:45:40,480
for more than a century, was toppled
and pushed into the river.

1528
01:45:42,960 --> 01:45:44,760
CHEERING

1529
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,440
There's never been a time in history

1530
01:45:51,440 --> 01:45:54,320
when statues have not
been pulled down.

1531
01:45:54,320 --> 01:45:57,320
But Colston's dramatic departure

1532
01:45:57,320 --> 01:46:00,560
captured headlines
and divided opinion.

1533
01:46:05,440 --> 01:46:09,200
For a lot of people, it's a reminder
of, like, what the UK specifically

1534
01:46:09,200 --> 01:46:10,760
was built on.

1535
01:46:10,760 --> 01:46:14,400
To see, like, the people of Bristol
come together and say as a community

1536
01:46:14,400 --> 01:46:17,920
like, yeah, this needs to come down,
it was honestly great to see.

1537
01:46:20,080 --> 01:46:23,720
What I think they've got no right
to do is to take our history away,

1538
01:46:23,720 --> 01:46:25,240
whether it be good or bad.

1539
01:46:25,240 --> 01:46:28,400
I'm not sure if, you know,

1540
01:46:28,400 --> 01:46:30,880
vandalism is the right answer,

1541
01:46:30,880 --> 01:46:35,400
but I believe people wanted to see
some kind of radical change.

1542
01:46:36,640 --> 01:46:39,360
If there are people of colour
who are seeing that statue,

1543
01:46:39,360 --> 01:46:42,840
that's got to be a horrible,
horrible thing to see every day.

1544
01:46:42,840 --> 01:46:48,720
I've experienced my share of racism,
but there's a better way to go

1545
01:46:48,720 --> 01:46:51,840
about wanting people to hear
your, your frustrations

1546
01:46:51,840 --> 01:46:53,600
or your concerns.

1547
01:46:53,600 --> 01:46:58,000
You can't teach the newer generation
where things have gone wrong

1548
01:46:58,000 --> 01:47:02,360
through history if you haven't got
no reminders of it.

1549
01:47:02,360 --> 01:47:06,360
Do you just take down these statues
because you now see things

1550
01:47:06,360 --> 01:47:08,320
from a different way?

1551
01:47:13,440 --> 01:47:17,760
Aindrea Emelife is a member of the
London Mayor's Commission looking

1552
01:47:17,760 --> 01:47:21,200
into how history should be
represented in the public realm.

1553
01:47:23,880 --> 01:47:27,800
What I wondered, did she think
about the fate of Colston

1554
01:47:27,800 --> 01:47:32,400
and the future of other similarly
contentious works of art?

1555
01:47:32,400 --> 01:47:36,200
I think what we saw quite poignantly
was with the Black Lives Matter

1556
01:47:36,200 --> 01:47:39,320
protests, how that sort of allowed
us to understand,

1557
01:47:39,320 --> 01:47:42,440
oh, these statues are here,
they're representing something

1558
01:47:42,440 --> 01:47:44,560
that is obviously not
in the current context

1559
01:47:44,560 --> 01:47:46,440
and in the current conversation.

1560
01:47:46,440 --> 01:47:49,880
If black lives matter, how can
we also have these characters up?

1561
01:47:49,880 --> 01:47:53,560
I mean, part of the issue is,
presumably, and part of the tension

1562
01:47:53,560 --> 01:47:56,440
comes from, whose voice counts...
Yes.

1563
01:47:56,440 --> 01:48:01,040
..in whether something goes
on display, continues on display

1564
01:48:01,040 --> 01:48:06,120
or is removed. Who gets to decide?
Yeah. That's a very tricky issue.

1565
01:48:06,120 --> 01:48:09,800
I mean, you remove something and
will we forget them? I'm not sure.

1566
01:48:09,800 --> 01:48:12,200
We lose something.
We lose something.

1567
01:48:12,200 --> 01:48:16,200
Put something on them or have
some different contextualisations.

1568
01:48:16,200 --> 01:48:19,320
There's a great artist called
Hew Locke, who did a photographic

1569
01:48:19,320 --> 01:48:22,440
series where he put cowrie shells
on Edward Colston.

