All language subtitles for This Is Modern Art - 1 of 6 I Am a Genius 1999

some sexy models now it's men with

earrings and converted warehouse studios

in the East End this one's doing photo

realism style that was invented 35 years

ago in New York and died out soon after

what's he doing again for let's go on

prowling moodily through this modern art

studio of nowadays interpreting the

signs of the big no the first two

letters of nowadays no to genius no to

beauty no to art where you can tell

what's happening here's a modern artist

who's made some paintings of words to go

with a sculpture of a full-stop she's

gonna be showing both Tate Gallery

Modern Art today is full of words and

full of sounds this slightly menacing

horror music sound like soundtrack for a

modern art program is actually some

modern art being made by this artist

who's also just had a show hey look it's

a painting by me I painted it at art

school it's cosmic apart and now it's

gonna be me talking I wonder I'm gonna

say why is it when we think of modern

art the art of today but we don't think

of this anymore a genius artists in this

studio drawing a nude woman with

charcoal what happened to make that idea

of art an old hat idea this is my studio

in Derbyshire Street in Bethnal Green

I share it with a load of other artists

who also never draw the model and you

mostly have never seen a nude woman in

an artist's studio outside of Hollywood

films about van Gogh or Michelangelo at

this moment they're upstairs or along

the corridor testing out every activity

Under the Sun except life drawing to see

if it could be art at another moment

behind a cloud of sexy girl was smoked

in a studio along the great dark

corridor of time is a real genius with a

big pen the biggest pen of all the pen

of Pablo drawing a face

war bad Picasso said peace good that was

the 1950s the time when I was born

when Picasso was a communist because it

was a time when modern art really stood

for something and a scribble and a line

and a few dots by Picasso could seem to

sum up everything nobody laughed at his

solution to world conflict but they did

sometimes cry about his drawing why a

child of six could do it

royal academicians cried I hated Picasso

and everything knew they wanted

everything to be old again but now it's

the 90s I'm in my forties it's a whole

different world today modern art is a

real pig a pig sawn in half with the

chainsaw and suspended in a vitrine of

formaldehyde or it's a photo of a

blankly staring post feminist woman of

the 90s or a tenth by another woman

artist embroidered with the names of

everyone she's ever slept with or the

London Tube map but with all the names

of the station's changed to nonsense

footballers instead of Jubilee line

stops philosophers instead of the circle

line

so that's modern art now and what I'm

going to be doing over the next six

weeks this modern art series called this

is modern art and a kind of I run it

doubtful way because no one knows what

modern art really is it's traveling

through time looking at the modern art

of the past and back again to the modern

art of today to see what the past has to

say about the present and what the

present has to say about the past this

is what the inside of my head looks like

like a Museum of Modern Art of the mine

there's some abstract expressionism

later I'm going to be looking at three

giant turning points in the history of

modern art all coming out of this place

the real Museum of Modern Art in New

York huge white magnificent anyone who's

ever been there will know the sheer

confidence of the display the scale of

it the feeling of authority and

credibility that it has New Yorkers go

around with that model of Modern Art in

their heads more or less not the ones on

crack of course because Americans want

this kind of art it answers a need

what is this need exactly modern art is

a mixture of snob culture and amazing

open-mindedness

back Andy Warhol modern art is a system

but one that's always changing

Warhol stands for one of its big changes

later on we're going to be meeting him

plus two more geniuses move the

parameters of Modern Art

this is the first one big cigar of

modernity the castle

this is Picasso's the Demoiselles Avenue

lady misil davon yo is the picture at

the beginning of all modern art books

it's the picture that started cubism

hardly a picture at all it's a monster

picture a parody of a picture painted in

one way and then half painted over in a

different way without caring if the

seams show five ugly angry glaring

prostitutes in a brothel with their

armpits showing and they're blank

indifferent dead faces staring out or

the primitive doglike African mask faces

from the eyebrows out to the folds of

the curtains everything irritates

everything else everything is spiky and

jostling as if it's the painting not the

women glaring out like an ugly angry

shocking exciting art joke when I first

saw this picture in a book at about age

17 I didn't think this is cubism I

thought this is modern art the hard

stuff

Sara Lucas defiant woman of the nineties

icon of young British art up against the

wall defiantly redefining what it means

