Start the Week

09/05/2011

Andrew Marr talks to the MP Denis MacShane about the political situation in France. It's 30 years since the election of the country's first socialist president, Francois Mitterrand. The People's Pledge is campaigning for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, and its founder Ruth Lea argues that it's time to disregard the wishes of Brussels. The Turkish artist Kutlug Ataman explores the spirit of Mesopotamia in his latest works, where his films of water defy national boundaries. And the so-called 'godfather' of the Young British Artists, Michael Craig-Martin, showcases the art of drawing, from his original sketches using tape forty years ago, to the computer-generated drawings of today. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Duration:: 42m
Broadcast on:: 09 May 2011
Audio Format:: other

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. All you homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to leave up holiday decorations year round. Others have the need to use their garage as practice space for their new metal band. And because each homeowner has unique needs, Geico helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. That way you get exactly what's right for you. Even if your needs are unique, get more with Geico. Thank you for downloading the Start the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4. For more information go to bbc.co.uk/radio4. Hello boundaries drawn and boundaries broken today. Later on we'll be talking about drawing and in a good drawing every line as a boundary with Michael Craig Martin, one of our best known artists. And we'll be talking about the work of Turkey's best known artist Kuttlu Ataman, which is meditations on the artificiality of man-made borders. But we're going to start with political borders. The economist Ruth Lee is a founder of the People's Pledge. We've had a referendum on changing the voting system. People's pledge, once one on a rather bigger issue, our continued membership of the European Union. And before that, a passionate pro-European, the Labour MP, Dennis McShane, who's been studying the enigmatic French president, Francois Mitterrand, 30 years after he was first elected. Dennis, remind us what an unusual figure Dennis McShane was. Remind us, Francois Mitterrand. Mitterrand was in French history, the first socialist president, of course, in modern times. That's right, 30 years ago, the 10th of May. I remember being there in the Place de Bastille, really excited. And I got the first plane back to Geneva when I was working in the morning, at 6.30, a little bit disheveled, too much to drink, happy. Because with Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ruling the roost in America and Britain, here was a socialist being elected. And every man on that plane was in a dark suit, a lawyer, an accountant, clutching a small black briefcase. And I reckon probably 20 billion French francs arrived in Geneva for the Swiss banks, just before the stock markets opened that morning. They were very worried, terrified. Two terms, in the first term, two proper terms, the first term, his great achievement was really binding France and Germany together in a way that we hadn't seen before. Yes, I think there are two historical aspects of Mitterrand. Firstly, he does put in a socialist and a social democratic economic and social model that really roadblocks what seemed to be the onward sweep of neo-liberal thinking coming from America and espoused by Mrs. Thatcher. And it worked, the economic indices are roughly the same between Britain and France over this period. And then secondly, in an extraordinary way, almost more powerful than de Gaul and Adenau, he locks himself with helmet coal. And you see, really, the great period of European construction, a single European act, Jacques de Law, a small rebate for Mrs. Thatcher, but in exchange, Mrs. Thatcher agrees to a tripling of the EU budget, and actually, the British contribution goes up fourfold after the fault and blow agreement. And then we finish up with Maastricht and then the foundation of the euro, caused a lot of difficulty in tension, but in historical terms, it's the most remarkable double act between two European leaders we've ever seen in peacetime. And of course, he was responsible for that great comment about Margaret Thatcher, wasn't it? Was it the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe? It was the eyes of Stalin and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe. But don't forget that when the Falklands War started and Ronald Reagan, the United States, Ginkock, Patrick, Douglas Hay, the Secretary of State, they were trying to achieve a compromise with the anti-Semitic colonels and generals who ruled Argentina as a dictatorship. And the first phone call Maggie gets, very nervous, sending us our martyr across 10,000 miles of ocean, terrifying decision. And the phone rings, and it's Francois Mitterrand, pledging total support, solidarity, all the secrets of the ex-asset, and the super end-on-dada plane in the missile that caused so much trouble, because I think big leaders have to have a sense of the direction of travel of history. And Mitterrand, be there, he'd been in the war, he'd been in politicised parts of the 1930s, he'd refused to accept office under the Gaul, spent a quarter of the century in the political wilderness. He was 64 when he became president. David Cameron thinks Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, 25 years younger. Imagine what all of those three, having to wait 25 years before they get a sniff of power. So he understood the flows of history, he understood that communism was going to finish, that what Margaret Thatcher was going to do in humiliating the dictators of Argentina would liberate South America from the rule of generals. And so there he was as a socialist