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Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer

‘Melencolia I’ is one of the world’s most famous prints. It’s also the most mysterious. Why do the two angels look so miserable? What are all the objects scattered around for? And what is the meaning of the big comet in the sky? Waldemar Januszczak investigates.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

In 2004 ‘Fountain’ was voted the most influential artwork of the 20^th century. Duchamp’s signed urinal changed the course of art, but what does it actually mean? Waldemar Januszczak follows Duchamp’s trail from Paris to New York in search of the truth.

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

There is so much going on in ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, it’s hard to know where to look. What exactly is going on in Bosch’s masterpiece? Waldemar Januszczak reveals the truth, sifting through the theories of drug-filled hallucinations, free love, and magic.

The Polish Rider by Rembrandt

Waldemar Januszczak has been captivated by ‘The Polish Rider’ since he was a kid. Who is the mysterious rider? Where is he going? In a search that takes him to Rembrandt’s hometown and the battlefields of Poland, Waldemar reveals the truth about Rembrandt’s masterpiece.

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Cézanne’s ‘Card Players’ is one of his most mysterious paintings. Why did the so-called Father of Modern Art paint two old men hunched over a game of cards? Gauguin’s ‘The Vision After the Sermon’ is a painting full of symbolism and mystery, but what does it have to do with Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ and with sumo wrestlers? Van Gogh’s ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’, painted soon after he cut off his ear with a razor, is one of his most celebrated pictures, but its genesis is a tale of geishas, brothels, bullfights, love affairs, suffering and a fiery relationship with Gauguin. While Seurat’s ‘Les Poseuses’ is a picture brimming with codes and hidden meanings. Waldemar Januszczak illuminates all these secrets in this new four-part series.

The Art Mysteries is a ZCZ Films production for the BBC. The series was commissioned by Mark Bell for BBC Arts and BBC Four.

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In Lviv, he is shown around the empty walls of the National Museum and discovers that most of the country’s treasures have been safely hidden. Next, he is driven to a secret location outside the city where thousands of precious artworks have been stored.

In times of war, Waldemar learns, art becomes more important than ever.

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In Film 1 of the series, entitled Goodbye Renaissance, Waldemar Januszczak sets out to position Mannerism in the story of art – when did it happen, what were its characteristics, what did it achieve? Looking back at its origins in Italy, Waldemar focuses on the huge impact of Michelangelo, not only in painting and sculpture, but also in architecture. Also important is the art of Northern Europe which brought new ambitions to Italian art.

In Film 2 of the series, entitled The Crazy Age, we see the revolutionary impact of Mannerism as it spread around Italy. In Mantua, Giulio Romano paints extraordinary visions of the Giants attacking the Gods. In Bomarzo, the wild inventions of the Mannerist garden find their most spectacular form. Also important is the emergence for the first time in Western art of women artists. Properzia di Rossi, Lavinia Fontana, Sofonisba Anguissola bring a new voice to art.

Film 3 of the series, entitled The Great Escape, celebrates the spread of Mannerism across Europe. The Sack of Rome in 1527 forced many Italian artists to flee aboard, taking the revolutionary new art movement with them. In France, at Fontainebleau, Rosso Fiorentino pushed the decorative arts in a new direction. In Prague, Arcimboldo invented a wild new style of portrait painting. In Spain, El Greco produced some of the most extraordinary and distinctive art ever painted.

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In the first episode, Janina sets Shaun the challenge of making a jewelled eagle brooch of the kind worn by Visigoth chieftains in the Dark Ages. Inspired by a live eagle he befriends in an animal sanctuary in Lancashire, Shaun is confident he can do it. But sourcing the materials proves tricky, and making the brooch is more difficult than he expected. Can he finish in time?

In episode two of Handmade in Bolton, Dr Janina Ramirez sets ex-forger, Shaun Greenhalgh, the challenge of making an alabaster carving of the kind mass-produced in Catholic England in the centuries before the Reformation. But the mines in Nottingham that produced English alabaster were closed down long ago. And the destruction unleashed by Henry VIII has left behind precious few examples. So Shaun’s views about how the Nottingham alabasters would originally have looked, shock Janina.

