'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' (1833) by P. Delaroche

Hello, we are Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollard. We're an art collaboration and we're artists, filmmakers and curators. Right, welcome ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Gallery. My name is Daniel Herrmann, I'm the curator of modern and contemporary projects here at the National Gallery and I am delighted to welcome you and thank you for making the time. I'm delighted to welcome you to our Unexpected Views series of events. Unexpected Views is essentially a lecture series, but what we do is very different from other lectures that we do, but what we do is very different from other events that we do. This is not going to be an art historical conversation, this is not going to be a background on the established art history of Paul Delaroche's painting that we see here right behind us, but this is actually an informal conversation with some of the most interesting and fascinating artists that we have working in contemporary culture today. And the particular interesting thing is that we are actually able to view works of art from the collection of the National Gallery through the eyes of these artists. It means it's going to be an informal conversation, it's going to be a very particular subjective view, but hopefully it will give us different ideas about the paintings of the National Gallery's collection, but also about how we can look at art in general and perhaps take that away to different ways of looking into the world, into the world of culture in general. Now, I'm also very, very grateful to our sponsor for these events. In this case, of course, it is Hiscox. Without them, it would not be possible for us to do these talks together with you and with our artists, so many thanks to Hiscox, which we appreciate very much. Now, I'm delighted that two of the most interesting artists of the current cultural moment are with us tonight. This is Jane Pollard and Ian Forsythe. Ian and Jane are artists and BAFTA-nominated directors working across film, installation, performance, sound, documentary, and TV drama. Ian and Jane have worked together collaboratively since meeting at Goldsmiths in the mid-90s. Their work has been exhibited around the world and is really collected by museums and its institutions around the world, including Tate, including the British government art collection, and many, many others. Their debut feature film, 20,000 Days on Earth, depicting a 24-hour fictitious period in the life of the musician Nick Cave, with whom the script was also co-written, won two awards at the Sundance Festival and won several nominations from BAFTA and the Independent Spirit Awards. They are currently working on a feature film featuring the work Life of Performer and performing artist Lee Bowery, which also relates to our current exhibition, Lucian Freud, New Gallery. Bowery was one of the most important sitters for Lucian Freud. But just as excitingly and very fitting for today's auspicious date of being Friday the 13th, they have recently curated the exhibition Horror Show, which is currently on display at Somerset House, which I hope all of you are rushing to see either later today or later in the coming days. The Horror Show is featuring artworks dealing from the macabre and ranging from the macabre to the terrifying, and really exploring horror as a catalyst to understand the dark underbelly of culture. Apart from that, there's of course also a Friday the 13th slightly frightening element about the painting that we're looking at together today, Paul Delaroche's execution of Lady Jane Grey from 1833. Maybe before we start talking about Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey, Jane and Ian, can you tell us a little bit about your practice? How would you describe what you as artists do and how you work and operate? We have... so hard to do, what do you do? We do projects that really fire us up. So the Horror Show recently feels like it's a kind of guide to our psyche, to the last 50 years. In fact, we both turned 50 in the last few months, and it felt like a way of looking at that period and looking at how artists use horror as a kind of creative force for rebellion. And maybe it's that, maybe it's creativity that links a lot of our work, because I'm thinking about the film with Nick, and the film about Lee, and Lee Barry and Sue Tilly, and a project we're doing with Marianne Faithfull at the moment, and they're all connected to that idea of why we do what we do, who makes, what makes us who we are, how are we shaped, and why do we make those decisions, and you know those kind of creative decisions. Yeah, I think art for us is a thing that gives you the freedom, a space in which you can explore ideas, and I think that's what's excited us since we met at Goldsmiths a billion years ago. It's kind of one of those terms that sort of means everything and nothing, right? You don't need to put yourself in a little box, and I think for us it gave us the space we were looking for as kind of young 20 year old artists to go out into the world and just explore the things that we found interesting, and then worry about how to put that together in a way that felt worth sharing with other people. So that's ended up being very, I