to be modern this abject wretched

stocking monster called bunny which

Lucas made in 1997 is the sister of Lady

Michelle Davin or only seventy years

younger than them Picasso with somebody

identify with I mean just in terms of

the amount of sex in his work I suppose

that's subject or event the way they

would transform say fruit or even just

lines that on break up a face in a

certain way so that you can see a penis

and your something like that and like

where he turns a pair of handlebars into

a pair of horns I'd say come very close

to the kind of transformation I'm using

little real objects to stamp something

else dumb things transforming in the

mind this sculpture is a 1990s tone of

jokey contempt nevertheless it's a work

that comes at the end of an art timeline

that begins with Lady Michelle Devon

young it's art that would be impossible

without Picasso it laughs at the cult of

the macho but it respects the thing that

the sex myth of Picasso really stands

for Picasso's cult of change of

Perpetual renewal my mind he's kind of

stands for only artists who manage to

carry on changing and um rather than

just kind of reiterating their own work

and the freshest work being when they

were younger so that's one of the things

I've really admired I'm

I find Picasso very moving not

disconnected from my world but part of

it what does he stand for he stands for

ceaseless creativity not caring not

being snobbish having his own sister

never being polite

on the other hand he also stands for a

kind of atrophying of the restless

modern-art mind where whenever his name

is mentioned tasteful music starts up

and we stop thinking

the Picasso Museum in Paris it's not an

unfamiliar sight on television and a

presenter waddling about it waving his

arms around it's not unknown either

so how do you make this old art subject

new well for one thing you can knowledge

that we live in a world where artists

like Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas are our

stars and where cubism is no more

important than any other ISM and no ism

is all that important and consequently

for different people with different

interests there are a lot of different

Picasso's there's the genius andy is

that no one could be here with the

energy of this art are not feeling was a

genius of some kind but there's also the

absurd decadent rich person who could

buy a chateau for the price of a drawing

and the old macho outdated sex monster

obsessively fixated on the image of the

artist alone in the studio with a naked

female model the woman rendered again

and again as a kind of hilarious

exploded oddly fide beautifully painted

male sex fantasy sex and death

Picasso's great themes this is a picture

of his friend who committed suicide from

unrequited love kassig Amos done when

young Picasso hadn't become a genius yet

but was just passing already existing

styles from Van Gogh to Toulouse Lautrec

everyone knows Picasso's blue period

informed art world people think it's a

bit sentimental everyone else loves it

because it's sentimental it's the stuff

after they're not sure about the genius

stuff when Picasso first painted led

Emma's old Evan yo in 1906 when he was

only 27 he rolled it up in a corner of

the studio because he didn't know what

it was even his friends didn't like it

Georges Braque said looking at it was

like being made to drink petrol but then

gradually Picasso and Braque came to

acknowledge it as the prototype for

cubism it isn't interesting to think

about cubism as an ism anymore but it is

interesting to think about what it

actually did it made the painting more

important than the picture it made

inventing more important than copying it

meant reality could be gutted and boned

and put back

gather again as something else as art

Picasso never made art from nature he

just made it out of his head he made it

up he held on to reality only to have

something to push around the Casa was

the first to think cubism was a boring

idea almost as soon as he invented it a

whole school of academic Cubist's

started up they stopped putting the eyes

on the side of the head and started

putting them in the right place for a

while

that was his neoclassical period of the

1920s but then he put them in the wrong

place again

and after that just switch back and

forth stylistically all the time from

smoothed out to jagged from wildly

distorted to calm from angry to funny

from ugly to beautiful

Picasso the genius lover of many women

destroyer of them step her over of their

distorted and Cuba fide bodies I don't

despise the corny myths of Picasso the

ego monster mr. loved pants but I know

they're not the art they're just the

Hello magazine version and I'm only faux

hello I think there's a real Picasso and

it's in these real shapes and bodies the

bits and pieces that make up this art

this is the Picasso system in operation

it's here in this museum but it's in our

heads to art's new systems of now and

mutations of his old system of then

here we are on the lovely Riviera

looking for the essential Picasso

Picasso was always changing when he was

in his sixties the new model was

Mediterranean Picasso the Mediterranean

is timeless classical ancient all about

