All language subtitles for BBC.Whos.Afraid.of.Conceptual.Art.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup

KNOCKING

A valuable package has just arrived.

It contains a work of conceptual art
by Martin Creed,

one of Britain's most celebrated
artists.

I bought this piece from
Martin Creed's gallery online.

It cost me £180,

and I've been given very specific
instructions on how to open it.

Apparently, I have to use a scalpel
to prise this box open

as delicately as I can, like this.

Let's open it up.

That's it.

I THINK that's it.

Oh, there's something in here.

A certificate -
"Martin Creed work number 88.

"A sheet of A4 paper
crumpled into a ball."

Welcome to the puzzling, sometimes
maddening world of conceptual art.

This piece perhaps encapsulates
why so many people struggle

with conceptual art.

It doesn't seem to require
much skill,

it's not particularly beautiful,

and ultimately, it feels
like a bit of a rip-off.

But maybe we're all
missing something.

'And so, in this film, I'm going
to attempt the near-impossible -

'to really understand
conceptual art.

'What is conceptual art?

'How should we approach it?

'And why should we care?

'To answer these
and other questions,

'I'm going to examine
its key works...'

GUNSHOT

..meet the movers and shakers
of today...

'and experience some cutting-edge
contemporary conceptual art...

'..in an open-minded guide
for the perplexed.'

And who knows, by the end of it,
we might have all changed our minds.

Before the 20th century,

there were objects,

and there were artworks.

Now, let's begin with the objects.

Some objects were natural,

some of them functional,

some of them not very beautiful.

Artworks, on the other hand,

were made by artists,

and they were very beautiful,
and often very, very expensive.

Now, people were very happy
with this distinction -

they knew where they stood.

But then, about 100 years ago,

that system began to fall apart.

Now, what happened was this -

objects became
more and more like artworks,

and artworks became
more and more like objects.

Gradually,
they began to swap places,

until, eventually,
it became difficult to know

which one was which.

Now, this left a lot of people
very confused, and some people

very, very angry.

But it was the first major
innovation of conceptual art.

And its first great innovator
was the enigmatic Frenchman,

Marcel Duchamp, the chain-smoking
sphinx of modern art.

Duchamp had started as a painter,
but around 1913,

he became increasingly
attracted to unassuming,

everyday objects, that he began
presenting as ready-made artworks.

A bicycle wheel.

A bottle rack.

A snow shovel.

And, most famously, a urinal.

So what was Duchamp up to with
his taste-defying ready-mades?

Taste is the great enemy of art,
A-R-T, mm?

That was the difficulty -

to find an object that had
no attraction whatsoever

from the aesthetic angle.

Of course, humour came in
as an element.

It was very important for me
to introduce humour.

That was my intention,

to do something that would not
please everybody, mm?

Marcel Duchamp was being
deliberately subversive,

while also making
a revolutionary point.

Not everything was art,
but anything COULD be art. Why?

Because the object
didn't matter any longer.

What mattered was the idea,
the concept.

And that was the beginning of what
we've come to call conceptual art.

Duchamp did a hit-and-run
on the art world.

After dropping his
conceptual bombshell,

he abandoned it, and became
a professional chess player instead.

But his audacious acts
opened the floodgates.

20th-century art abounds
with his disciples,

but one of the most original was
a mischievous Italian aristocrat.

Piero Manzoni was a self-taught
artist who rose to prominence

with his Achromes,

a series of white-surfaced
works

made from increasingly unusual
materials.

But by the end of the 1950s,
Manzoni began questioning the nature

of the art object
in bizarre new ways.

He signed real bodies
to make living sculptures...

..drew never-ending lines...

..blew up balloons...

..and called the resulting
sculptures Artist's Breath,

pressed his thumb print
onto hard-boiled eggs

for the public to consume...

..and even created
an upside-down plinth

that presented the whole world
as a work of art.

But his most notorious
conceptual creation

pushed both art and propriety
to the limit.

AIR ESCAPES LOUDLY

In May 1961, Manzoni sat down
and produced 90 unique sculptures.

He then tinned, signed
and numbered them.

And they contain something,
well...surprising.

Excrement.

Manzoni's own excrement,
and if you don't believe me,

just look at the label,

which, helpfully,
comes in four different languages.

"Artist's shit, contents - 30g net.

"Freshly preserved, produced
and tinned, May 1961."

If you thought conceptual art
was crap,

here's your proof.

But Manzoni wasn't done.

His outrageous asking price
for these little tins

was a crucial part
of the artwork itself.

Manzoni declared that each 30-gram
tin was worth its weight

in gold - actual gold.

Now, you might think, "Who in their
right mind would want to buy

"someone else's faeces, let alone
for the same price as gold?"

well, as it turns out,
quite a lot of people did.