1570
01:48:22,440 --> 01:48:25,840
Imagine if that was real,
if that was there and you could put

1571
01:48:25,840 --> 01:48:29,000
the sort of pomp of slavery
on a slave trader?

1572
01:48:29,000 --> 01:48:32,120
I mean, America has been doing
quite interesting things

1573
01:48:32,120 --> 01:48:34,120
with their Confederate statues.

1574
01:48:34,120 --> 01:48:37,200
Kehinde Wiley recreated a
Confederate statue

1575
01:48:37,200 --> 01:48:39,840
with a black man on it
wearing a hoodie.

1576
01:48:39,840 --> 01:48:42,280
And that was a huge statement
that was in the language

1577
01:48:42,280 --> 01:48:45,120
of the statues. Could almost blend
in if you didn't quite look at it.

1578
01:48:45,120 --> 01:48:48,520
It too often gets brought down
to a kind of,

1579
01:48:48,520 --> 01:48:53,440
a sort of, binary choice between...
Keep or remove? Yeah.

1580
01:48:53,440 --> 01:48:56,600
And there isn't anybody
who wants to keep every statue.

1581
01:48:56,600 --> 01:48:59,880
I mean, you know, I mean,
you know, we don't want statues

1582
01:48:59,880 --> 01:49:03,960
of Jimmy Savile up,
but after that, we don't know...

1583
01:49:03,960 --> 01:49:08,840
Where to go. And how do
we judge the level of offence?

1584
01:49:08,840 --> 01:49:11,520
This is where I get back to.

1585
01:49:11,520 --> 01:49:14,440
I think a lot of it should be
rooted back to the people

1586
01:49:14,440 --> 01:49:16,200
that live in those places.

1587
01:49:16,200 --> 01:49:19,440
I guess I'm using Colston again
as an example,

1588
01:49:19,440 --> 01:49:21,440
but you can completely understand

1589
01:49:21,440 --> 01:49:23,760
how that would be a great affront
to people.

1590
01:49:23,760 --> 01:49:28,720
Do you think it matters
to the acceptability

1591
01:49:28,720 --> 01:49:34,040
of a sculpture,
who the artist was that did it?

1592
01:49:35,920 --> 01:49:42,760
Marc Quinn's attempt to replace
the statue of Colston.

1593
01:49:42,760 --> 01:49:45,440
White celebrity artist -

1594
01:49:45,440 --> 01:49:49,480
exploits or celebrates
the black protester?

1595
01:49:50,720 --> 01:49:54,600
I think that debate started a
long time before that statue.

1596
01:49:54,600 --> 01:49:57,800
I mean, people discussed
Andy Warhol's race riots

1597
01:49:57,800 --> 01:49:59,480
that showed the Birmingham attacks.

1598
01:49:59,480 --> 01:50:03,120
People were wondering whether he
should be doing that work.

1599
01:50:03,120 --> 01:50:07,360
But then what I was most excited
about, is seeing an image like that

1600
01:50:07,360 --> 01:50:08,800
in the public realm.

1601
01:50:08,800 --> 01:50:13,080
And then, secondly, I heard
a lot of racist remarks

1602
01:50:13,080 --> 01:50:17,560
at seeing a black woman on the
plinth, and it made me realise that,

1603
01:50:17,560 --> 01:50:22,640
as important as who made the statue
is, it made us realise how necessary

1604
01:50:22,640 --> 01:50:26,080
it is to have more statues
like that up in public.

1605
01:50:26,080 --> 01:50:28,720
So kind of paradoxically,
you're wanting

1606
01:50:28,720 --> 01:50:33,080
more and more and more statues
so we see them differently? Yeah.

1607
01:50:33,080 --> 01:50:36,120
I want people to understand and to
think about their history more,

1608
01:50:36,120 --> 01:50:39,960
and I want us to confront the past.

1609
01:50:46,000 --> 01:50:50,640
Other countries in the world are
facing up to the statue dilemma too.

