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00:00To be continued...
00:57The crisis has deepened on Wall Street
00:59as stocks plummeted another 130 points.
01:02President Hoover has called for calm
01:03and the nation's banks have assured that investors...
01:06As America careened into the Great Depression of the 30s,
01:09there was one image of her engraved on the imagination of all foreigners.
01:14It was the skyscraper, sign of ambition, index of the power of Manhattan.
01:24New York's shifting, rising skyline
01:27was like nothing Europe had ever seen.
01:29It was a graph of cultural impaction,
01:32the condensation of lives, work, hopes and fantasies
01:35onto a mere pocket of land
01:37bought from the Indians with some beads.
01:44There was a reason for skyscrapers
01:46and it grew out of the tight space of Manhattan Island.
01:49When land is scarce, you have to multiply the site,
01:52you have to squeeze it upwards like toothpaste out of a tube.
01:55The Manhattan skyscraper replayed the myth of frontier expansion.
02:00Not horizontal expansion with the wagons rolling westward,
02:03but vertical expansion.
02:05A conquest of the air.
02:07A land grab in the sky.
02:20As investors used to say,
02:22the thing about land is that God's not making any more of it.
02:26American ingenuity now solved this problem.
02:28Once you had a site, however small,
02:30you could send it up in a stack into what had been useless sky.
02:44So Manhattan got both area and denser
02:47and even more of a hive of competing fantasies.
02:51The rest of the world marveled
02:52at how Americans could turn a patch of property
02:55into an abstract, universal sign
02:57of thrust and power and go-getting.
03:06Between 1927 and 1932,
03:08New York went skyscraper crazy
03:10and produced some of the most exuberant
03:13and flat-out original buildings of the 20th century.
03:20Their very construction was a romance
03:22and dancers were hired to perform
03:25on their bare girders for the avid media.
03:27The challenge for architects
03:29was to find a decorative style
03:31big and eloquent enough
03:32to clothe these steel frames.
03:41They brought it back from Paris
03:43and it was called Art Deco
03:45in homage to the event that popularised it,
03:48the 1925 International Exposition of Decorative Arts.
03:57It was modern but sumptuous,
03:59very far from the austerity of the Bauhaus
04:02that had gone before.
04:04Deco translated into wings and sunbursts
04:07and lightning bolts
04:08and its armature, the silhouette of the buildings,
04:11was changed by the New York zoning laws,
04:14the first code of its kind in the world
04:16which obliged architects to step their buildings back
04:19as they went up to prevent the avenues of Manhattan
04:22from becoming gulfs of shadow.
04:39These step-back rules encourage quotation
04:42from an ancient South American form,
04:44the Mayan Step Pyramid.
04:46Thus, you often had an imagery devoted
04:48to the sacrificial cult of the sun,
04:51ritual buildings growing up from the urban jungle.
04:58New York has always wanted to have
05:00and be everything, I think.
05:02New York is a romantic city,
05:04it's a theatrical city,
05:05it's a flamboyant city,
05:06but it's also a very pragmatic business city.
05:09Art Deco could have wrapped it all into one package.
05:12Suddenly, New York had a building type
05:14that could absolutely summarise
05:16all the things it cared about most.
05:18Drama, theatre, power, money,
05:21all of those things
05:23the great skyscrapers of New York represented.
05:26It was a decorative style,
05:28it was entertaining,
05:29it was using the ideas of modernism,
05:32but simplifying them
05:33and finding in them a kind of entertainment
05:35and putting back the romance.
05:38Suddenly, with Art Deco,
05:40you could have modernism
05:42that had beautiful curving lines
05:44and streamlined forms
05:46and a certain amount of decoration,
05:47and it was not stern and puritan.
05:49You're meant to like Art Deco
05:51because it's delicious
05:53and not because it's going to do you good.
05:54Precisely, exactly right.
06:04Is it a hypodermic needle?
06:06Is it Buck Rogers' spaceship on the launch pad?
06:09No, it is the Chrysler building,
06:11commissioned by the Detroit automotive tycoon
06:14Walter P. Chrysler,
06:15as a peon to the cars that made him rich.
06:22It's sheathed in polished metal
06:24and decorated with emblems of the auto age,
06:27gargoyles that are huge radiator caps
06:29and a frieze of hubcaps
06:31like solar disks
06:32running around the 30th floor.
06:36The triangular windows
06:38in the arches of the spire
06:40suggest the spokes of a wheel.
06:42This was amazingly inventive stuff,
06:44however much purists might sniff at it.
06:54Moreover, modern did not mean spartan.
06:57The elevators of the Chrysler
06:58were inlaid with brass
07:00and a dozen kinds of exotic wood.
07:02The cabs were the fastest ever.
07:06There was even a mural in the foyer
07:08symbolising the modern world
07:10with monoplanes buzzing around in the sky
07:12and the hundreds of construction workers
07:15who had built the tower
07:17and the tower itself.
07:26It's 65 years since this palace of vertigo
07:29and vain glory was finished,
07:30two-thirds of a century,
07:31and yet the Chrysler building remains
07:33the best example of a building
07:35as corporate logo anywhere in America.
07:38She just keeps going,
07:39this lofty old dowager
07:41with her stainless steel dress
07:42and her wonderful eagle gargoyles.
07:45Walter Chrysler told William Van Allen,
07:48the architect,
07:49that he wanted the tallest building in the world.
07:53That set off a vertical race.
07:55Downtown in Wall Street,
07:57construction was already underway
07:58at the new Bank of Manhattan.
08:00It, too, had ambitions to be the tallest.
08:04Van Allen bluffed his rival
08:06into believing the Chrysler
08:07would top out at 925 feet.
08:10So the Bank of Manhattan
08:12finished at 927,
08:13and then Van Allen
08:15pulled the phallus out of the hat.