Last year, Christie's sold a tin
just like this - number 54 -

for £182,500,

and that made Manzoni's turd,
gram for gram,

almost 200 more times
more expensive than gold.

So what does it all mean?

Is a turd the ultimate
personal ready-made?

HE SNIFFS

Who is it meant to provoke?

And what was Manzoni's endgame?

I'll be honest - I really don't know
what to make of this piece.

My instinct is that
Manzoni's making fun of us.

He's making fun of museums, critics,

he's making fun of people who've got
more money than sense.

He's making fun of the whole madness

and pretentiousness
of the art world.

And I have to admit, part of me
feels like

a bit of an idiot for coming
all this way to look at something

that is, essentially,

a shit on a plinth.

But you know, thinking about it, I
realise that for all its silliness,

it is actually an extremely clever
conceit.

It could be anything in that tin,
but we will never know,

because as soon as we open that tin,

the artwork's destroyed,
the value is lost,

so we will never ever find out.

If this tin contains anything,

it contains an idea.

This piece feels like
a shit-filled hand grenade

that Manzoni has flung
55 years into the future,

and we still don't know
how to defuse it.

No wonder he looks
so proud of himself.

Piero Manzoni died at the age of 29,

but he proved that conceptual
artists had a Midas touch.

A good idea could convert
practically anything

into a masterpiece.

And today, like Duchamp,

he's regarded as one of the
forefathers of conceptual art -

a pioneering provocateur,
whose influence lives on.

One of the figures
he's helped inspire

is the artist who began
this programme -

Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed.

# Understanding, I'm understanding

# I'm understanding

# I'm understanding! #

Over a freewheeling career
that includes making music,

Creed has converted a whole range
of things,

and no-things, into art.

# We were arguing... #

Blu-Tack...
# I'm a victim...

..empty galleries with the lights
coming on and off...

..and, yes, even excrement.

# What it felt like
you were saying...

# I'm understanding

# Listening, I'm listening... #

I've come to Hackney in East London
to meet Martin

as he launches a new album of songs.

One, one, one, two, one, two.

And I'm hoping he can shed
some light on the ideas

behind work number 88...

..that scrunched up ball of paper
that cost me £180.

A few days ago... Yeah.

I purchased this, one of your
pieces, work number 88. Yeah!

And I wonder if you can help
explain it to me. Oh, right.

Well...

Shall we open it? Well... I was...
Oh, yeah. There you go.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's
a crumpled ball of paper,

inside a nest of shredded paper,
to keep it from getting crumpled up.

MARTIN CHUCKLES

So, tell me how did you... How did
you come to that idea of doing that?

A friend was doing these editions
where he was making booklets

made out of A4 paper.

He asked me if I'd make a book,

but I just couldn't think of
anything that I could, you know,

put in a book, and I thought,
well, if I crumpled it into a ball,

the paper, instead of making
a booklet out of it...

Yeah, and that was it,
and I thought it was funny,

because it looks like
it's just a piece of garbage. Mm.

But I tried to make it...

as beautifully as I could.

So how do you do that? Do you have
a particular method that you used?

Yeah. I mean, apart from scrunching,
obviously. Yeah.

The best way is to get the paper,
and loosely crumpling it

before you actually... So you don't
just try to make the ball in one go.

Usually about one in three
of these works out.

So, what is it that you're
looking for?

You know, when you say that
two out of three you throw away,

what is wrong with the two?
A perfect sphere, you know...

I mean, it's never perfect,
but I feel like a sphere,

or circle is a beautiful shape,
cos it's equal in all directions,

you know, so you don't
have to decide. Mm.

You know, I like circles.
MARTIN CHUCKLES

How many of those do you think
you've made through your career?

Well, I think they're numbered,
so... But I don't know.

Oh, this is 695!

Martin's quest for the
perfect paper ball

reflects a broader interest
in things.

He's used cacti...

..chairs...

and that conceptual favourite,
balloons,

filling half of room with them
in a work called

Half The Air In A Given Space.

But the crumpled ball is perhaps the
hardest thing to appreciate as art.

A lot of people, and probably a lot
of our viewers, will be perplexed

at this being called art.

What would you say to those people?

How would you try to answer
their concerns?

Er... Well, I wouldn't argue...

Well, really want to argue
with them, cos this is...

I wouldn't call this art, either.

But if it's not art, what is it?

Well, it's something that, erm...

I did...

because I liked it.

Yeah. I'm, erm...proud of this,
you know?

I wanted to get out of bed
in the morning to do it.

You know,
I thought it was worth doing.

I think a lot of the little
things in life are important,

you know, so not just all the things

that are made out of gold,
or whatever.

You know, who says anyway what's
good and what's bad, you know?

If something is exciting,
and it feels good,

that's the test of things, you know?

Martin Creed's a tricky man
to pin down, and I'll admit,

I'm not totally convinced
by his paper ball,

but he's helped persuade me
of something really important.