backing it to the hill. And he was intriguing, I said enigmatic earlier on, an intriguing personality, he didn't come from a grand background himself, but by the end he was something bourbon about him, he was a grand monarch in a democratic sense. I always say that Britain is a true parliamentary republic that just has a common sense to have a nice lady as its head of state. France is a real monarchy, they elect the monarch and then by goodness whether it's Mr Sarkozy or Mitterrand de Gaulle, they have supreme power, no other head of government and state and they're fused of course in France, unlike in America where there's a real separation of power, has so much executive authority. Yes, his last years he liked he was suffering from prostate cancer, he liked to have holidays as one damn, and I always thought he looked at the pharaoh. The pharaoh was looking out at the sphinx. There was a lot of bad things he did, I mean I'm not a sort of big admirer of everything that Mitterrand stood for his second seven years, wasn't as happy, but nonetheless he is an extraordinary post-war or late 20th century figure of European history, and it's rather a shame, I wrote a biography of him 30 years ago, but I don't think you'd find a publisher interested now, we just have in Britain generally our culture, we like France to go on holidays and so on, but we're just not interested in the political culture of European countries. The French are still interested in him, there was a film not so long ago, it wasn't about his final years, that's as he was meditating. The French are obsessed by him, they're utterly obsessed, I'm going tomorrow to speak at a big commemorative republican celebration at the Teotihu know where Peter Brook does all his famous plays, and they are utterly utterly obsessed, because again like the great figures of history, do we really know who Winston Churchill was, do we fully comprehend Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair? He's a little bit Churchillian also in the range of his reading and knowledge, I mean he was a deeply red and cultured man too, wasn't he? He spent all of his time with his nose in books, you'd find him, I mean I never find him. I met him once or twice, I saw him, you'd see him in the bookshops as president, I mean can you imagine David Cameron or Tony Blair walking out to Daunce and sort of taking an hour off and say let's see what the best books are, I'm sure they're literally men, but nothing is well read as false on me at all. Ruth Lee, do you acknowledge this picture of France as a semi-disguised autocratic monarchy? I think that's only too true and I think Dennis has pointed out in one of his papers that actually in France you have the monarch stroke the president and then you have the people and the trouble is there's really nothing in between because basically it is so autocratic and this is one reason why you get so much writing possibly in France because there are no other political outlets, money whereas you were making the distinction between France and Britain where there is some sort of intermediary between the head of state and autocracy tempered by strikes. That's right but I was going to say perhaps we're not quite so different as France after all because we do have our not so much our strikes but we certainly have our our rights in the streets when people obviously feel that the parliamentary system doesn't actually represent what they think, I mean just look at the way we had the tuition fees rights last year. Oh yeah I mean in France there is nothing between Paris and the people between the head of state or the king in the middle ages and the streets that's true. Of course I mean people were pining into fortnum and Mason I think believing that if you found property there I mean property it was probably theft and enjoying themselves hugely. We have our anarchists and we look back to some of the 1980s troubles Liverpool, Bristol and Brixton the notion somehow that the French do strikes and we have a statement we're not going to be able to use the tube next week thanks thanks to our tradition of strikes. Good, you were in Paris I think during the meter-owned years. Yes I was I was a student but I not only that but oh I was also I also went to French high school and then right after that I went to to the States and for me the difference is that maybe you know call me idealistic if you want but you know you always feel in an Anglo-Saxon culture that if something goes wrong you can always sue or you can always you know you can go all the way to the Supreme Court to defend your individual rights whereas in France you never feel that people will just look at you and laugh at you and things that can happen to you there you know in a western democracy can be quite shocking actually. I don't think that's quite fair because there are plenty of examples in in our own history of courts and police and the establishment locking away people treating people very badly of just a report I think in the independent today on virginity tests applied to Asian immigrants coming to Britain in the 1970s. Imagine that a virginity test maybe maybe that was done in secret I don't know but you know going there to the States and the at least at the idealist level you know this is this is what you are taught this is the kind of existing culture you know I'm going to ask Michael Craig Martin the France of Mitterrand and indeed France of the day has a more assertive culture of supporting the arts in particular spends more on the arts though whether that's good for the more bad for the I think is an open question. Well it's very interesting about how there's such enormous political differences between Britain and France but there's also the same cultural differences the way the relation of the head of state of the state to culture is completely different and I think there