Waldemar Januszczak TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV -
Natural v Artificial: There’s somewhere where this distinction isn’t nearly as clear-cut. It’s a place where the artificial seems perfectly natural. And in that sense, it’s somewhere that got to the future before us: Japan. Waldemar Januszczak, Travels in Virtual Japan, Channel 4 2000
Technology is a friend, not a fiend. ibid.
While we were inventing morris dancing, the Japanese were coming up with the first robots. ibid.
Early Japanese robotics was a science having fun. ibid.
The modern world has grown suspicious of the man who painted this picture. All you need to know is that she was 15 when he painted her; he was nearly 50. And she was his woman. Doesn’t sound good, does it? Waldemar Januszczak, Gauguin: The Full Story, BBC 2003
Even the madness of Van Gogh gets blamed on Gauguin. ibid.
I reckon Gauguin painted some of the world’s most alluring women. And he put them into several of the world’s most gorgeous pictures. ibid.
He had guts by the barrel-load, and with the life he led he needed them. ibid.
Peru had done its job: it had given Gauguin’s art a completely different headstart to anyone else’s. ibid.
In 1873, at exactly the same time as he became as stockbroker, he started becoming an artist too, an unsually gifted one at that. ibid.
Sculpture, pottery, all manner of print methods, carving walking sticks and pipes … ibid.
He’d sailed halfway around the world imagining an unspoilt tropical paradise but the missionaries and the colonial hypoctrites had got there before him. ibid.
The show had all his Tahitian masterpieces in it. Critics grumbled about it. ibid.
I’ve just been to China where I saw some completely unforgettable art … I’m talking about the present and probably about the future too. Because it’s fallen to China of all places suddenly to become the global leader of outrageous artistic progressiveness. Waldemar Januszczak, Beijing Swings, Channel 4 2003
JJ and Chai do whacky things in the name of art … If things go to plan, I’ll soon be swallowing human dumplings. ibid.
Zhu Yu – he’s the Damian Hirst of Chinese art. ibid.
He admitted that he vomited twice before going forward with his [dead] baby eating performance. ibid.
‘I fight for the right of self-expression in public.’ ibid. Zhang Dali, graffiti artist
A middle-aged protest artist on a bike whose canvas was an ugly new city being built on the on the trampled down remains of a beautiful old one. ibid.
Cang Xin: These very painful outrageous performances. ibid.
Sun Yuan & Peng Yu: He works with dead bodies; she makes things out of human fat. ibid.
Kazakhstan: It’s currently producing some of the most exciting and potent and out there modern art in the world. Waldemar Januszczak, Kazakhstan Swings, Channel 4 2006
The largest land-locked country on Earth. ibid.
This is remarkable. The modern art they make here makes you tingle with excitement. It’s utterly fearless. ibid.
Almagul Menilbayeva: Performance artist and very tough cookie. ibid.
Rustam Khalfin: The godfather of Kazakhstan art. ibid.
They call themselves the Red Tractor Group: an artistic collective of regressive progressives, seeking I guess to connect with their ancient freedoms. ibid.
1901: The two biggest artists on the scene couldn’t be more different. This one here – he’s an American with fast hands – John Singer Sargent, a bearded smoothie who specializes in dashing portraits of the rich and famous. This other one – he’s more of a crumpled plodder – Walter Sickert – another foreigner born in Germany. Waldemar Januszczak, Sickert vs Sargent, BBC 2007
Sickert like light that was urban and grubby as if it had been trampled on in the streets. ibid.
Sargent’s folk were from Philadelphia, came over to Europe and pottered about elegantly. ibid.
Sargent was so good so quickly that he never really had a student’s era. He was making striking art from the start. ibid.
Sickert disappeared into Whistler’s possessive orbit for nearly a decade. It took him so long to find himself. ibid.
The commissions dried up in Paris so he [Sargent] moved to London. ibid.
Sickert was a North London man, Camden Town, Mornington Crescent, and those in-between bits of the smoke around King’s Cross … Sickert had this weird compulsion to keep moving. ibid.
‘Sickert shows us a world that is drab, dirty, disillusioned, whose pleasures are mirthless, a world in fact such as we know.’ ibid. William Rothenstein, friend of Sickert
Sargent liked the theatre, the opera, and that quintessential Edwardian night out, ‘the at home’. ibid.
His [Sickert] entertainment of choice was the music hall. ibid.
Music Hall: Sickert was its first and best chronicler. ibid.
He was a voyeur staring at the voyeurs. ibid.
That common prejudice that sculpture is somehow an interesting by-way of art, a nice addition the paintings. Actually, it’s the other way round. Waldemar Januszczak, The Sculpture Diaries I: Female Sculptures, Channel 4 2008
The be-all and end-all of art. ibid.
If anyone belongs in Trafalgar Square it’s Alison Lapper. ibid.
Willendorf Venus: The first undisputed masterpiece of world sculpture. ibid.
I’m in Nigeria … on the sculpture trail. ibid.
That’s sculpture for you: it frightens the parts that other arts can’t reach. ibid.
Human beings are sculptures too. ibid.
Venus de Milo: The Louvre’s celebrated masterpiece. ibid.
Are we talking about ideal beauty here or are we talking about ideal deformity. ibid.
Orlan: She’s a body sculptor, and the body she sculpts is here own. ibid.
Sculpture has always been in the business of supplying stand-ins. ibid.
The dark art of Hans Bellmer … one of the spookiest sculptors of the twentieth century. Dolls were his thing. ibid.
In matters of leadership, lions are what you want, and sheep are not. Waldemar Januszczak, The Sculpture Diaries II: The Leaders
If there’s really one thing sculpture is really good at it’s turning sheep into lions. ibid.
How do you sculpt a leader? … It’s one of sculpture’s oldest problems. ibid.
Four great presidents of the United States carved into Mount Rushmore … It was built to be a tourist attraction. ibid.
Its mighty ghosts. I think you know where I mean. Easter Island. There’s nowhere else like Easter Island. It’s terrifyingly remote. ibid.
Stalin’s World: This grotesque theme park was created by one of Lithuania’s richest man … Viliumas Malinauskas. ibid.
Big statues wind up your enemies something awful. ibid.