When confronted with conceptual art,
we really shouldn't worry about

whether it's art or not, because
no-one really knows what art is.

Instead we should ask, is it funny,

is it original, and perhaps most
importantly, does it make us think?

And, in a way, this little crumpled
ball does all of those things.

In 1897, a French humorist called
Alphonse Allais introduced the world

to a series of pictures.

Each of them was a plain
sheet of coloured paper.

They appeared to depict nothing,
until you read the titles.

This one was called

First Communion Of Anaemic
Young Girls In A Snowstorm.

This one,

Apoplectic Cardinals
Harvesting Tomatoes On The Shore
Of The Red Sea.

And this one, which I warn you
isn't politically correct -

Negroes Fighting In A Cellar
At Night.

Now, Allais was joking, of course,
but his joke was

a really important moment in the
pre-history of conceptual art,

because it showed that words

can be more meaningful than images.

When conceptual art really
kicked off in the mid-1960s,

many of its leading protagonists
were so determined to purge art

of its decorative frilliness,
they turned more and more to words.

In a revolutionary atmosphere,
words were used to explain...

..subvert...

..and occasionally replace
the art they described.

And the results were often
tricky to decipher.

One piece proved
especially mind-bending.

In 1973, Michael Craig-Martin

placed a glass of water
on a shelf in a gallery,

and titled it An Oak Tree.

The work was completed
by an accompanying text,

a philosophical dialogue,

presented as a Q and A session
between artist and confused viewer.

To begin with, could
you describe this work?

Yes, of course.

What I've done is change
a glass of water

into a full-grown
oak tree.

It looks like a
glass of water.

Well, of course
it does.

I didn't change
its appearance.

But it's not
a glass of water.

It's an oak tree.

Haven't you simply called this
glass of water An Oak Tree?

Absolutely not.
It's not a glass of water any more.

Seems to me that you are claiming
to have worked a miracle.

Isn't that case?

I'm flattered
that you think so.

'In my opinion, this was neither
an oak tree nor a glass of water.

'It was an empty exercise
in semantics

'that deliberately confused
its audience.'

But Craig-Martin agreed
with Duchamp and Manzoni -

when it comes to conceptual art,
it is the thought that counts.

This was certainly the view
of the American artist Sol LeWitt.

In the 1960s he declared,

"The idea becomes a machine
that makes the art.

"It is the objective of the artist
who is concerned with conceptual art

"to make his work mentally
interesting to the spectator,

"and therefore usually he would want
it to become emotionally dry."

This is one of my problems
with conceptual art.

It often put the brain
before the heart.

But not all of it does.

Some artists used words to combine
intellectual curiosity

with real emotional power.

One of the most talented was an
American artist called Mary Kelly.

And this is her stomach,
heavily pregnant.

Her resulting child
went on to inspire

one of conceptual art's
more intimate works.

In Post-Partum Document,
Mary Kelly recorded and analysed

her changing relationship
with her young son.

A six-part series,
each section concentrates on

a different formative moment
between mother and child...

..blending unusual materials
with words.

Part One caused a scandal
when first shown in 1976,

because Kelly used her son's
dirty nappy liners

as a sort of canvas,
onto which she typed

a log of everything
he'd eaten that day.

This is the third section
of Post-Partum Document,

and I'm pleased to report there are
no nappy stains in sight.

In fact, it doesn't really leap out
and grab you as a spectator.

It consists of a series of small,
really quite murky images

that you could very easily miss when
you're walking through the gallery.

So what we really to do is step in
and take a much closer look.

The work is a kind of collaborative
diary from the autumn of 1975,

when Kelly's son
first began nursery.

Each picture contains a mixture
of writing, coloured paper,

and her son's crayon scribbles.

So, what we're looking at
is three columns of text.

The first column, on the left -
that documents Mary Kelly's son's

own words, on the date
13th of September 1975.

And a second column
to the right of it -

that documents Mary Kelly's response
to her son's words on the same day.

And the third column, which is
probably the most interesting,

and isn't typed, it's handwritten -
this contains Mary Kelly's

broader reflections on
the original exchange.

Now, it's quite complicated at
first, but there is a logic to it,

and once you understand
that three-column structure,

you can begin to understand
the entire piece.

And the closer you read,

the more vividly their relationship
comes to life.

The demands of motherhood are
clearly taking their toll

by the final image, and it actually
records some very fraught

exchanges between mother and son.

He refuses to go to sleep -
he's bossing her about

over pillows and stories.

"He's bossing me around.

"He'll just have to read the story
I choose this time.

"I'm trying not to be weak."

And there's a particularly moving
passage here where Kelly writes,

"I feel somehow undermined.
Not resentful, but just confused,

"because just being affectionate
isn't enough any more.

"He tests me.