sensuous timeless pleasure only Picasso

could mix all this up with aggressive

modernity after the war he was given

this museum of local culture in Antibes

to use as a studio modern art was hated

by fascists so it must be good for peace

it was thought Picasso became France's

official expresser of the new post-war

happiness he roamed the building taking

down the old official art and replacing

it with smiling triangles his paintings

here aren't particularly well-known but

they're the sublime playful side of

Picasso

these are modest masterpieces of

ordinary life the pleasures of the

domestic and the everyday to me they're

the awesome achievements of modern art

full of details of real things real

things changed into painting things

modernity with Picasso is Picasso's

schwate vivre let loose frolic II and

funny and feeling good without caring

what others think but of course he

didn't have to care because a big

support system of mythology and market

was doing all that for him this was

another modern art system that Picasso

invented the system of the modern artist

as entrepreneur and showman

Mediterranean Picasso is Picasso number

two in the various mythologies of

Picasso Picasso rich guy in his old age

lived a magnificent rich bohemian life

in the South of France

moving from villa to villa filling them

up with new creations watching wrestling

on the TV

having Gary Cooper around to visit his

favorite film star he was thought to be

the highest-paid man alive called

himself a communist but Moscow called

him a decadent

he didn't care though when he wasn't

painting he was out making sculptures

that change the language of sculpture

forever and ceramics that made him laugh

he was full of beans he thought if he

never stood still he could live forever

that was what drove him but that's one

thing modern art can't do

this is almost the last picture he ever

painted a self-portrait from the year he

died it was 1973 Picasso was 92 modern

art wasn't just Picasso anymore it had

been taken over by New York what a

picture

Picasso is always dead for us it's part

of his myth he died he stared death in

the face before he went he was

trepidatious guilty but all the lives it

stepped on and destroyed on his path to

genius

New York started taking over modern art

in the Second World War by the 1950s the

job was complete Picasso is still

producing but not progressing it was

thought in New York progress was the big

thing now but who could be the sign of

progress who could be as big as Picasso

but have the necessary newness Jackson

Pollock artist of the abstract rip

doomed forever to be a cliche what do we

see when we see a Jackson Pollock we see

what Pollock stands for Jackson Pollock

stands for freedom self-expression and

being American and for a particular

American financial success story we see

money building up this painting autumn

rhythm failed to sell at all when it was

first shown in 1950 even though the

asking price was only twelve hundred

dollars after Paulette died it was

offered by a dealer to the Museum of

Modern Art for $8,000 and they were

appalled at the price then it was

offered again for 30,000 and they didn't

even reply to the letter

eventually the Metropolitan Museum

bought it for 20,000 a trustee said a

painting this big must be worth

something 20 years later in the mid 70s

the combined value of all Pollock's

works in public and private collections

was estimated to be 50 million dollars

because he was a giant of American art

what else do we see we see the whole

tragedy of Pollock's life towards the

end of it he couldn't paint at all he

was a depressed alcoholic he was violent

he used to punch people if they punched

him back which they often did he used to

cry he had terrible in security he

thought he was a phony and a sellout but

the papers saw him as a macho primitive

hard man the tough guy who said I don't

paint nature I am nature but what are we

seeing just the look of it the sheer

feminine beauty of whatever it is the

image or the rhythm its containment

cross all those yards the energy and

facility and delicacy the pain the way

it sits on the surface of the canvas but

sinks in at the same time the way it's

flat and spacial at the same time all

that ease and grace the illusion of

something that's been made on instinct

alone what a weird mix of elements makes

up our idea of what Jackson Pollock is

the romantic myth of the tortured artist

I like it because I'm a bit romantic

myself I started coming to New York a

lot in the early 80s drawn by the allure

of the hip the hip up-to-date

cutting-edge art that was being churned

out here all the time then but often

found myself secretly yearning for the

old stuff the abstract expressionist

stuff

the Abstract Expressionists moment was

the 1950s it was an existential moment

it was all deep anguished pained

late-night soul-searching there was a

life of woozi Busey semi intellectual or

intermittently intellectual existential

loneliness this is the cedar tavern New

York's famous bar where Jackson Pollock

and the Abstract Expressionists used to

come and drink in the 1950s actually

it's not the cedar but a remake put up