08:17He'd secretly constructed
08:18a 185-foot spire,
08:21and now he had it hoisted
08:22to the top of the Chrysler
08:23in only 90 minutes.
08:25Victory was his.
08:30With much hoopla,
08:32featuring dancers
08:33costumed as futuristic machinery
08:35doing their routines,
08:36high in the sky,
08:38the Chrysler building
08:39opened to the public
08:40on May 27, 1930.
08:42Was Andrew Lloyd Webber
08:44watching this?
08:45Maybe from the womb.
08:58Later, William Van Allen
09:00went to an architect's ball,
09:01looking like Ming the Merciless
09:03dressed in his own creation.
09:12Other architects turned up, too.
09:32In the collective reach for the sky,
09:34no records could stand for long.
09:36Within only a few months,
09:38the Chrysler was topped
09:39by an even more famous tower
09:40only a few blocks away.
09:43We are about to officially
09:46open the Empire State Building,
09:49the largest and most beautiful office building
09:52in the world.
09:56not everyone liked the style.
09:58To some young architects,
10:00functionalism was the gospel,
10:02and Art Deco seemed trivial,
10:03gratuitous.
10:06I looked at them the way I would have finned on a Cadillac,
10:10with revulsion and disgust.
10:12I said, imagine decorating
10:14these wonderful skeleton buildings
10:16that we have.
10:17The only good skyscrapers,
10:19one that isn't finished.
10:20The steel was so beautiful
10:22that naturally,
10:24if you had that steel,
10:25why would you dress it up
10:26and put meaningless decoration on it?
10:29You see,
10:29I had no idea of the subtleties
10:31of the Art Deco decorative things
10:34that I like now.
10:37When you look at the Empire State now,
10:38do you think of it as being
10:39one of the genuinely distinguished
10:40American buildings?
10:42I certainly don't.
10:43It's an ugly building
10:43and has much architectural quality,
10:45but it has a symbolic quality
10:47way, way beyond its requirements.
10:56It is a symbol,
10:58and as a symbol goes,
10:59you couldn't do any better.
11:00The tallest in town,
11:01it was in the middle of the Depression,
11:03and it lifted all our hearts,
11:04me too,
11:06to say we can do it still,
11:07can't we?
11:08How ridiculous all this poverty,
11:10what are they talking about?
11:12And so it represented something so strong,
11:14I can't get it out of my mind.
11:16I still go up,
11:16should we go up to the top
11:17of the Empire State Building?
11:18Well, there's nothing up there.
11:20But, oh yes,
11:21it's the top of the Empire State Building.
11:32But for many Americans,
11:34these high celebrations
11:35of corporate power
11:36were offensive.
11:38They preached the virtues
11:39of big money
11:40to people queuing
11:41at soup kitchens
11:42in the streets below.
11:43They were a master image
11:45of inequality.
11:46With the crash,
11:47the skyscraper
11:48became an emblem of doom,
11:50like the temple
11:51of a sacrificial cult.
11:56Hugh Ferris's drawings
11:58turn an imagined New York
12:00into a city
12:00of prismatic tombs,
12:02scary, abstract monuments
12:04in a social void.
12:11The shift in the image
12:13of the skyscraper
12:13was highlighted
12:14in Fritz Lang's film
12:16Metropolis,
12:17set in an inhuman cityscape,
12:19a dystopia
12:20created by hostile technology
12:22and based on New York.
12:38You feel a chilly touch
12:40of this sometimes
12:41in real architecture
12:42as well,
12:43as for instance
12:44in a New York newspaper building.
12:49The step from
12:50the Deco Tower of Joy
12:51to the Deco Tomb
12:52was taken by Raymond Hood
12:54when he came to design
12:55the foyer
12:56of the Daily News building
12:57on 42nd Street
12:59in Manhattan.
13:00The idea came
13:02from the tomb
13:03of Napoleon in Paris,
13:04but instead of the body
13:06of a dead emperor
13:07at the centre,
13:08you have this large
13:09blue globe
13:10of the world
13:11slowly rotating
13:12in captivity
13:13under the all-seeing eye
13:15of the press
13:16and by implication
13:17its readers,
13:18all happening
13:19underneath that
13:20glittering black
13:21firmament up there.
13:22My God,
13:23what nostalgia.
13:24Makes you think
13:25of the days
13:25when Clark Kent
13:26was a boy
13:27and the newsrooms
13:28of America
13:28were full
13:29of the likes
13:30of Jimmy Cagney
13:31wearing their hats
13:32while belting
13:32on their underwoods.
13:36The ambitions
13:37of the Daily News
13:38are etched
13:38into the very floor
13:39of the foyer.
13:40This, we see,
13:41is the centre
13:42of the world
13:43with its capital cities
13:44in orbit around it
13:45held in the field
13:47of the media's scrutiny.
13:59This amphitheatre
14:01of pleasure
14:01gave relief
14:02to thousands
14:03from the harsh,
14:04dull life
14:04of the Depression.
14:06Radio City Music Hall
14:07was designed
14:08for the theatrical
14:09impresario
14:10Samuel Roxy Rotherfeld,
14:12who wanted it
14:13to seat 6,000 people.
14:15With the balconies
14:16like decks
14:16and rows
14:17of seats
14:18like waves,
14:19you were meant
14:19to feel
14:20just a bit
14:20like a passenger
14:21on an ocean cruise.
14:25There's no mystery
14:26about why Roxy
14:27wanted a liner motif.
14:28The great ocean liners
14:30of the 30s
14:30were symbols
14:31of luxury
14:32and escape.
14:33They were floating islands
14:34that could carry you away
14:35from the drab,
14:36anxious reality
14:37of Depression America.
14:38And so you sat here
14:40and you looked
14:41at a 60-foot-high proscenium
14:42covered in gold leaf
14:44representing the sun
14:45coming up
14:45out of the ocean.