"I feel I have to gain his respect,
where before I felt assured of it

"simply because I was his mother."

Mary Kelly's art
is about self-understanding.

But it takes effort
to understand it.

This art isn't simply
for looking at.

You have to read it,
analyse it, and decipher it.

And it repays your hard work.

You know, I'm actually
really surprised

at how powerful I find this piece.

Because when you start
investing in it,

when you start getting up close
and reading it,

you really get drawn into
this very intimate emotional world

that's intelligent and witty
and moving.

Conceptual art - emotionally dry?

Not here, that's for sure.

Today, artists inspired
by conceptual art

are still trying to use words
in fresh ways.

One of them is Robert Montgomery.

Robert aims to take text art
out of the gallery,

and into the wider world.

From light pieces...

..to fire poems...

..to public billboards like this -

one of two pieces he's invited me
to come and see in London today.

It's really exciting watching
the piece unfold.

It would take me at least two hours,
what he can do in 20 minutes.

So, the piece
is up, and it says,

"The air chases and scatters
blue light

"more than it scatters red light

"That's why the sky is blue

"When we are cloudless,
when it is big-gushed

"the screens which circle you
like butterflies now

"All your tomorrow's turned
to electric waterfalls

"Digital culture created a new kind
of unconscious hipster capitalist.

"Unsuck the glamour
from these glass towers

"Blank the sycophantic neon

"Undress in the streets this summer

"Make our universities free again

"Save our fragile libraries".

This is no picture,
but it's chock full of imagery.

You've got a combination here
of the romantic and the political.

So it starts with this wonderful
description of the sky and clouds,

almost pastoral set of lines,

but then you finish
with a very strong message.

Yeah, I think of myself as
a traditional British romantic...

painter, in a sense,
in the tradition of Turner.

I want to talk about those things.

I want to talk about romantic,
transcendent sunsets,

and I want to bring that into the
dirtier life of today.

You know, my idea of being an artist
is to be engaged with the

culture and politics of
your time in a real way.

It's also to do with billboards,
in a way, defining the discourse

and conversation of the city,

and that becoming
increasingly a conversation

that treats us as only consumers.

I want to touch on
the subconscious mind

through a medium that is used
to sell us shampoo.

So you are using the infrastructure
of capitalism,

but you're not trying to sell
anything.

In fact, you're trying to
provide an antidote or...

To what people normally find
on their streets.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I can be
an antidote to capitalism

just on my own, entirely.

But I can certainly open up
a more sensitive state of mind

in this place.

Do you find that people engage with
these pieces?

Yeah, I do.

In 2004, I started
in this neighbourhood

doing billboard pieces, let's say...

Would I say illegally?
I would say unauthorised-ly.

And I'd get hugged quite a lot
by drunk estate agents who were

wandering home to Essex,
and would come up and say,

"What is that, then, mate?

"What's it an ad for?"
"It's not an ad for anything."

"Oh, is it poetry, is it art?"
They'd ask those questions.

And I would say,
"Read it and see what do you think."

And so, the question is to try to
make poetry and contemporary art

simple enough in 100 words
that it's accessible to people.

"Accessible" - not normally a word
you associate with conceptual art.

So, Robert, where are we heading
now?

We're heading Bermondsey Wall East,
which is on the south of

the River Thames, and we have
a light piece there today.

What is it specifically about words
that appeal to you as a medium?

I think there's a certain
slowness to words.

I think we probably live
in an age of accelerated image,

and we are bombarded with, like,
hundreds of images a day.

And, ironically, in that context,

words can be a moment of quiet,
or a moment of pause.

Wow.

"The people you love
become ghosts inside of you

"and like this you keep them alive."

Yeah. It's a very personal piece,
this one.

I had this really close friend
during art school called

Sean Watson, and he got hit
by a car on the Edgware Road,

and died very suddenly in 2004.

And it was the first sort of
heartbreak of grief

in my adult life, in a sense,

and it affected me really badly.

And then a few months into that,
I had this dream where

Sean was just there -
he was alive and just around.

And I woke up the next day
happier than I'd gone to bed.

And I thought, OK,
this, maybe, is what ghosts are.

Maybe ghosts are a positive thing.

This very personal piece was always
intended for public display,

but the scale of its impact
caught Robert by surprise.

If you search "The People You Love",
the title of the piece,

and my name, you get 4.39 million
results in 0.7 seconds.

This is a tribute page
to a guy called Chico S Las Mana.

"Always missed, always loved,
type a message." Wow.

And that is how it is commonly used
online. This was interesting.

This is a South Korean rapper
called Taeyang who saw it in

a gallery in Paris, went home to
Korea and just faked the whole thing

and put it in his video,
rapping in front of it.

He seems to have missed the point
of it. I'm not sure.

He might get the point of it, but he
certainly just made it on his own.

