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British Masters: Episode 3: A New Jerusalem

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Episode 3: A New Jerusalem

A New Jerusalem

BBC Four - British Masters, A New Jerusalem

Artists turned to the figurative painting tradition to address what it means to be human.

James Fox explores 20th-century British art. After the Second World War, artists turned to the figurative painting tradition to address what it means to be human.

Three-part series in which art historian James Fox explores 20th-century British art, a period he considers an extraordinary flowering of genius.

In the decades after the Second World War, at a time when many had lost their faith in humanity, British artists turned to the great figurative painting tradition to address the biggest questions of all: what does it mean to be human and how do we create a more humane world? Such existential angst is captured in Lucien Freud's harrowing early portraits and Graham Sutherland's Pembrokeshire landscapes. Francis Bacon stared deep into his own soul to explore the human capacity for evil, while Richard Hamilton warned against the false hope of consumerism. As national pessimism gave way to a new optimism, David Hockney dared to suggest Paradise might be available to us all. But in the early 1970s, just as the world finally began to recognise the genius of Britain's painterly tradition, young artists at home turned against it.

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Art historian James Fox explores British painting from 1910 to 1975.

Art historian James Fox argues that British painting from 1910 to 1975 was an extraordinary flowering of genius.

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