14:47Morning in America,
14:48at least for a couple
14:49of hours.
14:52For the crucial opening night,
14:54Roxy employed
14:54a company of dancers,
14:56the Rockettes.
15:01It was just so vast.
15:03Nobody had any idea
15:05or could visualize
15:06really what it was
15:07going to look like.
15:07It was just like
15:08a huge airplane hangar
15:10and this big,
15:11high ceiling
15:13with the lighting
15:15that gave the effect
15:16of almost the sunrise
15:18or sunset
15:20or a rainbow effect
15:22because it was just
15:24so beautiful.
15:28the opening
15:29of the Music Hall
15:29was December 27, 1932
15:32but everybody
15:33that was anybody
15:34in New York
15:35was there for that opening
15:37with the red velvet carpet.
15:39It was a very, very
15:40long, long show
15:42which ran into
15:44the very late hours
15:46at night.
15:57And the house lights
15:58came up
15:59and half the people
16:00were going home
16:01because it's now
16:0212 o'clock
16:03and much later
16:04I guess than people
16:05had anticipated
16:06and the show
16:07had been much longer.
16:09It was not long
16:11at all before
16:11Roxy was gone
16:12because he had
16:15practically collapsed
16:16after the show
16:17maybe realizing
16:18that his dream
16:19hadn't really turned out
16:20as he expected.
16:24Roxy died within
16:25five years
16:26of his opening
16:26night flop
16:27but his work
16:28remained an
16:29imperishable
16:29period piece.
16:31Its designer
16:31Donald Deskey
16:32left his imprint
16:34throughout
16:34from the lavatories
16:35to the theatre
16:36and the foyers.
16:37There wasn't a handrail
16:38or a light fixture
16:40in the place
16:40that didn't get
16:41the maximum treatment.
16:42You went first class
16:44when you entered
16:45Roxy's dreams.
16:48Even the Men's
16:49Smoking Lounge
16:50got a major mural
16:51by the artist
16:52Stuart Davis.
16:53Its title
16:54is out of Hemingway
16:55Men Without Women.
16:57It features
16:58the biggest Havana cigar
16:59in the history
17:00of Western art.
17:04Reprehensibly sexist
17:05yes
17:05but Davis also
17:06pointed out
17:07that although women
17:08had pushed their way
17:09into New York's
17:09ale houses
17:10they'd never get
17:11into the men's room
17:12of Radio City
17:13to see his painting.
17:17The invention
17:18of the Rockettes
17:19a line of identical
17:20dancers
17:20as perfectly synchronized
17:22as clockwork
17:22not a movement
17:23off the beat
17:24became a favorite
17:25image of the 30s
17:26part of the same
17:28abstraction of the
17:28human body
17:29that gave Hollywood
17:30the Busby Berkeley
17:31spectaculars
17:32and in its most
17:33dictatorial form
17:34brought Germany
17:35the Nuremberg rallies.
17:41I am prepared
17:43under my
17:44constitutional duty
17:45to recommend
17:46the measures
17:47that a stricken
17:48nation in the midst
17:48of a stricken world
17:49may require.
17:51This nation
17:52is asking for
17:54action
17:54and action now.
17:57After his election
17:58in 1932
17:59Franklin Roosevelt
18:01set out to save
18:02capitalism
18:02by instituting
18:04a very different
18:04form of state
18:05intervention
18:05the New Deal
18:07which included
18:08massive programs
18:09to employ the millions
18:10who were out of work.
18:14the works progress
18:15administration
18:16gave employment
18:17to struggling
18:18writers and artists.
18:21It kept painters
18:23busy with murals
18:24for town halls
18:25railroad stations
18:26and post offices
18:27temper
18:28democratic
18:28subject
18:29the work
18:30and aspirations
18:31of collective America.
18:33this produced
18:34quite a lot
18:34of idealized kitsch
18:36not unlike
18:37the public art
18:37of Stalinist Russia
18:38in the 1930s
18:40but it also
18:41kept quite a few
18:41good artists alive.
18:44Before the depression
18:45American artists
18:46were going to the
18:47left bank
18:48in Paris
18:48and they were having
18:49this beautiful
18:50sort of hedonistic life
18:51and when the money
18:52stopped
18:53they all came back.
18:55the depression
18:56was so disastrous
18:57that many of them
18:58left off their berets
19:00and shaved off
19:00their beards
19:01and became workers
19:02in the New Deal
19:04and the work
19:05got politicalized.
19:06I know
19:07in my own case
19:08I was politicalized
19:10out of my own poverty.
19:11I didn't have a dime
19:12so I was very unhappy
19:14I was very bitter
19:15nobody wanted my work
19:17and I think I was
19:18when I got on the project
19:20I was on for a while
19:22it was like
19:23someone had thrown
19:24me a lifesaver.
19:26What artists then
19:28had that I don't think
19:29they've had
19:30any time
19:32ancient and present
19:34is that they felt
19:36as part of the
19:37working class.
19:40When the WPA
19:41looked upon
19:42everybody's unemployed
19:43and the artists
19:44were unemployed
19:44they were free
19:45to be what they
19:46wanted to be
19:47painters
19:48and what they were
19:50is painters
19:51who worked
19:51who painted
19:52the common life.
19:53they were the part
19:54of the common life.
19:56There was the freedom
19:57to share thoughts
19:59to share opinions
20:00share people's
20:01financial difficulties
20:02and this was freedom.
20:05Freedom to dedicate yourself.
20:07Free to
20:08say I'm a painter
20:11who's a human being
20:12and my fellow human beings
20:14are my subject.
20:16That's freedom.
20:26corporations too
20:28encourage public art.