are certain ways in which this proves really very useful it enables quite significant things to be done culturally quite easily in France which meet great resistance here but on the other hand the meddling of the state in virtually every aspect of cultural life of trying to control cultural life seems to be to fail. Is that true? I mean Mitterrand put the pyramid in the Louvre he brought over great foreign architects a Bobo of course designed by Norman Foster. We have Prince Charles the moment a remotely 20th century piece of architecture is proposed publicly and our sort of head of state to come writes cross letters all over the place try and block it. Richard Rogers. Oh Richard I'm sorry I always go cross but forgive me forgive me forgive characters and well I think we should we should just carry on with the theme of democracy in a slightly different light we just gone through the referendum on the alternative vote which gave a very resounding no to that but Ruth Lee you have founded something called the People's Pledge which wants a referendum on what is certainly a bigger issue than that which is Britain's continued membership of the European Union itself. Could I just ask where the idea came from how the people's pledge got going in the first place? Well there were several of us and actually the emphasis is very much on the left of the political spectrum rather than the right which is interesting the director of the People's Pledge is someone Mark Seden who's to write a tribune. The chairman is John Mills and then we had John Cryer we actually have a member of the RMT brand. Any supporting the People's Pledge and I must admit I don't agree with the tube strikes either but there we go and Jenny Jones and Karen and Lucas of the Green Party and then we have people like yourself who be from the political right. All the political rights like Zach Goldsmith and Dan Han and myself and various others so I think it wasn't the idea was that we missed our referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In fact we had been promised if you remember of course a referendum on the Constitution. She started to stand as her constitution but then when France and the Netherlands of course voted against it then it came forward it was sort of changed into the Lisbon Treaty and then the referendum promise was renamed. And you have to be 54 years old is that right to have voted in the referendum on Europe? Because it was 1975 and I think you had to be 18 at the time and I remember I was I was eligible I admit to my age in that respect but I was a civil servant at the time and I never even thought it mattered can you believe that? Well and I'm sure Dennis will smile given my sort of reputation for Euroscepticism since but I really felt at the time that a whole political class or a lot of the political class at the time felt that actually membership of the EEC was actually a no-brainer it had to be. But the EU has changed so much that you regard that we had it's important that we have to have a referendum again. And not least for some of the reasons that Dennis was saying you know you had the period of the 1980s when you had the single market which was being pushed by Lord Cofield as well as Mitterrand and then of course the single currency of the 1990s, Maastricht and Amsterdam and Nice and last but not least of course the Lisbon Treaty and I think it's changed out of all recognition from what it was in the 1970s but of course in Britain we always thought it was something like a free trade area we were told that that of course was never the case because if you go way back to the Treaty of Rome this was about the ever-increasing unification of the peoples of Europe. Yet the European issue rather oddly at the moment apart from the euro and of troubles in Greece and so on is not much on the agenda you might have thought with the Conservative party being the dominant figure in a coalition and everyone says the most Eurosceptic Conservative parliamentary party ever elected that Europe would be a big issue at this country now maybe it's simply because of the coalition's own stresses and strains over this but it's a subject that simply hasn't been much discussed over the last year. I think that's true I think the trouble is with the European issues that they are very hard to focus on you can focus on the economy you can focus on public finance you can focus on health all those things but the thing about the EU of course it affects everything right across the board but it's it's hard to pick out as an issue but I think you're right that within the parliamentary Conservative party and I'm sure Dennis is familiar with these people as well as I am there is a terrific Euroscepticism but Cameron himself actually I think if I may use the word ambivalent about Europe he of course did say at some point that he'd be talking about withdrawing from the social chapter which was never on the cards as far as I was concerned. For any leader Europe gives them another platform and another stage on which to perform and a certain amount of extra heft in the world as well. Well I think politicians do like if I may say so strutting around on the world stage and just thinking of a country like Switzerland the Swiss politicians the political class in Switzerland would love to be in the EU absolutely dying to be in the EU and no doubt the Norwegians as well but of course they have a system of referenda within the Swiss and they've always bought the idea of actually joining the EU so people themselves don't want it that there is a disconnect between what politicians like and what people want I think proposition roofly as so long as we've got a coalition we're not going to have a referendum on Europe. Well maybe but I have to say this there was one party and there's one party leader of course that did promise that I know what you're going to