after the original tavern burnt down in

1963 to this day people still come here

in search of the abstract expressionist

myth expecting to find it steaming off

the tables perhaps come out and fight

the Abstract Expressionists used to

growl at each other when they met here

they'd rip the doors off the hinges

Jackson Pollock actually did that one

night they punch each other and insult

each other and say I'm more sincere than

you or I'm more authentic than you or

I'm more existentially tortured than you

or I've had all your women which was one

famous insult that the art critic

Clement Greenberg was supposed to have

hurled at the painter Willem de Kooning

in a drunken brawl like many of these

myths it turned out to be only partly

true as Greenberg later revealed there

was only one of de Kooning's women he

liked and that was de Kooning's wife

Elaine de Kooning but in all this macho

comedy there was tragedy and there was

pay fuss and that was what was going on

in Jackson Pollock's head it was a very

angry person a very unhappy person he'd

be very subdued running the sober but

when he had when he got drunk found the

aggression would come out and he would

be very very difficult very aggressive

when he going to the seat of I'd say you

[ __ ] [ __ ] you think you're painters

you don't know what anything is

self-destructiveness was overwhelming

Pollock Sartre was a mystery art of pure

abstraction there was nothing in it

except art it made sense to him as a

natural development from the Picasso

system but he found the process of

getting it over to the public by playing

up to the media

mad making it resulted in a Polock who

was alienated from himself nowadays we

find it normal for modern art to be in

the papers a lot and for the stories

about it to be all exaggeration and

rubbish from outright jeering to

accolade overdrive but that was all new

in Pollock's time

his escape from art world hysteria was

his home here in East Hampton three

hours drive from Manhattan he lived here

with his wife the artist Lee Krasner

every week he went into New York to see

his analyst to hang around with artists

and critics and then he came back here

to paint and to worry worried about who

he was and what his status was why was

he so popular anyway he was thought to

be a wild painter he painted on the

floor because he was wild

he used cheap household paints because

it was rough and tough in fact he used

quite expensive household paints because

they got the effect he wanted he got the

paint out of the tins onto the canvas in

big sweeping loops using sticks are old

dried-up hardened brushes but he didn't

just get it all on there at once

he worked in stages building up an image

it isn't wild art it's deliberate

sophisticated art it's good art but

there is wildness in it and that's why

it's great art spontaneity chance

ugliness are all definitely in there

making something new something graceful

and delicate and odd which even today we

can't quite pin down however blase we

think we are about the myth of Jackson

Pollock

you

this is the real Pollock really painting

but it's also the mythic Pollock

painting for the camera like Picasso

playing to the camera Picasso is at ease

with being a showman but Pollock wasn't

perhaps because it was the wrong show

thing I always think it's odd how

delicate everything looks here one tough

it all is by the time this film was made

Pollock's dream of art had started to

turn into a nightmare nothing was real

everything was constructed around him I

don't think that he had a terribly large

ego but he performed a lot in order to

get attention he wasn't an intellectual

he was he was charming and attractive

but very shy actually not a big ladies

man that only really dominated him you

know he was submissive and she was

aggressive she was aggressive in all her

relationships but he had this old barn

for a studio but Lee had to work

upstairs in a small room you're her

painting that's true but that was her

choice I mean she was thought that

Jackson was a great painter a great

artist and she devoted herself to that

proposition what Lee did she decided

that if he had some success that he

would have more confidence and he

wouldn't get into these terrible

depressions and drinking and so on and I

think it started out well when they

moved here and it really worked out very

well for a while she cultivated everyone

who could be helpful to him

the worldly way and rather isolated him

from his real friends and I think that

was a mistake as artificial as it is I

think this famous film is the most

touching film ever of an artist working

was a very unnatural self-conscious

awkward process to make it but every

image of Pollock is full of tenderness

he agreed to paint on glass so the

camera could be literally within a

picture developing Pollock had been on

the wagon for two years but he was

driven back to drink by the pressure of

making this film at the end of the last

day of shooting he knocked back tumblers

of whiskey and started shoving the film

maker and snappeth you're a phony he

shouted I'm not a phony you're a phony

but the fact is that the film was a lie

in his drunken rage with mammoth [ __ ]