guess you'd call it, multidisciplinary over the years, I think probably at this point in our life. Filmmaking is a very dominant part of our practice. Throughout your practice, you guys have always worked much with lens-based media, is that correct? For sure, yeah. Yeah, I don't think you can grow up in the 70s and 80s and not be shaped by lens-based media. I mean, some of the most kind of influential pieces for us of work, but of also television and film, but particularly television, you know, I think things that changed us. Cracker, you remember Cracker on television? Wow, like that really opened up kind of how you'd make something. You felt the kind of joy of the team making that, and of the people on screen, and I think that makes a massive difference. But also I think it just, it was the way that we saw potential or alternative, you know, that well, we talk about it a lot in the horror shows, that a lot of the people who started and kind of founded punk and, you know, came out of the, were practicing in the 70s and early 80s, it was that 1972 moment of Bowie on top of the pops when he looks down the camera lens as he's performing Starman, and he points at you as the viewer, and that was like some kind of clarion call, like a rally. We were too, I mean, that's the year we were born. For us, it was Adamant, the same program, Top of the Pops, Adamant coming on, and Kings of the Wild Frontier, and that character, and the sort of audacity, and kind of camp and performativeness of it, and it just had that feeling of something more, there's something more exciting, there's something possible, yeah. Well, and then of course, the next question for us is, how did you choose this particular painting? And basically, how do you go about watching a painting like this with your particular interests in mind, and as artists with the practice that you have? I mean, we chose it because it's the best in the gallery, right? It's, look at the moment it's suspending. So, these walls are full of frozen moments, but think about the choice the artist is making, and which moment to freeze, and you see moments of revelation, or of revolution, you see moments of torture, or of chaos, of change, of violence, but this one, this is so interesting, because it's a not quite moment, it's a just before something, and I find that idea of particularly working a lot with sound, and installation, and in the design of the exhibition, you know, the horror show, thinking about how you connect to a viewer, and how you hold them inside a moment, what is that suspension? And I love here that it's so, kind of holds its breath, it's about fear and doubt more than it is violence, it's a kind of quieter moment than you expect, but the impact of that means there is, I don't know, there's just more space for you to kind of be with it, you know, you don't need to avert your eyes, there's nothing that's kind of shocking, but nor do you really feel like you've kind of missed anything, you understand the language of what's just happened, she's been blindfolded, and she's been lowered, but you see that, look at that taut dress underneath the knee, that tells you the story of just the moments before this, and you know what's about to happen, so it just sits there kind of full of fear, and doubt, and reluctance, and it's yet really, really kind of substantial. And I think it's the choice of that very specific, you know, in a way it almost looks like, you know, if you're watching a film, and the old days you just pause the videotape, and there's just that random moment that's chosen, but of course it's far from a frame in a sequence, but somehow it feels like the whole story is there, you understand the story, you understand the frames before this frozen moment, and you understand only too well the frames of the story still to come, and I think to be able to capture on film an entire story is challenging enough, to be able to capture all of that within essentially what in my mind feels like a single frame, a single cell of a story, is incredible. There's something about her being blindfolded that's really key, I think, to the way that you read this work, and to the way that the artist makes room for you as a viewer, in the way that you're watching it. If we could see her eyes, we would know so much more about the kind of emotional content of this, but we can't, we can't see her eyes, so we have to look at other things, and as humans we're doing it all the time, but look at that, look at that right hand, I mean the left hand is looking to steady itself, but the right hand, that bend in it, those fingers, that's everything, all the reluctance and fear is in that hand, so you're being made to kind of dive in, you've got to look for other clues, so you start to read body language, and look at things like the taut dress, the tenderness of his touch, and maybe also her being blindfolded, I mean we all know what that's like, just close your eyes, to have your sight taken away, so maybe it makes you, gives you a bit of space, a bit of scope for kind of, to feel empathy as well, to kind of, to understand, to be able to put yourself in that position, even in the smallest of ways, but in that tiny little act, you're making this, there's something transformative happening between you in it, between you in this