Arena — Season 1, Episode 128: Six Days in September
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
John Hoyland is reckoned by many both here and abroad to be this country's finest abstract painter. A key figure for younger artists and critics, he has been both loved and hated to excess. As a major retrospective of his work opens in London, here is a film that stays close to the artist during six days when he faces hostile criticism, starts a new painting and explains why, in bleaker moments, painting can seem ' like flicking away in a corner with a feather duster '.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.