was expressing a real anxiety he really

couldn't work anymore it reached a point

where his ideas were just dried up by

the mid fifties Pollock had had

exhibitions in New York and all over

Europe his art was argued about by the

most powerful critics in America

it'd been on the cover of Life magazine

he was world famous and yet he didn't

know where to go he said he'd been in

life but all he knew about was death he

didn't know what was happening to him he

was disoriented he was in despair he

told Lee to think of his eraser bility

his violence his drinking as a storm

that it would soon blow over and then on

the night of the 11th of August 1956 it

did Lee was in Europe [ __ ] was in a

car with Ruth Kligman his lover and

Edith Metzker Ruth's friend it was an

Oldsmobile it just got an exchange for

two small paintings Pollock was driving

and he was drunk he was driving at 80

miles an hour a car came to a curve in

the road a spot Holland knew very well

because it was only a few yards from his

house but he failed to slow down instead

the car sped into a group of oak trees

it ran up one of the trees and flipped

over

Edith Metzger had been in the back

hanging onto the safety strap calling

out to Pollock to slow down was rammed

into the trunk of the car and crushed to

death Kligman and Pollock were each

thrown from the car

Kligerman suffered a fractured pelvis

but Pollock collided with a tree

headfirst

it was too sensitive to criticism that

was bad I think he was someone so so he

had no skin to protect him you know

everything would would get out him and I

think that the success was both good and

bad because he had gained confidence but

it was always exaggerated you know that

he was the only painter and all that

which still was obviously insecure

why do I not care about all the Picasso

myths so much but want all the Pollock

myths there's so many things already in

Picasso's art so few in Jackson

Pollock's just a misty space a sublime

nothingness we want the sublime but we

want it to be attached to something if

it's Tanner we want a storm at sea with

Pollock we want the car crash we feel

we're really getting something then the

last big story of Pollock's life its

descent into chaos and death welcome

back to the modern art tour this is

Planet hotdog continent burger the

country candy

what's this got to do with art or we

landed wrong place Coney Island a

complete art free zone there aren't any

big ideas here just fantastic

blow pot mass drops who is responsible

for collapsing this stuff into the world

of high culture one man Andy do you feel

that the public has insulted your art uh

no why not uh oh I hadn't thought about

it it doesn't bother you at all VIN

uh no Andy do you think that pop art has

sort of reached the point where it's

becoming repetitious now all right yes

do you think it should break away from

being pop art no are you just going to

carry on yes

here's Warhol with his icons of modern

life modern celebrity modern glamour

modern sexiness when I first saw a

Warhol like everyone else probably I

couldn't see why it was art was a photo

show we hear about his great color and

he is great at that but what we first

see are things objects soup cans or

Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy Jackie

multiplied by a million its Gideon Liz

Taylor why is that heart when Warhol was

first becoming famous he was asked what

he thought about Abstract Expressionism

he just said art is dead did he think he

had killed our himself or did it just

die on its own

we certainly associate his name with a

big question mark hanging over it after

Marilyn's in 1962 he painted a lot of

Elvis Presley's in 1963 he painted

double Elvis's and single Elvis's and

triple Elvis's this one his 11 Elvis's

all different and all the same he

painted the whole series very quickly he

painted 50 of them in an afternoon but

the studio was leaking and they were

spoiled slightly so just painted them

all again all the things that in the

abstract expressionist days were assumed

to justify art's difficulty its

specialness its sensitivity its

unrepeatable 'ti its complexity and

depth he was happy to throw away being

famous and being recognized he thought

were better it's one thing to have that

thought and the people he hung out with

had thoughts like that all the time

because they were stoned or drunk

but what Warhol was good at was showing

what that thought might actually look

like he had always been interested in

glamour from the time of seeing movies

from Hollywood in the photo play

magazines he always thought there was

such a great glamor and magic about

being a star and I think he

directed himself to find out what was

glamour you know and how could I put it

in a can and then just paint it around

actually paint glamour in a room or on a

canvas

Warhol famously came from the wrong side

of the tracks where there wasn't any

glamour this is Pittsburgh where Warhol

was born in 1928 he lived here with his

mother and father who came over from

Czechoslovakia and you could hardly

speak any English and his two brothers

John and Paul it was a simple

working-class life Warhol was always ill

as a child and read movie magazines in

bed and their chocolates I used to go

out and buy him move movie star

magazines you know different theater

magazines which he got three faun

doggies to cut out the pictures and then

later on he says Paul how can I get some

of these movie stars autograph yeah now

and I says well I'll write to him you

know so I wrote a lot of movie stars and

a lot of them responded especially like

Shirley temple's she sent them an

eight-by-ten photographed Andrew Arjona