And then you start to see it
appear as tattoos. My gosh!

Sometimes...
All along the arm, there.

And then this is
a really beautiful one,

cos it was a brother and sister
who I think had lost their mum,

and they wrote to ask if they could
get tattoos of each other

reading the text as a sound wave
on each other's arms,

as a sort of tribute to their mum,
and that was lovely,

cos that was them making
their own art from it.

They reinvented it. Yeah.

It has, really, a life of its own.

People have got to really like
this piece

to tattoo it onto their bodies.

I mean, that's pretty flattering.
It's really nice.

I mean, the thing is,
the point of art

is to touch the hearts of strangers

without the trouble of ever
having to meet them.

But if you can sort of touch their
hearts from a distance,

and help a little bit,

you know, from your quiet studio,
then it's very nice.

It's moving.

Very moving.

Makes you think of the wartime,
I think.

All the memories.
All what's happened along here.

We just came by the pub
for a pint and saw it,

and it's just like amazing and
stopped us in our tracks a bit.

I think against this dramatic sky
tonight as well,

it just really stood out.

Perfect backdrop.

I mean, for me, I think about
relationships lost. Yeah.

Especially cos I'm not actually
from London and I'm kind of
like...

I left those behind.
And then here I am.

The statement is kind of poignant
for us at the moment because

we have poorly relatives,
and a new life.

I'm struggling to find the words.
It's like a little discovery.

Robert's words aren't exercises
in empty semantics.

They are big, bold,
out in the real world.

Hungry for our attention,

and inviting us to stop, look,
think and feel.

And it reminds me
of something Robert said.

He said, "The great thing about
words is they slow you down.

"They slow you down
as you read them."

And that's what this piece
has done.

It has encouraged people to briefly
put their lives on hold,

and reflect on something really
rather lovely.

I must say, I'm beginning to change
my mind about conceptual art.

Maybe it isn't as pretentious
and elitist as I once feared.

Perhaps all we need to do is
give it a chance.

However, there is one facet of
conceptual art that still

scares us, and shows little sign of
being accepted by the public.

It's often known as - gulp -
performance art.

Of course, art and the body have
a long and healthy history.

Detailed study of human anatomy
and appearance formed the

backbone of thousands of years
of artistic output.

But the body's full potential
was yet to be unleashed.

Art isn't simply about
making things,

it can also be about doing things.

And from the 1960s onwards,

a number of conceptual artists
embarked on a spate of acts,

performances and stunts, and put
their own bodies centre stage.

In New York, artist Vito Acconci
spent a month following strangers

through the city's streets...

..for minutes and sometimes hours
at a time...

..until he could no longer
track them.

A relatively unknown Japanese artist
called Yoko Ono sat alone

and impassive onstage while her
audience were invited to

come up and cut away her clothes.

And in London, an irreverent
performance by a young man

called Bruce McLean attempted to
redefine the nature of sculpture.

So, what was going on?

Well, fortunately, Bruce McLean is
still very much active and has

suggested revisiting this pivotal
moment of conceptualism with me.

Bruce. Hi. Good morning,
nice to see you. You too. All right?

What is this you are doing? Sorry?

What are you doing, are these poses?

No, I'm just moving around the
plinth a little bit. Limbering up.

So, what we've got here,
these are three plinths... Yes.

Three different heights, just about.
What are they all about?

I was hoping you weren't going to
ask me that question,
funnily enough.

In 1971 I borrowed 50 plinths from
the Tate for an installation

called Objects No Concepts...
No Concepts.

..as opposed to
Concepts No Objects.

And three somehow got left.

And I thought, "What can I do with
these, then? They seem to require
some sort of sculpture."

So I started to play with them,
cos I like playing.

I think it's quite constructive.

And I thought I could be the
sculpture on these plinths,

and I could let these plinths
determine what I did with my

very nimble and athletic
dancer-esque body that I had
at that point in time.

So, I just kind of got on them.

This was more than just
a series of self portraits,

here the artist BECAME the art.

And I thought,
that's quite a good...

I moved and I held it for a bit,
then I moved and held it for a bit.

Did it for about an hour, I think.

And then somebody said,
"Why don't we photograph that?"

I can't get up there any more.

I could help bring your leg up.
No, thanks.

No leg cocking in this film.

What I like about it is you've
got the plinths,

this black and white photograph,
feels very formal,

and at the same time it's you
subverting a tradition.
Yeah. Trying to.

And having a bit of a laugh.

I wasn't doing it as a laugh,
and I wasn't doing it as a "Ooh..."

solemn work.

I thought, well, let's look of these
cliches and take them apart a bit.

When I look at something I don't
understand, I'm interested.

And where did you get the idea of
making your body part of
the sculpture itself?

I liked the idea that you can
use your body,

so you don't have to buy
any material.

You don't need a bit of wood,

you don't need glue, paint,
anything.