20:29New York's Rockefeller Center
20:31is full of it
20:32including this early relief
20:33of heroic journalists
20:34at work
20:35by the Japanese-American
20:36sculptor
20:37Izumo Noguchi
20:38on the Associated Press
20:40building.
20:44One project
20:45caused bitter controversy.
20:47The Mexican artist
20:48Diego Rivera
20:49was approached
20:50by John D. Rockefeller
20:51with a commission
20:52to paint a major mural
20:53reconciling capital
20:55and labor
20:55in this time
20:56of red scares
20:57and the threat
20:58of class war.
21:00Rivera was the best
21:01public artist
21:02then at work
21:02in either North
21:03or South America
21:04and a hero
21:05to the artistic left
21:06in New York.
21:07He was a passionate
21:08if eccentric Trotskyite
21:10and he endowed
21:11this temple of capitalism
21:12with a design
21:13featuring political demos
21:15cops bashing the workers
21:16and a portrait
21:17of Lenin.
21:19Lenin was the last straw.
21:21Rockefeller fired him
21:23and had the whole mural
21:24demolished.
21:25Artists from the left
21:26were outraged.
21:32Photographers too
21:33produced their versions
21:34of the worker
21:35as hero.
21:36In particular
21:37Lewis Hine.
21:42These rigors
21:43on the high steel
21:44are seen as young angels
21:46of risk and skill
21:47icons of American work.
22:04The greatest monument
22:05to such collective effort
22:06bridges Nevada
22:07and Arizona
22:08the Hoover Dam
22:10finished in 1935.
22:13Nobody from Las Vegas
22:15to Phoenix
22:15could be able
22:16to brush his teeth
22:17or water
22:18his ecologically
22:19impertinent lawn
22:20without this
22:21government project.
22:25the dam became a rallying symbol
22:27for American self-confidence
22:28so bruised and battered
22:30by the Great Depression.
22:31It asserts the power
22:32of technology
22:33and it predicts
22:34a limitless reign
22:35over the forces of nature.
22:36This great concrete wall
22:38726 feet high
22:40taller than the Pyramid of Keops
22:41that holds back
22:42the Colorado River,
22:44the stream that had carved out
22:45the Grand Canyon itself.
22:46It isn't even fixed
22:48to the canyon walls.
22:49It sits there
22:50held by the pressure
22:52of the water behind it
22:53like a leaf over a drain.
22:59Can you talk about
23:00the elegance
23:00of something so big?
23:02Absolutely
23:03because its forms
23:04are so economical
23:05the curve of the dam face
23:07the polygonal towers
23:08mass and lightness together.
23:20enormous design effort
23:22was invested
23:23in the project.
23:27Naturally
23:28sculpture celebrating
23:29the work
23:30was incorporated
23:31into the work.
23:32These winged figures
23:34of the Republic
23:34for instance
23:35and a monument
23:36to the men
23:37who were killed
23:37during construction
23:38to make the desert bloom.
23:43But if the Hoover Dam
23:44was America's
23:45biggest metaphor
23:46of will and skill
23:47rising above the depression
23:49there was one story
23:50that the Works Progress
23:51administration
23:52left largely untold.
23:59It was a story
24:01of violent racial oppression
24:02and of resistance
24:03that of American blacks
24:05in the deep south
24:06and their migration
24:07to the cities of the north.
24:09The job market
24:10for farm work
24:11mainly in cotton
24:12was collapsing
24:13in the wake
24:14of the mechanical harvester.
24:16So they voted
24:18with their feet
24:18and by the end
24:19of the 1930s
24:20more than a million
24:21African-Americans
24:22had travelled north
24:23to the cities
24:24looking for a better America.
24:26This was the biggest
24:27internal migration
24:28in American history.
24:33It was left
24:34to a 23-year-old painter
24:36Jacob Lawrence
24:37to create a sort of
24:38visual ballad
24:39and the migration series
24:4060 paintings that narrate
24:42his people's exodus
24:43to the freedom
24:44that they hoped for.
24:46I was a youngster
24:48in 1935.
24:49I was 18 years of age
24:51and all this talk
24:52was around me.
24:54I would hear my mother
24:55and her peers
24:56like their mother
24:57and their peers
24:58had told these stories.
24:59And so it just took on.
25:01They told it
25:02and through the churches
25:04and through the schools
25:04and through the libraries.
25:06So it just took on
25:07this kind of fascination.
25:10Reading in the newspapers
25:12about people being
25:14attacked along the way
25:15by the authorities.
25:17So it could be
25:18a very brutal
25:19kind of a thing.
25:20And even the people
25:21who had been
25:22in the north for a while
25:23were subject to
25:24physical abuse,
25:26that kind of thing.
25:27So this was,
25:29we were right
25:30in the heart of it,
25:32right in the midst of it.
25:33So all of this
25:34went toward influencing
25:38my series on the migration.
25:48It was just very exciting
25:49seeing the people move
25:51or I imagine
25:53that sort of movement
25:54from one battle
25:55to the next,
25:56south, north, south, north.
25:57And I loved colour.
26:00We were going
26:01through a Great Depression
26:02in order to alleviate
26:03the draveness and so on
26:05that my mother
26:06put up all these colours
26:08and throw rugs,
26:10imitate a Persian rugs
26:12and things like that.
26:14And I realised
26:15that that might have
26:16led me to look
26:17at a person
26:17like Matisse more.
26:21considering the violence
26:22and pathos
26:23of his subject matter,
26:24prisons,
26:25deserted communities,
26:26race riots,
26:28Lawrence's images
26:28are all the more piercing
26:30for their lack
26:30of bombast.
26:32When he painted
26:33a lynching,
26:34he left out
26:34the dangling body,
26:35the jeering crowd.
26:37There is only
26:37bare earth,
26:38an empty noose
26:39and the huddled lump
26:41of a grieving woman.