moment. The space for you as a viewer, I think, is what, what makes it a painting that we keep coming back to, I mean it's a painting that I would, I would come to the gallery to literally come through, look at this piece, and you know, leave, that's enough, that's what I came for, but I think perhaps it is something to do with what Jane was saying about, you know, nobody's making eye contact, I mean being looked at is uncomfortable, you know, you stand in a room and someone looks at you and you feel it, you sense it, and it's not nice that most people want to leave, and I think the fact that you're observing the thing with nothing, trying to draw your attention in that way, it just gives you, it gives you the mental space, but also the physical space, because the physicality of the work is so, you know, human, I mean literally life-size, you literally feel the presence of these figures in a way that's very, very organic and very, very visceral, and I think the joy has been able to spend time literally in front of the work, but feeling like it's theatrical, it feels like you're part of an encompassing whole, you're not looking at a picture on a wall. I think it was quite interesting what you were saying about the role of the gaze, and the role of having, using the gaze of figures on the canvas, I almost said on the screen, to create a relationship with the viewer, with the beholder, with us as spectators looking at the canvas, and here we can see that Delaroche is staging everything to avert that gaze, to avoid that we are making eye contact with anyone, but even to the point where you're exactly saying that the blindfold in the eyes of the victim, of Jane Grey, is blinded from us, not just from her, her sight is being removed, but also our possibility of making eye contact with her is being shut off and curtailed, and that's actually quite a dramatic way of intervening between this relationship between the viewer and a protagonist in the scene that would otherwise be there. Is this something that, as directors for film, works for you in a freeze frame, or is this also something that works in moving images? Both, and I think about the way that very early in our practice we made a lot of video art, and we were absolutely obsessed with Bruce Nauman, he was God, and then later kind of got into Vito Acconci, and really kind of guided by those early pioneers that had the VHS camera, the cable connected to the monitor, and were able to watch themselves performing, and so it's like you literally kind of have a camera and you're able to sort of see yourself, but one of the things we loved most about that setup was that often it would be comparative life size to you watching it, so I mean again anybody who grew up in the 70s or 80s, the notion that the newsreader is a head in the box in the corner, you get it, you understand it, there used to be a man that lived inside our television, and so I think there's something about that, and there's something about that that it lessens the distance between you and it, and I think that's what Dalai Lama does so well here, there are sort of three things at play, there's no eye contact, but yet you are driven by particularly this character's gaze, you're driven to kind of look at her, and in a way you're very similar to this character, you take a a similar stance, and how weird to be the most similar with the executioner, and yet he seems the most relaxed, he seems the most patient, he doesn't, there's no sense that he's judgmental or kind of blood-hungry, there's a sense of kind of just of being, of just waiting, of just being with this. And yet there's the premonition of the axe which is very very prominently waiting and ready to be used. Yeah, but he's almost holding it back, it's a slight kind of, you know, it's not even helped yet. It's almost the lack of prominence that makes it so terrifying, and it's interesting looking at it now, having very recently curated the horror show that Somerset has, which is all works that are dealing with different forms of horror, and I think what a lot of them do that really appeals to us, and it kind of relates to this work also, is that it's horror in a very human psychological way, it's not horror in a kind of 80s slasher movie kind of blood and guts, and you know, the axe could be the center of the frame, it could be covered in blood, a head could be rolling in the pristine straw, and it would be a horrible painting, it would be a terrifying painting, but you know, I mean it almost looks like he's trying to, you know, slip the axe out of the shot, you know, if that was, if this was the scene you were filming, you'd be quite worried that this guy's gonna end up with the axe out of shot, and you're gonna lose a vital, you know, story beat, so I think that's something that also just always draws us in, is this idea of being able to charge an emotion in a non-obvious way, to be able to create a kind of psychological relationship with something that isn't about going, you know, look at this man with his guts pouring out on the floor, isn't this horrific, isn't this a horrible, terrible image? It's more about the suspension, the creating of narrative that is anticipated by the beholder. Yeah, and the narrowness of depth in here as well, look at that, look at how we're not seeing