You can make something up as you
go along, with nothing.

And it was a time of the student
revolution coming from France,

and the whole mood of the time was
about a global mood,
a global feeling.

Young people thinking,
exchanging ideas,

being part of what became known
as conceptual art.

People didn't want to make stuff
with stuff for people to consume.

We are all anti-consumerism.

We were there to question
the nature of sculpture.

While Bruce McLean played with the
idea of ephemeral human sculpture...

..others were busy transforming
their whole lives into
allegorical artworks.

The most mercurial of them was
a hugely influential German artist

called Joseph Beuys.

In 1974, Beuys flew into
New York's JFK airport.

He was covered in a layer of felt,
loaded onto a stretcher,

and taken by ambulance to
a West Broadway gallery.

SIREN

It was all part of an elaborate
performance piece called

I Like America And America Likes Me

in which Beuys was to share a room
with a wild coyote

for three whole days.

TRIANGLE CHIMES

Confused? You should be.

Beuys once declared that art is not
there to be simply understood,

or we would have no need for it.

Understandably, the coyote was also
somewhat mystified,

and fairly angry, to begin with.

But over time, the animal appeared
to grow tolerant,

even accepting of the
eccentric artist,

and by the end, they had formed
something of a friendship.

So was it just a stunt, or was
there method in the madness?

I see Beuys' performance as
a strange but powerful allegory

about peace, tolerance
and respect for nature.

This was what Beuys called
social sculpture -

an art form that turned
life into art

in order to change both
politics and society.

Elsewhere conceptual artists
took a more direct approach...

..and distributed their political
messages by any means necessary.

In Brazil, a young artist devised
an ingenious plan to combat

his country's oppressive US-backed
military dictatorship...

..not with coyotes,
but Coke bottles.

Cildo Meireles began by purchasing
a number of Coca-Cola bottles,

and then he made some careful
modifications.

The bottle in the foreground
reads "Yankees go home".

And the one in the middle has the
recipe for a Molotov cocktail.

Crucially, when Meireles had
made his modifications,

he then sent these bottles back out
into circulation, where they

were purchased in shops and
drunk by the public.

Meireles considered this to be
an act of guerrilla warfare against

capitalism, against censorship,
against dictatorship.

And he was fighting his foes
with conceptual art.

Meireles's work again shows that
conceptual art takes many
different forms -

objects, words, bodies, actions,

even fizzy drinks.

But in the 1970s, artists found
a new medium to exploit -

the media itself.

'I'd like to introduce myself.
My name is Chris Burden.

'And today, on this tape,
I'm going to show you

'excerpts or visual records from
11 different pieces that I've done,

'starting in 1971, into 1974.'

Chris Burden pushed himself to
the limits in the name of art.

From balancing above
electrified water

to being shot with
a .22 calibre rifle.

GUNSHOT

Here was a man intent on exploring
what both artist and audience
could endure.

'Holding my hands behind my back,

'I crawled through about
50 feet of glass.

'Very few spectators saw this piece,
most of them just passers-by.'

Strange, this piece.

It's almost unwatchable,

but at the same time,
you can't stop watching it.

At least, I can't.

There is something horribly gripping
about observing another
person suffering.

That, I think, was the point.

This piece was made during
the Vietnam War,

and it was all about people,
Americans,

becoming increasingly desensitised
to images of death and violence

that they were seeing
in the media.

Burden realised that the very
same media could potentially
be infiltrated

to shock and confuse
his fellow Americans,

and that television held
the biggest captive audience.

So, in a separate artistic act
he created a series of

guerrilla TV adverts to be
broadcast almost subliminally
amid the normal schedule.

'Raico presents Good Vibrations -
22 original hits with the
Hollies...'

BURDEN: 'What you've been watching
is the advertisement that actually
precedes mine.'

'Well, that was it.
You saw how short it was.

'I didn't have any illusions
that people understood this.

'But I know it stuck out like
a sore thumb,

'and that I had the satisfaction
of knowing that 250,000 people

'saw it every night,
and that it was disturbing to them.'

In a conceptual masterstroke,

the artist had hijacked the medium
of TV, along with its audience.

To think that Burden actually bought
air time and sent his commercials

into the homes of hundreds of
thousands of unsuspecting people -

it was utterly audacious.

Artists like Chris Burden blazed
an edgy, provocative trail in

the relationship between conceptual
artists and the mass media.

But they also reconnected with the
creative potential of the prank.

Christian Jankowski is
a German artist who has spent

the last 25 years masterminding
a whole range of media pranks

that often rely on
innocent collaborators.

He spoofed Supermarket Sweep-style
daytime TV...

..persuaded a team of high-ranking
Vatican officials to cast

Jesus in a talent show contest...

..and got Polish weightlifters to
lift public sculptures in Warsaw

for a mock TV sports show.

