Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A painter known for his representational style, always painting on wood and building up pictures with many layers of paint.
On the island
Eight records
UcaluluFavourite
For me, an absolutely haunting song from Kurt Weil's Ucali, sung by Teresa Stratus.
This record is of an aria from Glux Orpheus which was sung to me by my mother when I was a child of, I suppose, three, four and five, which I had completely forgotten about till I heard it being played and it was a very emotional moment when I heard it again. And it reminded me of my mother's happier days.
A piece that really has something for everybody in it.
This is Habeli Sanjeet, which is in fact an evening rug. Sung by Ama Lal. This is something of great sentimental value to me because it records the singing which I heard on the terrace of the palace at Kishangar in India when I went to India for the first time with my friend Robert Skelton who then was head of the Indian section at the VNA.
Auction Scene (from The Rake's Progress)
John Dobson, London Sinfonietta Chorus, Riccardo Chailly
all about collecting. It's part of the auction scene from the second act of The Rake's Progress by Stravinsky.
Trois Morceaux en forme de poire
Gabriele Tacchino and Aldo Ciccolini
is a great favourite. When I was at Bath Academy of Art, which was the school run by the great Clifford Ellis, He was very interested in music as well as painting and he got William Glock, Sir William Glock, to come and talk to the students and play the piano to us and when he played this it was the first time I'd ever heard it.
Torleif Thedéen and Roland Pöntinen
part of Stravinsky's Italian suite for cello and piano, which Many people may recognise as being actually something else.
I want it to be played at my funeral, and it's the Andrews Sisters singing Patience and Fortitude.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:03Were you in two minds about accepting the knighthood?
Yes, and in fact I'm still perhaps rather in two minds having accepted it, because I didn't really want a knighthood, but they don't give things like that to artists very much, and so I thought, oh well, all right. But of course I'm not for a second suggesting, as some theatrical knights have done, that they were ta I was taking it for the profession. I mean it's a entirely selfish thing to have.
Presenter asks
9:45You say that aria reminds you of your mother's happier days – what do you mean by that?
Well, it reminds me of when my mother was looking after us as when the family were small children and it was before the war. At the beginning of the war we went my mother, my sister and I, to America. And those were happy days as well, but they were completely different.
Presenter asks
13:15Did you run away from prep school and Eton and Bryanston because you were bored?
Well, it was slightly more complicated than that. I had decided that it was the kind of education from which it would be very difficult to be an artist. And I would like to put the record straight a little bit in that I had wonderful teachers. I was extremely lucky for the kind of child I was. In virtually every school I went to I was given privileges which were very unusual, so instead of having to play organized games, I was able to paint. But I was determined from the moment I came back to England from America to somehow become a painter.
The keepsakes
The book
Eugène Delacroix
My book would be Delacoir's journals in French. It's a wonderfully long book. I don't read French with much facility. It's completely fascinating. It's all about an artist's life, but it's full of gossip about the art world, about machinations between one artist and another, and so on. I think it would be totally fascinating.
The luxury
a permanent supply of mayonnaise
Well, if I'm allowed, I would like a permanent supply of mayonnaise. Presumably, there'll be a lot of fish to eat. And cold fish with mayonnaise is something I probably like eating better than anything else.
Presenter asks
15:28Did your parents despair of you?
Very nearly. My father loved painting, and we shared tremendous enthusiasm for the work of both Pierre Bonnard and Vuillard. But I think he was very worried in a proper old fashioned middle-class way that I would ever have any money to live on.
Presenter asks
23:34Why do your paintings take so long to finish – years in some cases?
Well, the shortest and perfectly true answer is because I take so long to make up my mind. It's very difficult to keep all the elements going that are in a painting. The feeling, the emotion, the memory of course as it invariably is has to be turned into something else and that takes a very long time as well. I keep making false moves. I think really the problem is making the picture stand up by itself. Because the memory has to be transmuted into a thing, into an object, and that is a very slow process for me.
Presenter asks
24:47How do you know when a painting is finished?
Oh, that, uh forgive me, is a question I've often been asked, and it's very easy to know. It's when the distance from the or original feeling is such that the original feeling comes back at you. Then I know it's finished, and then there's nothing more to be done.
“It was painted on the back of a blackboard from an RAF mess, which had had so many notices pinned on it that the corners had become rounded, though rather irregularly. I like that very much.”
“All your best pictures look as if they'd been painted in an afternoon.”
“What it's about is of course part of the image you see.”
“We don't like brilliance. We don't like these ... I think because it's thought to be over emotional.”
“Oh I hate being alone. Because my work is so lonely. The awful thing about being on a desert island is there'll be no audience for what I do.”