say yes a referendum on the EU his name was Nicholas Clegg if my memory serves me correctly and of course the irony of about the people's pleasures I was saying I gave this list of names across the political board that we got on side but we've not managed to attract any liberal Democrats yet and it's wouldn't it be a good thing for this country perhaps to have a proper referendum and a proper debate about this because it's so many people across about this and and feel that the British have been denied a proper democratic say get it over with get it done one way or another we've just gone through a plebiscite that really raised the tone and the quality and the culture of political discourse no insults there were there was a calm rational explanation it was a moment of political education I mean frankly AV in first past the post it's like Gala was travels whether you have cracked the egg at the big or the little end I think that's what people that's what people felt and it was reduced to kind of ghastly smears and half lies and personal attacks I mean I was ashamed I nearly didn't vote and actually that would have been that's the majority result of the British people the majority of us just said no thanks we don't want this wretched plebiscite does a referendum clear any air my very firm belief is that if really is in or out then I think roosts establishment even the hedge funds and the people who don't like Europe would say actually out out out disconnect from the open market disconnect from 900 000 bridges and living in Spain disconnect from free travel arrests you wouldn't disconnect any more than Switzerland or Norway does but they have to pay proportion to their budgets just as much as we do to the EU anything like this this is this is one of the difficulties I lived in Switzerland for 15 years if I made Ruth I lived in the country for 15 years when I lived there no European could buy a property in Switzerland now they're all allowed to there's open borders they have to give money to help East Europe and so if we leave we'd have all the obligations and responsibilities none of the rights of Ruth's turn but this is an argument that's Ruth's turn I'm afraid the Swiss government has come out and said quite clearly that if they were remembered the EU they'd be paying substantially more into Brussels than with their current relationship which is one of free trade and they're in Schengen and the fact that also they have certain mutually beneficial bilateral agreements but they have actually said that I can give you the reference no I know you don't want anyone to interpose themselves in this in this interesting argument Michael Craig Martin is going to do it nonetheless it just seems it seemed to me with the the recent AV vote that this was described as a complicated issue and the reason why it was such a problem was because the general public didn't really understand it well if the general public doesn't understand AV that a vote on the European Union is truly doomed to misunderstand because it's a much harder thing to grasp I think that's being really very hard on people I think people have got more instinctive understanding of these issues than you give them credit for it what about democracy democracy we actually let people like Dan is much shame to be our representatives I actually love Parliament and I hate plebiscites I started my political life campaigning against the call for referendum restoring capital punishment that was the passion of the time bring back capital punishment I said no I believe firmly Parliament as any kid had abolished it let our decisions rest with Parliament not with the press not with plebiscites well I'm going to bring a look then I think we should have the referendum just for a moment on this subject before we turn to his art because of course it's a huge issue in Turkey isn't it still do you think Turkey will ever join the EU would it be a good thing or a bad thing if they did well I my feeling until two years ago I used to believe that Turkey is going was going to join the EU but it's changing now obviously because the economy is improving in Turkey and we didn't have the impact of the crisis as much as you headed in Europe so it's changing the general public is questioning the idea of it's not necessary for Turkey to join the EU to continue to be a successful democracy well at the same time it is it the idea of EU of course is very important because it it creates this impetus for change for democratization in Turkey because in order to join in the EU you have to democratize you have to change the country so it has this double side and I also have a kind of a double position on this because I I hold dual citizenship so as a UK citizen I feel like you know we should you know strengthen our relationship with Germany and try to change EU from within rather than isolate ourselves but as a Turkish person I am doubtful that you know we should be part of the EU maybe I think that's absolutely excellent conclusion to come to I mean this idea that one has to be in the EU and then you have lots and lots of influence on the EU I Britain has tried that ever since we remember and back in 1972 and frankly I don't think the EU is where we would like it to be but there we go we are we're talking about boundaries and your new exhibition video installation at the Brighton Festival is playing with ideas of boundaries and geography as well so let's let's try and it's impossible to describe a video installation over the wireless but let's have a go mayhem is a piece that you filmed in Argentina that area of Argentina called Mesopotamia is that right that's right why is it called Mesopotamia well that it is actually in a way a provocation on my side I wanted to do it there because during the you know when Zionism was coming into being one of the ideas was actually to move to Argentina not