1610
01:50:53,560 --> 01:50:56,440
And Germany, which looks back
to a 20th century

1611
01:50:56,440 --> 01:50:59,800
marked by two world wars,
dictatorship, division

1612
01:50:59,800 --> 01:51:03,480
and reunification,
has attempted one solution

1613
01:51:03,480 --> 01:51:06,880
at the Citadel Museum
on the edge of Berlin.

1614
01:51:10,640 --> 01:51:16,320
We've seen the Nazis getting rid of
art, but other regimes did so too.

1615
01:51:21,920 --> 01:51:26,640
Here, a variety of monuments,
at different times unwelcome

1616
01:51:26,640 --> 01:51:30,240
in the capital's public spaces,
have been brought together.

1617
01:51:31,440 --> 01:51:34,600
You can walk amongst them
and now even touch them.

1618
01:51:37,120 --> 01:51:39,200
There are Prussian bigwigs,

1619
01:51:39,200 --> 01:51:41,640
a Nazi athlete...

1620
01:51:42,840 --> 01:51:47,720
..a couple of East German border
guards, and more.

1621
01:51:52,720 --> 01:51:57,720
In a way, the poster boy
of the museum is this head of Lenin

1622
01:51:57,720 --> 01:52:03,000
that once topped a colossal statue
of him set up in 1970

1623
01:52:03,000 --> 01:52:07,680
in communist East Berlin,
and taken down again in 1991

1624
01:52:07,680 --> 01:52:09,800
and buried in the ground.

1625
01:52:09,800 --> 01:52:12,720
In 2015,

1626
01:52:12,720 --> 01:52:17,000
the head was dug up again
to be installed here.

1627
01:52:17,000 --> 01:52:21,840
He's a severed head and a
symbol of toppled tyranny.

1628
01:52:23,080 --> 01:52:27,120
And the idea of the curators
of the museum

1629
01:52:27,120 --> 01:52:31,560
is that this should be a safe space

1630
01:52:31,560 --> 01:52:37,160
where people can come and confront
and debate the historical issues

1631
01:52:37,160 --> 01:52:39,320
that these images raise.

1632
01:52:52,280 --> 01:52:56,120
This is a stunning
and slightly eerie space

1633
01:52:56,120 --> 01:52:58,840
with its wounded statues,

1634
01:52:58,840 --> 01:53:02,760
its battered marble bodies
all lined up.

1635
01:53:02,760 --> 01:53:07,200
And it's certainly one solution
to the problem of what to do

1636
01:53:07,200 --> 01:53:10,800
with monuments that have passed
their use by date.

1637
01:53:14,280 --> 01:53:20,200
But I'm not convinced that the,
"Oh, put them in a museum" line

1638
01:53:20,200 --> 01:53:22,360
has all the answers.

1639
01:53:22,360 --> 01:53:25,800
The sheer elegance of this display,

1640
01:53:25,800 --> 01:53:28,280
it's just a bit sanitising.

1641
01:53:28,280 --> 01:53:32,360
It tends to blunt
the political edge,

1642
01:53:32,360 --> 01:53:35,400
and it might make it easier
to turn a blind eye

1643
01:53:35,400 --> 01:53:37,880
to their contested histories.

1644
01:53:37,880 --> 01:53:42,120
Besides, you have to choose
to come here to confront them.

1645
01:53:42,120 --> 01:53:46,080
Putting statues away like this

1646
01:53:46,080 --> 01:53:50,400
can be a way of dodging their legacy

1647
01:53:50,400 --> 01:53:53,280
as much as facing up to it.

1648
01:53:56,560 --> 01:53:59,840
This is not the only drawback
to the idea

1649
01:53:59,840 --> 01:54:01,960
that the solution lies in museums.

1650
01:54:05,680 --> 01:54:10,400
In fact, I think those on all sides
of the debate about the future

1651
01:54:10,400 --> 01:54:14,120
of our statues might be missing
a bigger point,

1652
01:54:14,120 --> 01:54:16,760
brought home to me in Bristol

1653
01:54:16,760 --> 01:54:20,760
when I saw the toppled
Edward Colston for myself.