kind of lines of perspective that are taking us into a world that exists inside the wall, we're looking at something that has a really fairly solid flat backdrop, and this really substantial kind of architecture to it, but the detail is really faint, and it just sort of sits at the back, and I think that really helps you be close to it as well, that again it's not, that it works really subtly with illusion, but that it's not trying to be overly kind of deceptive with its illusion, like overly kind of, it's not too try hard, that's what it is, it's, you could have done so much more with the background, but actually it's quite plain, and that lack of kind of, that lack of detail, and the sparseness again drives you further in, and it becomes, so those details become poetic, and that, I think that does connect to thinking about the way in which you film, the way in which we film, and the way in which we think about film, whether it's installation art film, or whether it's for drama, or television, you're always thinking about like, how do I use the frame for the most amount of impact, and given that, you know, a scene will be cut relatively short, how do I make sure that you see the things that are metaphorically, or poetically, or physically, kind of gonna tell you something more, or mean something more, and here I get really obsessed by the velvet, like there's so much, there's, you know it's velvet, there's no, absolutely no doubt it's velvet, and, and that, and that it's the, the kind of character with the fur collar, and the, the women in waiting, but you feel like their sadness is kind of somehow embodied in the weight of that velvet, in the sort of dragging down of that kind of hugely dense, and heavy fabric, that doesn't really, doesn't really catch the light, it doesn't reflect the light, which works beautifully in, in comparison to her undergarments, which are, you know, cold, and crisp, and I mean, she's essentially already a specter in the centre of the, in the centre of the image, you know, she's all, the image is already haunted by her death, yeah. Now, the painting itself was painted in 1833, and we, we are talking about it right now in a way that's very much influenced by the history, and the expectation of photography of a film, where of course, invited you also in your, your capacity as, as filmmakers, and, and producers of visual images in lens-based art. When you look at the composition of something like this, when you look at the drama and the narrative that is being developed, are there certain things that strike you as particularly modern, even today, or as things that have maybe informed the language of cinema, of lens-based media in a particular way, or are there also maybe things that are old-fashioned, outdated, that you would consider very different from how we operate today? It's funny, we were talking about it earlier, actually, and there's something about the, the crispness of the straw in the foreground here, and just how sort of perfectly arranged it is, that makes it very difficult not to have your mind taken to the classic nativity scene, something about that kind of arrangement that just takes you there straight away. And that maybe the nativity scene is the kind of ground zero of sort of tableau vivants, which this kind of, which we know Delaroche was looking at, so these, these tableau vivants are still pictures, they're like, living images, living pictures, and their groups of actors would be frozen in a moment, often costumed, often theatrically late. So, you know, there again, you've got that real life-size people in front of you in a shallow depth, platformed kind of entity attempting to communicate a moment, a story, a time, and you get that with that, with this, you know, for me, the historical kind of story in here is the least important thing for me, for me, I don't, I mean, I'm intrigued by it, you know, the, the nine-day queen, and, but it's not what's leading it at all, you know, for me, it's the same as looking at Hamlet or Beckett, I'm looking at it like that, I'm seeing, I'm, and I'm, maybe it's because I'm seeing the author's hand, or I'm feeling the author's taste, and I think about the directors that we really like, or the artists that we really like, Jarmusch or, or Lynch, you see, you know, that when, when, when, you know, when one of their films opens, you get, you get to sink back into the sofa and go, I'm in safe hands, you know that their taste, their instincts are good, they've really thought about, you can just sense that confidence in the kind of, the imaginative, crafted constructiveness, and I guess that's right at the core of everything we do, that I don't, we're not frightened by that kind of artificiality, or that construction, I think, if anything, I'm drawn more to that, so like artists like Tony Ousler, or Janet Cardiff, love that work, I love the sense that, you know, that, that, you know, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, that you're, you're seeing often these kind of life-size sets, or, or people, and there's a sense of construction, or, or, or of theatricality, and that, that, for me, kind of permits the potential for something to happen in front of a piece of work, and I think we're always looking for that, maybe, that, that moment where you're, you lose