26:48There is an Egyptian
26:49stillness,
26:50freeze-like
26:51even when you know
26:51the subject was in motion,
26:53like that crowd
26:54surging into the narrow slot
26:56between two railroad cars.
27:00The entire series,
27:02of course,
27:02is a clash
27:03where you're dealing
27:04with this physical confrontation.
27:07Also the two women,
27:09one black
27:10and one white
27:11at the fountain,
27:12it sums up
27:13a human experience
27:19that we've faced
27:21for 400 years.
27:23Two women at the fountain,
27:25both look the same,
27:26only the colour
27:27because the skin
27:28is different.
27:29They both have
27:29the same shapes
27:30and here they are
27:32as two symbols
27:33of a separation,
27:35how people relate
27:37to and see each other.
27:39I would like to think
27:40that's a universal symbol
27:41and not just a symbol
27:45within the migration itself.
27:57But the greatest American artist
27:59of the 1930s
28:00didn't paint
28:01collective experience.
28:02A solitary,
28:04deeply inhibited man,
28:05he focused on lonely people
28:07in an indifferent world
28:08without much social connection.
28:10His name,
28:11of course,
28:12was Edward Hopper.
28:20If you live in New York,
28:21you see Edward Hopper everywhere
28:23in a man staring out of a window
28:25in the sunlight on a cornice
28:26in the lobby
28:27of a third-class hotel.
28:29There hasn't been a painter
28:30in the 20th century
28:31whose work was more associated
28:33with the look and feel
28:34of a certain kind of America,
28:36a basic America
28:37that has nothing to do
28:38with the rhetoric of patriotism
28:40but goes much deeper.
28:42Earlier artists
28:43had painted the frontier
28:44but it was Hopper
28:45who saw that the frontier
28:47had moved inwards
28:48and now lay inside the self
28:50so that the American man of action
28:52was replaced
28:53by the solitary watcher.
28:54He was a man
28:55of extreme plainness,
28:57straightforwardness
28:58and tact of feeling.
29:00He was candid
29:01but his candor
29:02always holds a certain mystery.
29:05He's a painter
29:06that I trust absolutely.
29:12Hopper was convinced
29:13that in his words
29:14American art
29:15should be weaned
29:16from its French mother
29:17but Europe always
29:19meant a great deal to him.
29:20He was no cultural isolationist.
29:27Hopper wanted to capture
29:28what he called
29:29all the sweltering
29:30tawdry life
29:31of the American small town
29:33this sad desolation
29:35of our suburban landscape.
29:44You can get a sense
29:45of the nuances
29:46of Hopper's imagination
29:47from one of his best-known paintings
29:48early Sunday morning.
29:50It's a frontal view
29:51of a row of stumpy brownstones
29:53in New York
29:54too early for people to be up
29:56or for traffic to be moving.
29:58Silence,
29:59stillness
30:00and yet there's
30:01an air of expectancy
30:02and Hopper
30:03pays so much attention
30:05to the exact rake
30:06of light and shadow
30:07across that band
30:07of red brick
30:08that you feel yourself
30:09drawn into the details.
30:11Plus,
30:12the buildings seem
30:13to go on
30:13outside the frame.
30:15And so,
30:16without alerting you
30:17and without telling
30:18any kind of a story,
30:19he manages to slip
30:21a sense of time
30:22into his space.
30:29There are walls
30:31between Hopper's people
30:32transparent
30:32but thick.
30:35In Summer in the City,
30:37has she put her clothes
30:38on after sex
30:39or has he taken his off
30:41to get cool
30:41in the New York heat?
30:43We don't know.
30:44We aren't meant to know.
30:48Hopper's peculiar mix
30:50of voyeurism
30:50putting us in the room
30:52and discretion
30:53not revealing
30:54what they've been doing
30:55or thinking
30:56is the hook
30:57in the painting.
30:59The formality
31:01of the picture
31:01is signalled
31:02by the trapezoids
31:03of light and shade
31:04cast by the slanting sun
31:06through the big bear window.
31:08He was,
31:09you know,
31:10a rather noble,
31:13somber,
31:13stately,
31:14silent fellow.
31:14His wife,
31:16Jo,
31:17she was a wonderful eccentric
31:18who was much underrated
31:20in the Hopper literature.
31:21She was a sophisticated woman,
31:22a woman of great character
31:24who kept him alive.
31:30He had a wonderful,
31:32uninterrupted apprehension
31:33of things
31:34which he then put together
31:35massively
31:36in a Cezanne-like way.
31:37He adored Cezanne.
31:40And the other great passion
31:42was light.
31:43He wanted the fall of light
31:44everywhere.
31:45He watched light.
31:46He watched it
31:47wherever he could see it.
31:48The slanting light.
31:49The movie light.
31:50So you can imagine Hopper
31:51at the movies
31:52looking at the slanting
31:54film noir light.
31:57The people who still have,
32:00in some ways,
32:01the deepest sense
32:02of what Hopper did
32:03and was
32:04are cameramen.
32:05Cameramen just adore him.
32:06That almost objective,
32:09stony gaze of his
32:11which projects the picture
32:13like a movie.
32:19In New York movie,
32:21painted in 1939,
32:23the spectacle on screen
32:24is out of view
32:25and what counts
32:26is the boredom
32:27of the usherette
32:27who's seen it 50 times before.
32:30She's dreaming dreams,
32:31but are they movie dreams?
32:33We don't have a clue.
32:39Woman in the Sun
32:40is like a Renaissance enunciation.
32:43It's his wife,
32:44Jo,
32:44who was 70 by then,
32:46facing the sun
32:46stark naked
32:47with that blinding shaft
32:49of light and shadow
32:50printed on the floor.
32:55And then,
32:57the figure vanishes.
32:58Four years before
32:59he died in 1967,
33:01Hopper painted this,
33:02Sun in an Empty Room.