1654
01:54:23,520 --> 01:54:25,000
Oh, wow.

1655
01:54:29,440 --> 01:54:31,760
God, it's an extraordinary sight.

1656
01:54:37,960 --> 01:54:41,040
There's something pretty unsettling,
actually,

1657
01:54:41,040 --> 01:54:45,080
about being sort of so up close.

1658
01:54:45,080 --> 01:54:48,520
I mean, I'm not somebody
who was ever a victim

1659
01:54:48,520 --> 01:54:51,760
of what this man stood for,
or his legacy.

1660
01:54:51,760 --> 01:54:57,200
But when he fell, I still thought
there was a bit of history here

1661
01:54:57,200 --> 01:54:59,880
being rewritten and I felt pleased.

1662
01:55:01,120 --> 01:55:04,960
But now, when I look at him
in this slightly pathetic state

1663
01:55:04,960 --> 01:55:07,400
and almost catch his eye,

1664
01:55:07,400 --> 01:55:13,160
I kind of think also that he's now
challenging my moral certainty

1665
01:55:13,160 --> 01:55:15,000
about things.

1666
01:55:16,320 --> 01:55:20,000
I watched Colston come down
on my television and

1667
01:55:20,000 --> 01:55:23,000
I was clutching in my hand
my smartphone.

1668
01:55:23,000 --> 01:55:27,800
Now, I think I know, and most of us
know, in what conditions our

1669
01:55:27,800 --> 01:55:32,160
smartphones are made, our other bits
of high-tech, our cheap clothing,

1670
01:55:32,160 --> 01:55:35,640
and yet we don't want to see that.

1671
01:55:35,640 --> 01:55:41,120
I suppose I wondered, how different
is my blindness from the blindness

1672
01:55:41,120 --> 01:55:46,000
of Colston himself, or the
people who put his statue up

1673
01:55:46,000 --> 01:55:50,680
in the late 19th century, or the
people who made him a local hero?

1674
01:55:50,680 --> 01:55:53,000
Not so very different, I think.

1675
01:56:12,560 --> 01:56:16,960
I can tell you, you learn a lot
about how exposed you feel

1676
01:56:16,960 --> 01:56:20,280
on top of a plinth by trying it out.

1677
01:56:20,280 --> 01:56:24,560
But I've not just been talking
about the statue wars,

1678
01:56:24,560 --> 01:56:27,240
I've been talking about art,
religion, tradition

1679
01:56:27,240 --> 01:56:31,280
and politics of all kinds,
trying to think harder about

1680
01:56:31,280 --> 01:56:34,200
what or who we get to see

1681
01:56:34,200 --> 01:56:37,240
and what or who we don't.

1682
01:56:37,240 --> 01:56:40,120
From the sacred to the slave trader.

1683
01:56:41,280 --> 01:56:44,720
Throughout history,
people have argued about what work

1684
01:56:44,720 --> 01:56:48,560
should be on public display
and who should decide.

1685
01:56:48,560 --> 01:56:51,680
In the end, the arguments
come down to what we think

1686
01:56:51,680 --> 01:56:53,560
those images are for.

1687
01:56:56,080 --> 01:57:01,720
I can't help thinking that they do
more than celebrate and honour.

1688
01:57:01,720 --> 01:57:05,840
They help us frame debates
about what's important to us

1689
01:57:05,840 --> 01:57:11,200
and, of course, they turn
the spotlight back onto ourselves,

1690
01:57:11,200 --> 01:57:15,080
offering a salutary warning
that one day

1691
01:57:15,080 --> 01:57:20,640
it might be us and our heroes
who are candidates for the chop.

1692
01:57:20,640 --> 01:57:23,480
So don't blame the artists,

1693
01:57:23,480 --> 01:57:26,880
they're shining a light
onto our anxieties.

1694
01:57:28,520 --> 01:57:30,560
Which reminds me,

1695
01:57:30,560 --> 01:57:33,840
how exactly do I get down from here?

1696
01:57:35,080 --> 01:57:37,080
Has anybody got a ladder?