Painting

The story of one misguided art collector's attempts to save a Banksy painting from destruction and the auction block. Featuring some of the world's top street artists, this film poses the question 'What would you do if you owned a million dollar painting that the artist doesn't want sold?'

Waldemar Januszczak sets out to uncover the secret meanings hidden in four famous paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Seurat. Everyone knows the pictures. They are among the most celebrated masterpieces of art. And yet, hidden inside them are codes and puzzles that no one has been able to decipher.
Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was painted soon after he cut off his ear with a razor. But how much do we really know about it? In a far-ranging investigation, Waldemar Januszczak delves into the clues hidden in the painting. The result is a tale of geishas, brothels, bullfights, love affairs, suffering and a fiery relationship with Gauguin. The work has a powerful secret message, if you know what to look for.

Hanging in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Seurat’s Les Poseuses is probably his least-known painting. It is also a picture brimming with codes and hidden meanings. It shows three nudes in the artist’s studio, but included in the background is Seurat’s famous masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Why is it there? What is it trying to say? Why two pictures at once? Waldemar Januszczak investigates.

Art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the incredible story of Russian art, its mystery and magnificence and until now a story untold. He explores the origins of the Russian icon from its roots in Byzantium and the first great Russian icon, Our Lady of Vladimir to the masterpieces of the country's most famous icon painter, Andrei Rublev. Both epic and awe-inspiring, and producing brilliant art", nevertheless medieval Russia could be a terrifying place. Criss-crossing the epic landscape, Andrew visits the monastery founded by Ivan the Terrible, where his favourite forms of torture found inspiration in religious art. One man would shine a light into Russia's 'dark' ages - Peter the Great who, surprisingly, took as his inspiration Deptford in South London.

Sir Roger Penrose is more than just a fan of MC Escher's mind-bending art. During the course of a long creative collaboration, the British mathematician and the Dutch artist exchanged ideas and inspirations. Some of Escher's most iconic images have their origin in Penrose's mathematical sketches - while the artist's work has served as a starting point for the professor's own explorations of new scientific ideas". To coincide with the first ever Escher retrospective in the UK, Penrose takes us on a personal journey through Escher's greatest masterpieces - marvelling at his intuitive brilliance and the penetrating light it still sheds on complex mathematical concepts.

This documentary series charting the visual appeal and historical meaning of maps. The Hereford Mappa Mundi, the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world, its ambition to picture all of human knowledge in a single image is breathtaking. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous 'monstrous races' which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.