the original Israel and there was a lot of European immigration Jewish immigration to Argentina and they simply selected two rivers and then in between the two rivers you know like just like Tigris and Euphrates in between the two rivers they called it La Mesopotamia and obviously you know it's a very lush rainforest and it's a very beautiful place in fact but that is revealing about the cut and paste nature of geography in fact what we call geography what we call history in the end it's all narratives isn't it I mean you know I come from a city called you know where the west is supposed to be meeting the east I mean Istanbul you know and you know I was recently in Singapore and that is you know they also say oh this is where the west is meeting the east so you know all these are all stories basically and you know we write these narratives to geographies and then we start and the metaphor that you have chosen is water in this work that's right so you've you were filming some famous the famous falls that's right and so and when somebody walks into the darkened room where this installation happens they are going to be assaulted by water or images of water on all sides that's true I was I started actually working on this idea much before I started with the bus for us straight in Istanbul and which that work actually is extremely calm and relaxing and meditative and then with the igwhas the falls you know I'm going into the kind of close-up of of the image of the earlier work and it's very violent and you know I was I guess I was very moved by what is happening right now in my geography with the Arab Spring and then I you know I got very excited with that and because the film came out the films you're best known for are very much focused on people groups of people whether they are beggars or transvestites or whatever it might be and this so this is a bit of a change of direction for you it had been like that for the last two years but slowly it's coming into this country to the new work and you are a as it were conventional have been a conventional filmmaker in the sense of making films to be watched in cinemas and you are an artist and you're an artist who expresses yourself through film and so what is the difference where is the central breakpoint between what we would call a film and a work of art film I think it's completely too completely different areas really I mean simply using the same the same object the camera just because you know just because you are moving moving image you are using moving image it doesn't make the two the same the same things and Michael the use of cameras and the use of video has become huge there's something that could have said which was that there were things that he could do as an artist within the context of art that were just impossible in the cinema and I always thought that one of the was wonderful things about the visual arts since the 60s has been the way in which it's welcomed in all the things that were very difficult to do in other fields whether it was in performance or dance or cinema these things all found a home within the context of art which allowed things that the traditional media tended to say no to is that right well that's absolutely true in fact what we do in the contemporary artists we cut out the certain elements from the traditional arts and then we bring we bring those elements into the center stage and we are allowed to do that where I was going in my in my question was whether or not you think it's the way that people react to the moving image that makes the difference that people come in a different frame of mind if you go to a cinema you're expecting to be you may be expecting to be moved and challenged but basically you're being told a story you'd be entertained and told a story when you go to a video installation in art gallery it's a totally different thing and you're looking at it in a different way or yeah as you as you are looking at a painting in my view yes in the end the experience is the experience of the painting it may not be a painting but if you are going to a performance or if you're watching a drawing or whatever you know it it doesn't have a beginning or the end you decide to experience yourself you're not captivated you're not like you know you have to be here and then you have to sit here for 90 minutes and then you have to have the experience it's not like that you love books and do a great book program I went to the Cork Street gallery to look at Michael's work on Saturday and there's there a book where the pages are never quite shut and never quite open and I love books too and I just kept looking at it and looking into it looking round it and it was a sort of puzzle and I was having this discussion it held me for several minutes as I tried to work my way through it but it captured that magical essence of something that's still I think profoundly important called the book and wants in it and the pages it constituted well cool cool because attention to the object rather than what the how the object is supposed to be functioning Cork Street is the the great traditional art street in London but London has totally transformed itself and the attitude of the British to the visual arts has changed a lot and I know that you're based part of the time here as well as in Istanbul and where you find which city you find most useful to you creatively London is great is to bring my work out and to create discussion but as an artist I'm drawn to tension and I find this tension more in my geography than in here I think here a lot of things are seem to be more settled whereas in places like Turkey it is like kind of lava coming out of the ocean and this islands and new geographies are being formed at the moment and that makes that is more exciting for me to watch I feel like I'm also you know you had the illusion that you are perhaps