Moving Pictures: Men of the Docks

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cathy FitzGerald takes us to the Brooklyn docks in New York on an icy day in 1912. That is the setting for George Bellow’s Men of the Docks, an extraordinary masterpiece from the collection of The National Gallery, London. The picture shows longshoremen waiting for work in the steely shadow of a cargo ship. Get up close and see how Bellows creates his cold and misty world - working quickly and fearlessly and using brushes, knives, even his fingers to manipulate the paint. Cathy hears why the artist wanted his masterpiece on display to greet the arrival in New York of the greatest ship in the world – The Titanic.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the
0:05.0	documentary podcast. If you have the time please rate the documentary on your
0:09.6	podcast app and leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. We're on the Brooklyn docks,
0:16.4	one cold, cold morning in 1912. In the distance, across the dark water of the East River,
0:24.0	the Manhattan skyline disappears into the mist.
0:27.0	The immense gray hull of an ocean liner dominates the view.
0:37.0	It sits high in the water, not yet loaded, and a group of workers wait nearby hoping to be picked for the job.
0:47.0	All of these men are bundled up. It's clearly a cold day and a very damp day down by the water. They are stamping their feet and burying
0:56.8	their hands in their pockets. Probably immigrant workers come to the docks to find a day job waiting to see if they
1:05.8	would be called on to help load or unload the ships.
1:19.0	Snow lies at their feet and a shelf of ice stretches out into the river. They must have spent hours of their life just waiting around. It must have been extremely
1:25.7	dispiriting.
1:26.7	Just so cold. And so cold. So cold.
1:30.6	You can just tell they've just pulled all of their muscles and their energy in because
1:35.8	they're cold and they're just trying to stay warm.
1:40.9	Welcome to moving pictures, the series that takes a long slow look at great
1:48.1	artworks and invites you to follow along. I'm Kathy Fitzgerald and today's painting comes from the National Gallery, London.
1:56.7	It's called Men of the Docks and was painted by the American artist George Bellows in 1912.
2:05.5	To see it, follow the link from the moving pictures page on the BBC World Service website.
2:11.9	You'll be taken to a high-resolution photo of the work made by Google Arts and Culture.
2:17.0	Once you're there, click on the image to zoom in. in. There are about 10 of them.
2:30.0	There are about 10 of them and you have very much a sense of their strong physical bearing
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.