In episode three of Handmade in Bolton, ex-forger, Shaun Greenhalgh, is set the task of making a Renaissance animal plate of the type invented by the great French potter, Bernard Palissy. Palissy’s plates are alive with writhing reptiles, but for Shaun, killing grass snakes in Lancashire is not an option. So how can he source some examples for his moulds? And will it mean journeying back to his dark past as a forger?

In episode four of Handmade in Bolton, Oxford historian, Dr Janina Ramirez sets ex-forger, Shaun Greenhalgh, his hardest task yet. Shaun has to carve an Islamic bottle out of rock crystal in the style of the 10th century Egyptian Fatimids. Rock crystal is notoriously fragile. Sourcing the right quantities of it is almost impossible. The real problems begin, however, when the carving is finished.

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The film sets out to discover the real Japan by following the lives of a diverse selection of its inhabitants: a young girl who wants to be a Geisha; a daring fisherman who braves the cold northern seas to catch tuna; a mad professor who strives to perfect a robot that looks just like him. Their compelling stories are relived in stunning high-definition footage – from the air, under the sea, on the land – in a pioneering documentary that finally lifts the curtain on this most mysterious of countries.

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But Waldemar Januszczak begs to differ. In Waldemar’s eyes, Rubens has been traduced by modern tastes, and a huge misunderstanding of him has taken place. By looking in detail at Rubens’s fascinating life, by understanding his art in more enlightened ways, Waldemar will set out to correct the extra-large misconceptions that have arisen about Rubens.

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Her identity has evolved from being the close follower of Jesus who was the first witness to his resurrection, to one of a prostitute and sinner who escaped from persecution in the Holy Land by fleeing across the Mediterranean to wind up living in a cave as a hermit in the South of France, enjoying ecstatic experiences with Christ.

It is this role as a repentant prostitute that has pressed the buzzer of art most violently. The loose woman, wild haired and sexy, draped in her iconic scarlet garb, who, as the archetypal penitent, set the moral benchmark for which women were to aspire.

Her identity has been re-imagined by bishops, artists, authors and musicians. Whilst possessing the relics of Mary Magdalene was big business for Medieval monks in France, she has also proved her worth in the West End and Hollywood, playing the role of the lover of Christ in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and in Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’.

Delving into the great art of the last 1000 years, Waldemar will explore the evolution of the identity of this scarlet woman and reveal what this all really says about the artists whom she bewitched.

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Episode 1 is set in the Wild West and begins with the sublime art of the Hudson River School, whose 19th-century evocations of the vastness of America did so much to fuel the myth of the promised land. Another huge influence was the mysterious rock art of the Native Americans, which set a stirring precedent for non-naturalistic painting. The film culminates in a celebration of Jackson Pollock, born in Cody, Wyoming, who arrived in New York wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots, and whose famous drip paintings were influenced heavily by both the moods of the American west and the example of Native American artists.

Episode 2 is set in the American metropolis – the soaring new cities of the East Coast with their futuristic skylines and lofty skyscrapers. But instead of looking up at the futuristic towers, Waldemar Januszczak explores the squalid boxing rings painted by George Bellows, Reginald Mash’s decadent awaydays on Coney Island and the crazy escape into theosophy and abstraction mounted by Thomas Wilfred. The film culminates in the harsh immigrant experience of Ellis Island and the profound impact that rootlessness had on the art of Mark Rothko.

Episode 3 looks at America’s most controversial cultural territory – the interstitial America of small towns and trailer parks. As his road trip takes him from Iowa to Tennessee, Waldemar Januszczak discovers how this much maligned territory had an immensely beneficial impact on American art. From the small town brilliance of Grant Wood, to the small town alienation of Edward Hopper, to the spooky Dust Bowl symbolism of Alexandre Hogue, interstitial America inspired much that was great. The film culminates in the brilliant assemblages of David Smith, the leading sculptor of abstract expressionism.

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