from Shirley Temple you know he prized

that when I talked to Paul I don't feel

it's all that different to talking to

anyone he doesn't know who Warhol was

any more than anyone else because the

artificial genius war hole that every

one more or less knows is all he knows -

I'm calling

a Warhol killed off his real self to

make room for his art self-made

production line art because that was

America and made himself into a parody

genius because that was art that was

bacastow and jetsam Pollock geniuses

have expressed themselves Warhol made a

new self to fit the new world expressing

his new artificial self his brainwashed

American consumer itself

he was vividly expressing the world he

was the world in all its ordinariness

and strangeness he had to keep the new

invented self going though he had his

own manual which he wrote himself his

famous book and he Warhol's philosophy

from A to B leaned back again enjoyed it

with his student and expect on the

coming round one of his aisles and

reading extracts from it at any moment

this ironic easy-listening soundtrack is

anything to go by when you want to be

like something it means you really love

it when you want to be like a rock you

really love that book I love plastic

idols what makes a painting beautiful is

the way the paint's put on but I don't

understand how women put on makeup it

gets on your lips and it's so heavy

lipstick and makeup and powder and

shadow creams and jewelry it's also

heavy I have a fantasy about money and

walking down the streets and I hear

somebody say in a whisper there goes the

richest person in the world Andy always

said everything more everything is on

the surface just look there and you'll

see everything that's there he didn't

have an intention to be heavy materials

wise or to be deep image wise he liked

being surface

he was audacious and somehow he knew

that what he was doing was right on

point

it was always exactly what needed to be

done at that exact time and it was

beyond being hip

and call even it was genius

you

Wahl is sometimes thought of as a light

and breezy artist sometimes as a rather

dark one I think of him as pretty dark

even at his lightest and breezy

this installation silver pillows from

1966 its walls take on the ultra

seriousness of minimalist sculpture of a

time but also it's a complete negative

couldn't care less comment upon it is

pink and yellow cow wallpaper from the

same exhibition exhibited here exactly

as it was then in a room adjacent to his

silver floaty pillows is an up yours too

contemporary abstract painting with its

abstruse theories of color and flatness

Warhol's own paintings go from

aggressive pastiche of the nights his

version of lovely Impressionism is both

gorgeous and sarcastic to stark

revelations of the horrible his death

and disaster series wall took everything

the mass media had to offer as if it was

messages from the gods and the gods

always have a lot to say about death

Warhol himself was a regular churchgoer

so it's only right he should feel at

home with religions big subject the end

with everything he does there's the

witty idea often given to him by

somebody else as it was in the case of

the death and disaster series but also

the cleverness and stylishness of the

ideas execution like picking the right

title and the right scale for this

painting called foot and tire just big

enough for the foot to be registered

beneath the tire at a glance and picking

the right news photo car crash for this

painting called 5 deaths 5 teenage

corpses are leaning on the grass looking

out their eyes wide open as if they're

feeling fine but in fact they're crushed

mangled and covered with blood

ambulance disaster the one vehicle you'd

think you'd feel safe in and white

burning car

the repeated news photo image shows the

burning car

and the driver grotesquely hanging from

telegraph pole a casual passerby not

just casually passing by and glancing at

death but not even bothering to glance

with the corresponding blank empty

nothingness of the last section of the

series can we do a cheese movie all you

have to do is say cheese cheese all

right go the next book next year's war

halt filming Susan Sontag frightening

superbrain of the sixties asking her if

she wants to be in a movie about cheese

just what you're doing Warhol's

paintings Warhol's films they're the

same they do the same thing it was part

of Warhol's genius to realize that could

be so can film be art were still asking

that question today this is Andy

Warhol's first film sleep made in 1963

only a year after he first became famous

as a painter just a man sleeping for

eight hours

Warhol used to go to underground films

all the time with the poet John John oh

he thought he could make when himself

say bought a camera what should he film

though Andy and I was sleeping together

I was drunk you know like if the hay was

about get up to take a piss and there

would be Andy who's on speed you know

would be looking at me and I would say

what are you doing he said watching and

then I'd go to sleep and wake up again

take another person and then he would

sort of was that night for the lack of

an idea what he was gonna make his a

movie of was he got the idea of

and then me sleeping war holeshot hours

of footage over different nights then he

got into a tangle editing it finally he

just picked out the shots that

brilliantly emphasized light and shade

so the film wouldn't seem too gay to

beat censorship laws and he made it

eight hours long because that's how long

sleep usually lasts to conform to arts

structural laws in this film there is

the palpable sense of one of the