33:04And that's all it is.
33:06But it's like a stage set
33:07just after the curtain
33:08has gone up,
33:09full of anticipation
33:10and mystery.
33:17There was another artist,
33:18though,
33:19who, unlike Hopper,
33:20portrayed the verve
33:21of 1930s America,
33:22not its social isolation,
33:24using jazz
33:25with its racy,
33:26optimistic beat.
33:30He caught the visual punch
33:31of the American street
33:32with its signs and life
33:34imagined at jazz tempo.
33:37In the early 20s,
33:39Davis set out to adapt
33:40the language of French cubism
33:42to the signs of American life,
33:44producing what he sardonically
33:45called colonial cubism.
33:52His father was a journalist
33:54and cartoonist,
33:55and the Sun would later
33:56describe his own role
33:58as a cool spectator reporter
34:00at an arena of hot events.
34:06Accused of aping French painting,
34:08he memorably replied,
34:09I am as American
34:11as any other American painter.
34:12Over here,
34:13we're racially English American,
34:15Irish American,
34:16Russian or Jewish American,
34:18and artistically,
34:19we're Rembrandt American
34:20and Picasso American,
34:21but since we all live here
34:23and paint here,
34:25we are, first of all,
34:26American.
34:32Davis delved images
34:34from commercial culture
34:35before the pop artists
34:36were even born.
34:37A classic one is Odol, 1924,
34:40in which the bent-neck bottle
34:42of a mouthwash
34:42is presented plain,
34:44name-brand, slogan and all,
34:46as its own icon
34:47reflected in a bathroom mirror,
34:49the ancestor
34:50of Andy Warhol's soup cans.
34:55Davis' obsession
34:56with jazz syncopation
34:58and variations
34:59on a melodic figure
35:00winds into the great housing mural
35:02Swing Landscape,
35:03in which familiar Davis signs
35:06for bridge,
35:07girder,
35:08ladder,
35:08mast and cable
35:09jive and flicker
35:11in a matrix
35:12of energetic colour.
35:16In the 1930s,
35:17Davis was on the political left,
35:19but he was no Stalinist
35:21and had little time
35:22for the kind of social realism
35:24practised by many
35:25in the WPA.
35:26In fact,
35:27he condemned proletarian imagery
35:29as false social content
35:31in art,
35:31and a big ideological split
35:33opened between modernists
35:35like Davis
35:36and those artists
35:37who saw cubism
35:38and abstraction
35:39as socially irrelevant
35:40over the workers' heads.
35:44There was a political split
35:45that happened
35:46and the left
35:47really got smashed up a bit.
35:48And it seems to me
35:50that to organise
35:54on the basis
35:54of feeding people
35:56or righting social injustice
35:59and all that
35:59is very valuable,
36:00but to rally people
36:02around the idea
36:03of modernism
36:04or modernity
36:05or something
36:05is simply silly.
36:07I mean,
36:08I don't know
36:08what kind of a cause
36:09that is
36:09to be up to date.
36:11I think it ultimately
36:12leads to fashion
36:14and snobbery
36:15and I'm against it.
36:17But Davis' enemies
36:18were not just
36:19on his own turf.
36:21Many Americans felt
36:22that neither he
36:23nor Hopper
36:23represented the true America
36:25and they looked
36:26for images
36:26of an altogether
36:27different kind,
36:28far from the elitist city.
37:00also the other
37:00as cool�y.
37:00That one
37:15There was a growing tendency to look away from the harsh realities of urban society
37:20and to idealise another America.
37:23The America whose honest and earthy citizens had truly staked their claim on the plains of the Midwest.
37:35This vision of an American rural Eden had something in common with all other Edens.
37:40It attracted a lot of people and it didn't exist.
37:43It was something that you look back on with the kind of nostalgia that in times of stress gets confused
37:48with social history.
37:50The Depression devastated life in the country as well as in the cities of America
37:54and though some people did better than others, there were no real areas of exemption.
37:58Nevertheless, this idea of Eden in the heartland struck a responsive chord with people who had been so battered and
38:07dazed
38:07by having the rug suddenly pulled from beneath them.
38:10And this found artistic expression in a group that called itself the Regionalists.
38:22Their loudest spokesman was Thomas Hart Benton, who loathed abstraction and New York itself.
38:36The Depression fostered a mood of isolationism and xenophobia in America,
38:41and Benton, to his own advantage, helped to focus that onto art.
38:45He claimed to be leading the charge for good, plain, honest American pictures,
38:50not foreign, not elitist, and not citified.
39:00In fact, Benton began as a modernist under the influence of Cézanne.
39:05And then, ironically, given his later dislike of abstraction,
39:09he came under the spell of an early American abstractionist, Stanton MacDonald Wright.
39:15His own abstract paintings reflect Wright's.
39:27Benton turned his back on Paris and New York,
39:30returning in 1935 to where he'd come from, Kansas City, Missouri.
39:35He destroyed most of his early work to get, as he said,
39:39all that modernist dirt out of my system.
39:43He denounced New York's art world as a veritable Sodom
39:47filled with precious fairies who wear women's underclothes.
39:52In the heartland, he found an Eden of honest work and muscular wrists.
40:15The fullest expression of Benton's desire to be the voice of his people
40:18is this room, the lounge for Missouri's local politicians in the Jefferson City Capitol building.
40:25These murals are Benton's version of the history of the state,
40:29based on the Missouri River, winding out of frontier times down to the present,
40:34which was the year 1936.
40:39Nowhere else can you get a better sense of the man,
40:41his rhetorical energy and his vulgarity,
40:44his love of the late Renaissance and his cornball humour,
40:48his overweening self-confidence and the anxiety that seems to be written all over
40:52these posturing figures in their buckling space.
40:55By the time that Benton was through with it,
40:57this wasn't a lounge anymore.