Christian has agreed to meet me
at his Berlin studio,

but I have to admit that,
what with his track record,

I'm feeling a little bit nervous.

I've been told to just
go with the flow

and enjoy the experience,
whatever happens.

Christian! Hi, James. Very good to
meet you. Good to meet you, too.

Thanks for having me. Come on in.

You've got a really lovely studio
here. Thank you.

This is all yours? Yeah.
We can go over there, or over there.

Over here. Great.

Do you like to shock people,
Christian?

Yes and no. I mean,
shock for the shock's sake, no.

I'm interested in images

and I'm interested in seeing images
I have not exactly seen before.

I was born in the '60s.

I didn't grow up looking at an
oil painting,

I grew up looking at the
television set.

Doesn't mean I'm not into paintings,
I love paintings, too.

I love all kinds of media,
but I'm very much, my thinking,

has been informed
a lot by television.

And one of the most successful TV
formats of the last ten years,

I suppose, has been the talent show.

And the piece I'm thinking about of
yours that relates to that is
Casting Jesus.

Can you tell me a little bit
about how that concept,

how that idea came about? Yeah.

I was in Rome,

and then I thought in Italy about
all of these different artists

over the centuries that needed
models to, you know, act as Jesus.

Because Jesus had to be refreshed
from century to century to

really reach the audience.

And I thought, what are really
strong formats of our days?

And I thought, the casting show is
a great format to bring

real Vatican priests on board
and be the jury.

And have casting agency to send you
different Roman actors that

could act in the Jesus role,

and so they were in
competition with each other,

in front of these priests that
had to, you know,

look for the perfect Christ.

Are you trying to make people laugh?

Is that an important
strategy of years?

I think there is something quite,

quite anarchistic with humour
because you can express feelings,

you can express opinions with it,
but not in the teacherly way

of saying,
"This is bad and this is good,"

it's a different style.

For Christian, all media formats are
potential conceptual playgrounds.

'This is Christian,
he is from Germany.' 'Hello.'

'We are talking about artistry,
we are talking about how God...'

Be they Texan televangelism...

'And so he shared something with
me which is a point...'

'Hello, Peter.'
'Hey, it's good to see you.'

..pop video piss-takes...

Can I start the bidding here
at 300 Euro for this?

..or vehicles to satirise
the art market.

1,200. Very popular, it is.
LAUGHTER

1,200 Euro, now. 2,200 Euro.
GAVEL FALLS

And whether his collaborators are
in on the joke or not,

without them,
there'd be no artworks.

You bring lots of people together
in your work, don't you?

It's not just about you doing
something on your own,

the audience participate,

you get strangers and people in
the street and weightlifters,

everyone is participating. It is
a real group enterprise, isn't it?

Yes, because that is where
I find the unexpected.

For me, if you call people
the medium or the material
you work with,

it sounds a little bit sick.

I am not saying you are
a paintbrush right now,

but you are also a medium.

Everybody I drag into my pieces from
this world outside of the art,

may it be sportsmen,
may it be anchormen, you know,

they all bring a new perspective.

Art at the end of the day is about
reaching to a new perspective.

So, Christian, to deal with the
elephant in the room, so to speak,

I can't help noticing you're naked
and have been naked throughout
this interview.

Can you tell me why?

Don't you see why?
It's quite nice, no?

I just thought, what can I add
to a situation like this?

How can we have a little bit fun
creating images that are out

in the mass media? If I would zap
to a programme like this,

I would think,
"Hey, what are they doing there?"

And it's very conceptual,

or maybe it also is I have
nothing to hide.

I'm just telling you what I think
about conceptual art,

it might not make you the most
happy, but maybe it does.

Who knows? Well, you have certainly
made me feel overdressed.

You make me feel underdressed.

Well, that was one of the more
surreal experiences I've ever had.

I've interviewed
a lot of artists over my time,

but I've never interviewed
a naked one.

But I really actually enjoyed
meeting Christian,

and he was one of the artists
I thought I was going to
struggle with the most.

I really thought of him
as a prankster,

but he clearly is a very, very
intelligent, thoughtful man

who uses humour and uses
the media to ask really

profound questions about the society
which we are living in.

I have to confess, I've grown to
rather like conceptual art

because in the hundred years since
Marcel Duchamp's urinal,

conceptual artists have
achieved a lot -

they have made us laugh, think,
and feel,

they have redefined art and
beauty...

..they have taken bold
political stances...

..and they've tried to make the
world a more unpredictable and

imaginative place.

But to really understand how far
conceptual art has come today,

we must delve deep into the
final frontier.

Katie Paterson is one of the most
exciting talents of my generation,

and for a few years now
she has been boldly going

where no conceptual artist
has gone before.

She's melted down and recast
a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite,

before sending it back into space.

She's mapped all the dead stars
we know of in the universe -

27,000, apparently.