elements of Warhol's genius the way his

art foreground sexuality like Picasso's

does only of course not like it because

Warhol was gay and because I wasn't

great energy comes with sex and drugs

just magnified him and he understood all

that I mean Andy was on speed himself so

he only so he could see everything with

enormous clarity and then everyone else

was on whatever drug of their choice was

and they will [ __ ] I mean it was grow

everyone was either straight or gay was

was a lot of sexuality and Andy totally

when that was the attraction of for him

to make movies I mean Andy didn't want

to have sex he wanted to watch as we

know he was a great lawyer

here's [ __ ] made in the same year as

sleep another film with a minimal

structure its reality but this is all

you get

it's the same frame for half an hour

reality and abstraction coming together

pardon my french

aha

it's a fine balance of elements lost on

some people who quite understandably are

interested in the title but a bit bored

by the film I told Andy once in New York

I says I'm going down to see one of your

movies you know it's playing and he says

look they charge $3

he says you give me the three bucks and

let me boot you in a rear-end he says

don't waste your time on it so that was

the answer that I got but it says some

some of the family members were sort of

critical about it you know my mother was

very deeply in the village and she had

faith in it and she brought Andy up

halfway to and brought all of us that

way I mean on numerous occasions when

we're up here and he's getting ready to

leave and in hid yell mother I'm getting

ready to leave come on in here and and

pray with me and he knelt down in front

of her altar and in in prayed you know

for five or ten minutes and Andy would

be on his way

warhol's pictures of death how great

they look even though they're only

silkscreen photos how great he could

make that technique be nobody knows what

he really thought about death these

skulls pop death or death death they

were painted ten years after he really

did nearly die from an attempted

assassination by Valerie Solanas the

author of the scum manifesto the Society

for cutting up men she came up to

Warhol's famous factory studio and shot

him one day in 1968 Warhol survived the

shooting but for the rest of his life he

suffered constant pain from the wounds

which went on leaking horribly but then

in February 1987 he did die tragically

from simple neglect when his private

nurse fell asleep following a routine

gallbladder operation his tubes just

clogged up and he died

here we are again in a graveyard

morbidly obsessing over modern arts dead

dad's Warhol was a genius but it was a

new type of genius he was a genius at

expressing what it felt like not to be

sure what you felt at all it was a great

psychologist he observed what drives

people and excites them not the people

in his pictures and films the icons but

the people who wanted to look at them

the public he wrote books and made

movies and produce records and painted

paintings a lot of it wasn't any good

but he looked at a wasteland and said

this is Modern Art and it was

hi its young people's music but back in

the now zone again people of the 90s

Times Square acting out a fashion me

acting modern uh-oh he has sent his man

head filled with the past pondering the

meaning of modernity is modern always

modern does it run out is it something

you get out the modern cupboard down and

polish or is it always frightening Lee

alive Warhol Pollock Picasso they all

stand for radical breaks with the past

ugliness instead of beauty America

instead of Europe irony instead of

anguish I am what I am because of them

but now they're the past Andy Warhol

became part of culture in about 1962

what's happened since then this is

millennium modern art Damien Hirst spots

in lot 61 the latest media hang out in

New York I'm drunk now and jet-lagged

from time travel so I'm just talking

rubbish

but if you ask me what these spots say

is that like Andy Warhol's silver

pillows we are a form of art of almost

unbelievable weightlessness and yet we

are quite good how can that be

it's bright decorative eye stimulating

exciting painting doing all the things a

painting should do but it's all done

mechanically with a compass and with the

colors not even being filled in by

Hearst but by an assistant so something

is missing there's nothing to tell us

what to feel it expresses our culture's

anxiety about the role of painting now

does it have one God has it come to this

from Picasso's fabulous art of domestic

life to all of modern are summed up in a

restaurant art is dead said Warhol I am

nature said Pollock

I don't seek I find said Picasso

vindaloo says

here we are back where we started at my

studio a modern art greenhouse where

modern art mines are cultivated and

nurtured he is an artist painting a

psychedelic modern garden this is modern

art going on but being different Damien

Hirst isn't the last chapter

he's just the leader of our present

phase of modern art we're geniuses don't

really exist but creativity and

inventiveness and not being straight and

having your own system and not being

polite all still do and that's the

answer to the thing we were wondering

last time we were at my ambiently

humming studio we like modern art

because we don't know what it is the

reason it keeps changing is to make sure

we never do

this is modern art continues next week

Thursday Ken Burns superb series jazz

continues with the music taking new

directions into the turbulent 60s join

us for jazz 9:30 Thursday nights stay

with us now for the history of sin

George's Chapel