contributing to that I think that's fascinating because one of your comments you were talking about boundaries in a geographical sense but then you were saying was that Istanbul was or the emerging of the of the eastern or meeting of eastern the west and then so was Singapore the meeting of the east and the west and it makes you realize that in fact you might have geographical boundaries but you have historical and cultural layers every time you go to somewhere you you think well geographically this may be Turkey or geographically this may be Singapore but just think of the histories just think of the cultural things that have happened in these particular territories that have made the countries what they are yes it's true but at the same time all these fascinating things in fact happened everywhere in the world and on the planet and even in Britain what you know history and geography are things that we actually actively write today we create today you know it wasn't like people during the Elizabethan age or Renaissance you know we're going around and saying oh it's really you know if you see we are going yeah we are living through Renaissance isn't this exciting well let's now walk our way delicately back to Cork Street because that's where the show of drawings by Michael Craig Martin can be seen at the Alan Christaire Gallery at the moment and I say drawings but these are these are drawings made not with pencils or with brushes but in a style which I think everybody listening if they see one of your works will instantly recognize it if I can put it that way but but explain to us how you actually make your famous tape drawings well it was a coincidence really that when in the 60s I wanted to do some pen ink drawings and I in those days used to use a repeatograph or a repeatograph is the perfect drawing pen but the only problem with a repeatograph is that you draw a perfect line and then it'd be a little blob at the end and I discovered a kind of tape that was flexible very thin it came in all different sizes and it was just like a pen line and the wonderful thing was it was perfect it did not blob at the end and so I used that in the earliest drawings which were in the exhibition from the 60s and then when I started to draw objects which are now much better known of what I do I remembered the tape and I went back and found the tape again and all of the work that I've done has used this tape and I if I'm doing a wall drawing it's exactly the same tape that's on the sheets in the in the exhibition it's just a wider line it's to make a bigger image but if it wasn't for this tape and it's amazing and capacity to curve none of my work could ever have existed it's absolutely dependent on this material and the works that are most you're most famous for the brightly colored tape drawings of objects a curious thing has happened because these are objects which you chose initially because they were mundane if you like they were milk bottles and light bulbs and scissors and so on but of course already quite a lot of them have been superseded by other objects and now look rather romantically old-fashioned it's it's absolutely true when I started doing the drawings I did I did drawings of individual objects the most ordinary objects I could I could think of because it seemed to me that these objects were the common language of everybody in the world and because they're not wonderful they're not special and they're not beautiful people neither hate them nor love them they're everywhere but they're invisible in a way and that struck me as such a particularly interesting thing about them but of course we all think of these things as standard in that they have kind of been around forever and they will stay forever but in fact they are constantly shifting and even if I draw a certain kind of an object and then I decide to go back and find that object again to make another drawing of the same thing the the objects it's themselves even when you don't notice that they've changed they've changed a little bit that you can almost never find again exactly the one that you had so the meaning of your art to the ordinary viewer has changed within a few years of it being made in the first place that that's certainly true and I mean I I in the beginning all the objects were financially they were cheap objects light bulbs a book a very very simple thing a shoe or something like that now you know in 10 years ago I decided I really had to draw mobile phones because mobile phones had become so ordinary that it was you it was ridiculous to think you were drawing ordinary life without drawing a mobile phone but then you realize what how things have changed because these are expensive things and now expensive things are considered ordinary and ubiquitous in a way that of course they're changing as well I mean year by year they change slightly and of course all my drawings in very soon will be unrecognized but just like I do I have a tape tape cassette and of course no young person would know what a tape cassette I can't use the drawing anymore because it's a mystery object um but you know drawing in in some respects has gone out of fashion and yet still seems to be one of the most primal things that anybody with an artistic sense wants to do it's one of the expression of water drawings as well at the moment in the in the in the royal academy it is wonderful it is wonderful I mean I don't think drawing ever goes away artists love drawings and there are many many people who look to drawings the people who are interested in drawings tend to be the most specialized collectors the people who really know what they're doing because they you have to do the problems of examining them and finding them and there's another thing that makes drawings very special is great old drawings cannot be shown constantly like paintings you can show them for