yourself, you just, like, who you are, what you are, where you are, doesn't matter anymore, and, and whether it's, whether it's physical, or whether it's just momentary and fleeting, I think those are the moments that define us, you know, they're the moments that change us, and kind of, that sort of work the gears of your heart, and make you who you are, and I have that in front of this painting, because it, there's a empathy, there's catharsis, there's doubt, and then he's also used all of these lovely, subtle techniques that close that gap between you and it, it's the same size as you, it's on a platform, you don't even have to imagine that their legs disappear into the wall, and that they're standing on the same floor as you, you know, it's already, it's, we've thought about that, how to sort of stage it, place it there, even the kind of containedness of the sort of architecture, but it's sensed that it somehow almost continues the walls on either side, you know, he's thought about that, that's really particular, the, the materials, the light, we know this is not how Lady Jane Grey was executed, you know, it wasn't in a building like this, it wasn't with so few people, but I want to be showing this, I want to experience a kind of artist's version of things, a world, you know, that's, I guess that's why I kind of, yeah, that's why I watch films, that's why I come to art. I think it's what makes work like this inspirational, because there's something that you can, I mean, understanding the, the authorship of the story you're being told, that it's not about a kind of documenting fact in a strict sense, and I think what I mean by that is that, you know, our degree was a combined fine art practice and art theory, art history degree, and it kind of trains you into a very particular way of looking at a work of art, and it's an interesting way, and it's an informative way, and it's a useful way, there's nothing wrong with it, but it starts to, I think you start to lose that other muscle, and it takes you a little while to develop that muscle, and get it back, and to be able to look at something, and in a way go, for a moment, let's just not give a toss what the story is, let's not care about, you know, Nine Days Queen, and all of the stuff of history that goes around it, you know, let's just look at a composition, a frame, an arrangement of people, a relationship between different people, a relationship between eye lines, and who's kind of connecting with who, and you know, I mean, one of my favorite things about the whole thing is the column here that just is given up on, you know, the downstroke, it's just not there, and it just immediately makes me think of theatre flats, you know, scenic painting, where, you know, that gray background could have been painted by a scenic painter at the National this week, it's totally plausible, yeah. I think it's, maybe it's because when we first met at Goldsmiths, I mean, you're talking about a degree like it happened recently, 30 years ago, we were 20 when we met, and we got together and then started working together very, very quickly. Foolish, my mother said, as did our feminist history teacher, that we kind of found our kind of collaboration and collective voice quite early on, and began by kind of making stuff happen, publishing and projects and things like that, and then found a kind of desire to make work together, and I think it came out of going to lots of gigs, really, going to music much more, we were friends with lots of people in bands, and Goldsmiths at the time was a desperate place, it was kind of post-YBAs, it was very, people thought if you could make big shiny stuff, it was going to sell straight away, and it was superstardom awaited. It was like a sort of Damien Hirst vapour trail was kind of, by the time we got there, and everyone was just trying to grab on and kind of get their own, just like little Pete, you know, if I can just sell something to search, there's a career waiting for me, and of course it, you know, there was a once in a, you know, lifetime, once in a century, probably, moment, and that wasn't the reality, you know, most of the people that came out of our course, and out of Goldsmiths at the same time as us, you know, we all struggled, it wasn't straight into, you know, gallery representation, and museum shows, and it was for two or three perhaps, but it wasn't anything like, you know, the heyday of the YBAs, so it was, it's kind of a rude awakening for a lot of people, and I think for us, what we really realized was that the things that we were experiencing in the culture that were connecting with an audience, that people were feeling a relationship with, and were feeling an emotional response to, at that point felt like it was much more other aspects of culture than fine art, at that point, you know, you go to an opening at a gallery, and you know, stand around having a beer, looking bored, and then go and see a band down the road, and have a really great time, and see an audience that really, like the independent publishing scene was dead exciting at the time, people were doing weird male art projects, and it was just that notion of like self-generated activity, it felt exciting that there was something happening, yeah, which also embraces popular culture as a moment of