And she's even made music
with celestial objects.

PIANO PLAYS

This is one of Katie Paterson's
most famous works.

You may recognise the music as
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

But let's have a closer listen.

MUSIC: MOONLIGHT SONATA,
WITH SOME NOTES OMITTED

Now, you might have noticed that
this rendition is actually
missing a few notes.

But you won't believe why.

Because what Katie Paterson has done
is taken a score of

the Moonlight Sonata, converted it
into Morse code,

and sent it by radio transmission
all the way to the surface of
the moon,

and then bounced it back into
this room, and into this piano.

So, where have
the missing notes gone?

Well, they have actually been lost
in the valleys, the craters,

the shadows of the lunar surface.

So, in many ways, this is
the Moonlight Sonata remade
by the moon itself.

In the same way that Duchamp's
Fountain was just a urinal,

this is just an everyday piano
plonked inside a gallery,

but it's been transformed by
an extraordinary idea.

My final stop on this conceptual
journey is to try and discover

where these cosmic brainwaves
come from,

and to see what else Paterson
has been dreaming up.

So, what have we got here,
then, Katie?

We have got a number of different
samples and bits and pieces from the

different artworks that I've been
working on for the last few years.

This is a candle that smells
of outer space.

I didn't think outer space
had a smell.

It has a lot of smells, it turns
out. It is quite a scented place.

Here's the sun, what does the sun
smell of? Welding fumes.

Actually, that doesn't seem
so surprising. Lots of hot metal.

I like that idea that Mars
smells of an old penny.

Some of the scents have come from
astronauts' clothing that

has been analysed, like
the scent of the moon.

I worked with a biochemist
to develop these
very particular perfumes.

That's just amazing. I'm looking -

burnt almond cookies,
the smell of the moon.

How do you come up with an idea
like that, the idea of, you know,

"What does the universe smell like?
Yeah, let's turn it into a candle."

That's just an amazing idea.

Where are those concepts
coming from?

Oh, my goodness,
where do the concepts come from?

I still surprise myself with
where the concepts come from.

I was thinking as if you are taking
a journey through space and

through time, and how to translate
the smell of a journey into

a physical thing,
and that became a candle.

What is it that inspires you
as an artist? What kind of things
get you going?

It's almost everything.

Nature and geology and geography.

The planet and the wider universe.
It's pretty wide!

What are these, then?

This is from a series called
History Of Darkness,

and I've been taking images of
nothing, effectively,

of dark spaces, from throughout
the universe.

So these are slides. Right.

They are slides,
and they are all just black.

But they are from multiple places
in the universe

that span billions of years.

So what is that saying? That is the
distance from Earth in light years.

Which is four billion...
Four billion...
..239,108,820 light-years.

Light-years from Earth. Exactly.

I kind of like to think these spaces
of emptiness could now be

filled with life and other planets.

It's so remarkable that in this
little slide you've got

four billion light years. Yeah.

That's an amazing, awe-inspiring
idea in its own right, isn't it?

And one of the concerns a lot
of people have about conceptual art,

and I have to confess that I've had
these concerns as well in the past,

is that it's somehow easy,
that anyone can do it,

but looking at your work, I realise
that it's completely the opposite,

this is not easy at all,
it's painstaking.

My goodness. Yeah, it's not easy,

because these ideas are kind of
on the brink of the possible and
the impossible.

There's so many things that go on
behind every single work,

but ultimately I hope the audience
make it come alive

by activating that idea through
their imagination.

And that, dear viewer,
is where YOU come in.

Most conceptual art only comes to
life when you are prepared to

put in the work.

Understanding often takes effort,

but you can complete the circle of
an artist's big idea.

And here's one of
Katie Paterson's biggest.

Wow!

It may only be a mirrorball,

but it is like no mirrorball
I've ever seen before.

Katie Paterson has painstakingly
compiled and arranged 10,000 images

of solar eclipses,

almost every one ever documented
by humankind,

and these transient
spectral moments,

brought together in this
otherworldly object,

have been granted new life as they
scatter and dance all around me.

It feels like I've stepped out of
the solar system,

out of time and space,

and I'm staring back at the entire
universe from a great distance.

This is conceptual art, all right,
but what's there not to like?

It's intelligent and beautiful and
hugely ambitious.

Conceptual art is above all
about ideas.

Now, as we've seen, those ideas
can come in many different shapes
and sizes,

but Katie Paterson deals with
the biggest ideas imaginable.

Space, time, the cosmos.

Those ideas are relevant to each
and everyone of us,

because they help define
our place in the universe.

So, let's stop being scared of
conceptual art,

because art without ideas is
just decoration, isn't it?

# Fly

# Fly me to the Moon

# And let me play among the stars

# Let me see
Oh, I wanna see what spring is like

# On Jupiter... #