40:59As one aggrieved legislator complained,
41:01he couldn't sit down and have a game of cards with his cronies,
41:05not with Jesse James about to jump off the wall down the back of his neck.
41:16Others disliked Benton's homestead wife, wiping her baby's butt,
41:20not the right image for the high deliberations of government.
41:24But they did like his vernacular and the big cast of characters,
41:28Huck Finn and his black friend Jim,
41:34Davy Crockett,
41:38and even Frankie shooting Johnny in the bar room for doing her wrong.
41:44Only a man who hated gays as much as Benton
41:47could have produced such a remarkable image of anal rape
41:50without apparently knowing it.
41:53But his colour is tawdrelly emphatic
41:55and he has no sense of surface.
41:58Paint is dry stuff for conveying the message.
42:06The rhythmical distortion of bone and muscular structure
42:09made his human figures weirdly overdeveloped.
42:13Here, in parody of Michelangelo and El Greco,
42:16are the twisting, bulging, overstressed forms of his mature work,
42:21mannerisms which would so influence his pupil, Jackson Pollock.
42:28He did love the people of the Midwest
42:30and he didn't like the idea of the American people
42:34having to buy art from another country.
42:38He felt very strongly about that.
42:40He didn't want to become, you know,
42:45a Europhile in the sense of the art world.
42:48He wanted to deny and get away from the European influence
42:53and have an art that was purely and strongly American
42:57and that it was certainly time for it.
43:01I think Daddy was a very physical person.
43:04I mean, he celebrated the working man.
43:06He thought that watching a welder
43:09with the sparks flying and the big mask and everything
43:11is one of the most dramatic things you could look at.
43:14And it was better to stay in touch with nature,
43:20with physical activities, with being able to chop wood,
43:23being able to hammer, you know, make something or do something.
43:28It kept you realer.
43:31As long as he felt that he was at war with his peers,
43:35he felt like he could go out there and just paint, you know,
43:38and really show them where they're at.
43:42As Benton got ever nastier about modernism
43:45and his cause was backed by conservative journalists,
43:48Stuart Davis uttered a protest.
43:50I, too, think great art will come out of the Middle West, wrote Davis,
43:54but certainly not on the basis of Benton's presumptions.
43:58Regional jingoism and racial chauvinism
44:00will not have a place in the great art of the future.
44:06Benton became a writer, political writer,
44:10calling modern painters communists.
44:14And they're foreigners, they're communists.
44:16I got it all over the place.
44:19Every place I went, when I went out to Kansas City,
44:22I was the hot abstractionist and goddamn communist to them.
44:28Everyone was, they said.
44:30That was the, that's what regionalism did to the art world.
44:35It separated them politically, not artistically.
44:42Then as now, Americans resorted to doses of industrial strength nostalgia
44:47for the good old days as a refuge from the conflicted present.
44:53One artist specialised in images of hometown Apple Pie, Eden.
45:05Next to the White House itself,
45:07this has to be about the most famous dwelling place in America.
45:11It didn't have an architect, at least as far as anybody knows,
45:13but it sure had a painter.
45:15And by posing his dentist and his sister in front of it,
45:19he turned it into the only picture by an American artist
45:22that would become an icon pretty well as famous as the Mona Lisa itself.
45:26American Gothic by Grant Wood.
45:30Wood painted it in 1930.
45:33You can't help reading it as the stern Puritan father
45:36defending the virtue of his not altogether alluring daughter with a pitchfork.
45:46It may be that Wood was slyly poking fun at the narrow-mindedness
45:50of the reigning values of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
45:54Or it may be that, as hundreds of thousands of Americans have thought,
45:58he was praising the enduring bedrock of American morality.
46:03Maybe both.
46:04The Gothic window makes the home the shrine of virtue.
46:09The Gothic window makes the home the shrine of virtue.
46:14Grant Wood, a closet case if ever there was one,
46:17spent his entire life in the state of Iowa.
46:19He was Benton's timid alter ego,
46:22unwilling to argue about his work or even explain it much.
46:27He set up an art commune here, outside the town of Stone City.
46:35From this base he wrote his manifesto,
46:38Revolt Against the City,
46:40exhorting students to stay put and feel free to depict what was local.
46:48In painting landscape, Wood developed a style which he called decorative design,
46:53light, shadow, cultivation patterns,
46:55and a determined sense of hygiene.
46:58His landscapes radiate peace and plenty.
47:02Sometimes they look like toy farms,
47:04suggesting a regression to communal childhood.
47:07Aurora Larkadia, swelling, rolling,
47:11the land ever so discreetly sexualised.
47:19Very occasionally there's a darker side,
47:22as here in Death on Ridge Road,
47:24with its impending crash.
47:26The machine is a dangerous intruder in paradise,
47:30with Walt Disney wheels.
47:34But it was real wheels that carried America's burgeoning fantasies about the future.
47:39Industry sold Americans on the life to come,
47:42and the future intersected with the present in styling.
47:46Practical streamlining brings a modern motor car into step
47:49with modern airspeed styling,
47:51which has real economy and efficiency.
47:55As far as the public was concerned,
47:57the real leaders in the visual arts were not painters,
48:00but designers, applying their ideas to machines like the Chrysler Airflow.
48:07The designers, with their naive enthusiasm,
48:10made everything look speedy,
48:11even if it was actually meant to be screwed down.
48:14The ideal American form was a teardrop with fins,
48:17and it gave you toasters and pencil sharpeners
48:20that looked as if they were ready to blast off your desk
48:22and go out through the front door at 600 miles an hour.
48:26They said,
48:27Escape with us to Utopia.
48:44From vacuum cleaners to cigarette lighters,
48:47the 30s saw more weight of marketing message
48:50built into everyday household objects than ever before.
48:55They advertised themselves.