subversion, and thus also allows it to become political, which I think is interesting, yeah. There are two things that I perhaps want to ask you before we also want to open it up to questions from the audience. First, I know that you also work together with younger artists, that you have an entire community of artists that you work with at Somerset House, and personally, if you were to work together with young artists at the beginning of their career now, what would you advise them, how should they look at a painting like this, the La Roche, what would you give them to look for? I don't know, maybe that freedom, like you want freedom, so, but even then, you can look back, and I think, go back to John Burgess' ways of seeing, you know, and the doors that that opened, the freedom that that gave you, a language of being able to look without, and understand what looking, that looking, there's no rules to looking, there's no, like there isn't a right way to look at something, you just look. You know, we were saying when we were coming in that today we cannot look at this without thinking about Marianne Faithfull playing Ophelia for Tony Richardson's 1968 production of Hamlet at the Roundhouse, because that was then adapted for film, and it is, we've been watching this film obsessively, she does an amazing performance, Nicole Williamson plays Hamlet, he is by far the best Hamlet I've ever seen, Antony Hopkins plays Claudius, and there she is in these kind of cold, white, shiny sort of a gown as the fallen maiden, you know, the kind of doomed virgin, she gives a phenomenal kind of performance, but there's something about this adaptation from kind of, was put on by the Free Theatre, so quite a radical group of trying to make theatre more accessible, and they use the Roundhouse, they use the solidity of the building, when they translate it onto film, it's really sparse, you know, but they also go outside and use bits around the sides, and they use the underneath the basement of the building, and it, yeah, I now can't look at this and not think about that, like I feel like this is Tony Richardson's version of Delaroche, it's kind of, it's already my way of, but maybe it's that, to enjoy that, that whatever it is that drives your, you know, that's just because we've been writing a script about, you know, Marianne, and about the character of Ophelia, and how Ophelia kind of seems to symbolise something else for kind of the, you know, the perception of women's role, and how they've been kind of manhandled by, you know, the media over time. Yeah, I think for me it also goes back to that thing about that other muscle that, you know, art school can kind of lose you if you're not careful, where, you know, I mean, I think as a sort of, you know, meaningless soundbite, piece of advice, I would say, stop looking and start feeling, but as trite as that sounds, I think it kind of underpins what I feel about, you know, why a work like this is so appealing to me, why it draws me in, why it inspires me, why there's a kind of constant desire to return to it, is not because I'm looking, not because of what I can see, not because of, you know, the details and the brushwork and all of the stuff that we can, you know, we can talk about and we can read the textbooks about, but I feel something stood in front of that painting, and I think all great works of art, whether it's a painting, a movie, a seven-inch pop record, you feel them, first and foremost, that's what matters, how do you feel? And one of the, well, my second question would be perhaps that, considering that Paul Delaroche was one of the most famous painters from France of the 19th century, he has also become very famous for a quote, and whereas the execution of Lady Jane Grey was painted in 1833, in 1840 Delaroche is said to have seen one of the first daguerreotypes that were ever made, one of the first precursors to the photographs that were developed at the time, and there's always this anecdote that Delaroche said, from today on painting is dead, and of course we know that, first of all, that's probably not what he actually said, secondly we know that, of course, painting is still persistent, still going strong today, but in order to tell Delaroche what the medium of photography, what the medium of film, what lens-based media have perhaps brought to the cultural table in the past 100 years, what three films perhaps would you recommend to Paul Delaroche to watch today? Wow, I mean firstly I can't tell you the number of times in the early 90s at Goldsmith's I heard the phrase painting is dead, so it clearly hasn't gone away, but three films. No, I can't, I can't, it's too hard. I would probably throw in Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, which sort of feels like a very painterly film, I think it'd be very interesting to hear what he had to say about that. Yeah, yeah, I could, yeah, I can see that. What else have you got? No, I haven't, I haven't, I've got a mind full of blankness, of panic, so I'm probably on the spot. Well, maybe that's a moment of horror that we can end on today, but Ian, Jane, thank you so much for coming and joining us tonight, tell us more about how you look at this painting, and thank you all very, very much tonight for joining us for this discussion. Thank you so much.