This is a film about art; not the history of art or the academic study of art or the fluctuations in the art market or the latest exhibition but it is about what starts artists off and what keeps them going.
It’s about instinct, temperaments and practicalities, about perseverance. About how work occurs and how, from working life to working life, art is passed on.
Although Walter Sickert is considered the father of modern British painting, he was born in Germany. He became Britain’s most famous artist but after his death he drifted into obscurity, ironically rejected for the same inventive spirit that had first made his name. He remains one of the undiscovered heroes of modern art.
“My pictures had and have secret lives, and so there were things I did not tell, a lot of stuff I did not say back then which I'm saying now.” R. B. Kitaj Though Kitaj was one of the most public of artists, making some of the most immediate, accessible and honest images of our age, he was also a very private man, determined to avoid the spontaneity of film.
Frank Auerbach is a leading figure in British art and recognized internationally as a post world war modern master. Frank Auerbach has become a symbol of "Englishness," heralded as a British icon. Identified with the Neo-Expressionist current, Auerbach had been well established long before the movement began to attract international attention. He carries expressionist techniques to extreme lengths, creating a style incredibly innovative and distinct.
Artist John Virtue spent twenty years in rural isolation as a landscape painter, first in the North of England and then Devon.
In 2002 he responded to a request from the National Gallery in London and decided to move to the capital and paint the city itself. The project took over two years to complete; this film follows the artist at work from Greenwich to Trafalgar Square; and includes witnesses such as Lord Rothschild, Frank Auerbach and Charlie Gillett. The result is a unique and intimate portrait of the painter's working life.
Titian has been called the “First great 20th Century Artist”. He is undoubtedly a master of Western Art and his influence has proved to be as durable as it is widespread… His fresh interpretations of old stories from Mythology and his constant reinvention of the portrait have inspired artists for over four centuries.
Filmed in France and Italy as well as in the UK, this film explores the reasons for the enduring power and abiding attraction of Titian’s paintings. His work and life are investigated by a wide range of enthusiasts:
Auguste Rodin is acknowledged as a colossus that bestrode 19th and early 20th century sculpture: his iconic works The Thinker, The Kiss and The Burghers of Calais are so forceful and gripping that they have become part of our visual vocabulary.
Allen Jones has produced some of the most startling and zestful images of the past five decades. His is a world of iconic women done up to the nines, immaculately seductive, a world in which glamour is a given, where roles switch to the beat and passions flower in searing colour.
Now in his 80’s, Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund, is the J. D. Salinger of modern art. As his fame increases and his eminence as a painter matures into pre-eminence, the artist has become the object of endless and generally inaccurate press interest. He resists all such intrusions and even avoids his own exhibitions in order to dodge the public gaze.
Born in Portugal, Paula Rego is that great rarity a Britain artist with an international reputation. Her lasting reputation of is beyond doubt. Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, describes her as a major figure who has "taken her own childhood experiences, memories, fantasies and fears, and given them universal significance".