48:57Look at my sleek lines and shiny surfaces.
49:00Buy me and you buy into the future.
49:04You buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:19you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:19you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:20you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:21you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:21you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and you buy me and
49:30you
49:39The future and what it promised
49:41was much more popular in the 30s than it is now.
49:45For designers and their audience,
49:47the utopian car offered much more pleasure
49:50than grandfather's horse and buggy.
49:58The most symbolically loaded of all these vehicles
50:01was the Chord 810.
50:06It became a fantasy that I would own one one day,
50:08and of course this was the Depression years
50:10when most of the cars we saw were dilapidated,
50:12beat-up old cars.
50:13People couldn't afford anything like this,
50:15and when the parents looked at me, you know,
50:16and they patronised, sure, sure, sure, you know,
50:19just go to work.
50:22It's different looking,
50:23but it has that glamorous, romantic feeling.
50:26Once in a while I see a picture of either clock.
50:28Gable, one of the big stars in Hollywood,
50:30owned cars like this, and, yeah, yeah,
50:32and I just fell in love with this.
50:35I mean, this was something to look forward to,
50:37and it became a fantasy of mine to own one one day.
50:40You sort of had the feeling that no ordinary person
50:42would own a car like this.
50:43Exactly, oh, sure, yeah, yeah.
50:55Launched in 1935, the Chord 810 carried a mass of trend-setting details.
51:03The nose with its wrap-around louvers replacing the normal radiator grille.
51:09The shield-shaped pop-up headlamps adapted from aircraft landing lights.
51:16And those sexy supercharger pipes worthy of Flash Gordon above the wheel casings.
51:22Nowhere else did streamlining get such a cosmetic push as in this rolling sculpture.
51:35Against the background of impending war in Europe,
51:38designers kept transmitting the popular message
51:41that a utopian future could lie in the machine age.
51:44At the 1939 World's Fair in New York,
51:48Americans were able to see, as the motto of the fair promised,
51:51Tomorrow, now.
52:00I hereby dedicate the World's Fair,
52:06the New York World's Fair of 1939,
52:11and I declare it open to all mankind.
52:18The famous symbols of the fair were the perisphere and the trilon.
52:23The perisphere, earthbound, was the world now.
52:27The soaring needle of the trilon suggested free flight into the future.
52:32At Flushing Meadow, American industry had turned a site
52:35made up of 6 million cubic yards of ash and trash
52:39into a consumer's fantasy world.
52:55Its most confident prophecy was an exhibit called Futurama, sponsored by General Motors.
53:01This was an environmental model, a hymn to the freedom of the road.
53:05Within 20 years, Futurama told you, all social tensions would be smoothed away
53:12by the hand of mega-planning and engineering,
53:14and the car would make you free.
53:18And now we see an enlarged section of 1960s express motorway.
53:26Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control.
53:32Curved sides assist the driver in keeping his car within the proper lane under all circumstances.
53:41The key note of this motorway, safety.
53:51Visitors could also watch a film about a happy family discovering the wonders of high tech,
53:56including an obedient robot.
53:58Count them on.
54:00A couple of steps down the IQ scale from the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
54:05One, two, three, four, five.
54:12Five? Well, that's absolutely correct.
54:15That's the most remarkable thing I've ever seen.
54:18Boy, what a guard that guy'd make on my football team.
54:23Yeah.
54:24This must be rather a trip down memory lane.
54:27Oh, I know it. I'm trying to...
54:29The art historian Robert Rosenblum remembers coming here almost every day when he was 12.
54:36You were last here when?
54:391939?
54:401939, precisely.
54:42Well, probably for the first time weeks after it opened.
54:46And I have to say this is a doubly extraordinary experience for me
54:52because one of the things I did as an 11-going-on 12-year-old in the summer of 1939
54:58was to sneak into Billy Rose's Aquacade.
55:01Which was held here.
55:02Right here where we're standing.
55:09Well, as I remember it, it was the aqueous version of the Rockettes.
55:14It was all very Art Deco rhythms.
55:17Used as I was to Radio City Music Hall,
55:19the biggest thrill of a child's life in New York would be to see the Rockettes there.
55:24This was the outdoor athletic version of that experience.
55:28And I sort of wandered around hoping that someday I could see it.
55:32And I, by accident, fell into a side door and tiptoed up some mysterious stairs
55:38and, lo and behold, found myself looking at what now is just an archaeological site.
55:47Did you feel when you were here, when you were a 12-year-old kid,
55:50that you were seeing the future, that this was what the world was going to be like?
55:53I can't tell you how much it felt like the way the world would be.
55:57The sense was that we were heading into the most glorious future
56:01and it was the machine that was going to take us there.
56:04And it just seemed as though things would be getting better and better and better.
56:08We were all so innocent in New York, or at least in the United States, in 1939.
56:13What was going on in Europe was just beside the point.
56:16We were living in a kind of isolation chamber.
56:19We never realised that the end was coming.
56:21As a symbol for me, this is really the end of an era.
56:281939 was the year that Twister plucked Dorothy out of Kansas and away to the land of Oz.
56:34And for a few years, it did look as though all Americans might reach the world of tomorrow
56:39down the yellow brick road of technology.
56:42Before long, though, it was clear that Oz wasn't around the corner.
56:46The Second World War would make America the most powerful nation on earth.
56:51But it would also show Americans what terrors the machine could inflict.
56:55They would end up much less certain about utopia.
57:00I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan
57:14on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
58:09The Second World War would make America the most powerful nation on earth.
58:18The Second World War would make America just a few years.
58:20The Fourth Bank ofchlagen Islands
58:21The fourth Bank of collections of Israel
58:21The систему
58:21The fourth bank of verlier트
58:21The fourth bank ofnajem
58:21The fourth bank interinterest
58:26The fifth inviting 충 uprising