a few months and then they have to rest and they have to rest in a drawer out of the light for a couple of years or they disappear so there's always something special about being able to see drawings Michael I was struck by some of your drawings a light bulb in red superimposed maybe on a deck chair and it almost looked like a CAD computer assisted design not drawn by hand but almost drawn down from a computer that tell me that's wrong and yes it's a neat trick of mine I initially I did all the drawings in pencil on paper and then I traced them on acetate with the tape and I made a template drawing and that that acetate drawing became the template for making other drawings and I constructed drawings out of the drawings I have to say today I do most of the original drawing now I don't do it with the pencil I draw it on directly on the computer and but I've learned how to draw with a mouse but they're all but all of them when I first did it I thought drawings like the ones I do exist and I'll just find them and then I went looking for them and I discovered they didn't exist and the only way they were going to exist is if I did them myself the word you must be most bored by and irritated by probably is Godfather because everybody's oh yes Michael Kremart the godfather of the young British artists Tracy M and David Herson all the rest of it nonetheless something very special happened in that period at your college and at some of the other art colleges in London and although there isn't the excitement it's not the media buzz perhaps around art it's taken it's stuck in London hasn't it because we've we've got you know more generations of interesting artists come around and said earlier on that the British had changed their attitude to the visual arts perhaps over the last I don't know 20 years do you think yes something totally extraordinary happened and they were in a way the catalyst to it and I think one of the reasons why what why the phenomenon of that of change occurred was because a group of them a small group of them of whom Damien was the central person because he was the curator of the exhibition found an opening of interest in people they were very young but there suddenly there was an interest in these people and instead of as would normally have happened of that the group closes its ranks and try to protect their success they kept expanding the group so that every exhibition they did they brought in new people so it was generosity there was there were 10 people then there were 20 people then there were 50 people then there were 100 people and that actually created a world for artists in London which is completely different than it was before could you do you recognize that world of the YBA's where you were aware of the time or was it something you came across later on the first time I came in this in this country YBA was the thing in fact also in the world stage and I have to accept how it contributed to the art industry here and nevertheless I think it's over now we have to know that and it has its own very important role in the history of the arts in this country however it is also about time that you know as with everything else we have to now evolve and we have to change and open up to the world I think it is at the same time it risks to be a little bit British specific and when we are we have a market an industry that is actually out there to really a world market now I think it has to now start taking in you know it has to it has to start evolving and also the world is a completely different place now you know there are political concerns and you know there's the Arab Spring going on at the moment and we you know the art has to be more international Michael Craigmore I certainly agree with Kootlu and but one of the things that happened through the the success of the YBA's was that it created in London a place where people from artists from other countries wished to be and it became a center for so that people like you were there was a place then that was accepted in New York before it was people went to New York and suddenly and of course when you have that kind of success in in in in art well then that draws in young people young artists from everywhere in the world and so in that sense London has become a center for the last 40 years I think the best generation of architects ever since probably hawks more than rent and they're known all over the world and people think of Britain as empirical and dominated by the city actually we call it a sensationally anti-filistine reputation around the world which is a very good and and healthy thing I'm not sure whether governments contributed to it probably not but it's been the wonderful moment why did they happen to France though why did France kind of fall on itself they just I agree they stopped thinking they stopped producing they stopped being hungry perhaps we need a little more hunger and anger well we've got plenty of hunger and anger I think but I was just saying that as someone who's very detached in the art world I've noticed what a terrific change has been in the art position here and I think it's terrific so well done godfather well done godfather well done all of you thank you to all my guests we have run out of time I'm afraid Michael Craig Martin's exhibition of drawings is at the Allen Christaire Gallery in Cork Street in London and you can see some of Kutlugh Ataman's works at the Brighton Festival this month Dennis McShane's been writing about Francois Mitterrand for policy network he's off to France as he said tomorrow to join in celebrations marking 30 years since Mitterrand came to power and Ruth Lee isn't off to France if I was I'm aware but he's campaigning hard at home for the People's Pledge next week France's Fukuyama Anatol Leven and Mohan Hamid discuss politics, power and Pakistan. But for now, thank you and goodbye.