Dan Cruickshank interview

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Carol Komaromy: I’m Carol Komaromy. I’m here with Dan Cruickshank to talk to him about his experience of filming The Art of Dying. We’re doing this interview in St Michael’s Church, which is in the grounds of the Open University. In the programme, you set out on a quest to find out something about the relationship between art and the mystery of death.

Dan Cruickshank: I should say that the programme was extraordinary. I’ve made quite a few television programmes, none as real and as worrying in a sense, because it was a proper journey, it wasn’t a simulated exercise for the camera. For the thing to work for everybody, and for me too, it had to be a real examination of the astonishing question about whether art can help with my own death, the death of people I love and mourning, and that is the question, and it’s a big real question - a question which all of us have to face. I was exploring art and then the other world was really how this relates to me, and I remember standing in front of this painting, a lovely painting, fascinating tale, but I’m just talking about it in a detached way, I’m telling a story based on research. Later that day I was talking about myself, my feelings, my grandfather’s death, my own death, how my daughter would relate to my death, and that’s why I thought it was quite emotional, an explosion because it’s these two collisions of worlds in a very personal, also rather detached.

Carol Komaromy: You take us on a journey, which I don’t think is a comfortable journey to watch and I think that the viewer gets a strong sense of your struggle.

Dan Cruickshank: It wasn’t comfortable. The very making of a programme cracks this. You know, you’ve got to suddenly confront something which you tend not to. None of us really want to, it’s a bleak story. If one does have a religious belief, whether Christian or Muslim or any of the religions of the book, or Buddhist, we may not fully embrace it but there is an explanation. In the secular world, which is what I was exploring, it is very difficult.

Carol Komaromy: My view of the programme, overall, is that religion comes out quite well.

Dan Cruickshank: If one is fortunate to have faith and belief then obviously the preparation for death is theoretically easier, isn’t it, there’s a framework. All religions tend to have the same idea. You know, there is an afterlife and there's some form of judgment, at some level you are answerable. In the end, you know, is there a soul or not a soul, is there an afterlife not an afterlife, is there a soul, clearly something else going on – I’m minded to think there is, you know and I think, I hope that comes across in the film.

Carol Komaromy: It’s interesting that the contemporary research shows that people facing death are equally afraid regardless of their faith.

Dan Cruickshank: Yes, I mean that, I must say, was Jung I think who said it doesn’t really matter, well, if there is or isn’t an afterlife. Obviously it’s healthy to believe there is because it gives you optimism.

Carol Komaromy: Watching the programme, for me, the most profound part was the Kollwitz statues.

Dan Cruickshank: Well, now that’s interesting. I mean the Kollwitz really I think came, well, from you, from the Open University, I mean through discussions about what relatively contemporary art, 20th Century, would work, and I knew that, from photographs, incredible two images, herself and her husband confronting the death of their son in 1914. Well, I should say of course there are two statues, of a father who’s sort of stoic as he’s kneeling sort of upright grasping himself in his arms, and she is bowed, broken. So she has this sort of strange form, sheathed in this sort of shawl, so she has a weird sort of Egyptian feeling like an elemental shape, isn’t she. She’s just sort of, just a strange bowed figure, and it’s in her face one should say, very clearly as a portrait of her, a self portrait, and she’s looking down just crushed. You’ve visited the Käthe Kollwitz statues, and I mean what impression did they make on you?

Carol Komaromy: I was very deeply affected by them. I’d read something about her struggle. And I read a lot more after I’d seen them. I can’t describe why they affected me so much. The image of the, it’s a very beautiful cemetery as you know but the image of the tombs with ten German soldiers in each one and the way in which the statues in their three dimensions – which you don’t get from a photograph – are actually asking forgiveness just moved me beyond words.

Dan Cruickshank: It’s to do with grief and mourning and not in any way celebrating war. Although mind when she starts, she just begins to think about in 1914 sort of somehow heroic youth who’d given their lives for the country, but that’s all stripped away, isn’t it, and her diary makes it clear over years her own art couldn’t help her. 1914, her son is killed, and it’s early ‘32 the work finally arrives on site. Her diary, you know, just charts the emotional anguish, the search, almost an extract from the elemental clay which she is working this appropriate image, and it’s stripped away isn’t it, and it starts with the conventional the dead son son and in the end it’s just her.

And of course it worked very powerfully in the programme because it is exactly this marriage, she’s an artist, her son dies, she has to think how she as a mother can represent her grief and the grief of her husband. But also of course represent the grief of all mothers whose children have been killed in war. And so that was an absolute moment wasn’t it, modern work which fused these ideas of art and personal grief. Because it was this personal strand, my grandfather, my father, myself and my daughter, even as I speak about it I still, a bit of a shiver goes, it’s quite exposing. Then of course, you know, therefore this relationship was to a degree paralleled because there’s me and my daughter. And because I, you know, my daughter’s interviewed in the programme talking about my memorial and the Kollwitz and her son and all confronting death and thinking about how art can help.

Do you remember what she said when she went there about looking at the other graves, the British ones of course arts and crafts, making pretty gardens and - and she didn’t like those! You know, death should be horrible; you shouldn’t make it a pretty garden. But that’s the power of her piece is that it’s extraordinarily solemn.

Carol Komaromy: I suppose we should say that they’re huge.

Dan Cruickshank: Yes.

Carol Komaromy: The statues are huge aren’t they? I thought that she was asking for forgiveness for sending the youth of Germany to war.

Dan Cruickshank: October wasn’t it in 1914, so only a few months after the start of the war, masses were mobilised and so he was a volunteer. I guess there was nothing she could do about it really; he’d obviously made the decision. But she would have felt horribly responsible, and she did.

Carol Komaromy: What would make a good death for you?

Dan Cruickshank: Just preparation isn’t it, preparation, contemplation, of course repentance. But it was living in a state where you accept that death will happen, and you don’t expect it any moment. Any moment, that’s the idea. You’ve got to take this with you in your daily life that death is imminent and it will happen, it can happen, will happen at any moment; every day is your last day. I mean one of the great things I suppose one says about art, the fact that, you know, what artists can do is put death in focus and help to make it less mysterious, less almost obscene. People, you know, don’t want to talk about it, which is ridiculous. You’ve got to confront it, you’ve got to deal with it, and I suppose paintings can do that.

Carol Komaromy: I think you’re saying, in the programme, this is what comes across to me, that having some form of material memorial is useful.

Dan Cruickshank: My grandfather had a bad death, fighting through the First World War, dying about six weeks before the end in a ridiculous way, a little steamer being torpedoed going back to Britain just off the south coast, and of course the U-boat crew themselves, thirty-eight Germans were dead within a few days. You know the whole futility, the utter pointlessness of it, and so the family… and those bodies were never recovered. But it is the bad death in ever sense, no body, untimely. I suppose he may have been prepared but it was an unlikely moment to die having gone through so much. It kind of haunts the family. It does help, it does help in deep and strange ways, and I mean that pushes me on to think about my own father who has no memorial, the. communism didn’t require one, the family did not provide one, and I think that was a mistake because memorial is a focus, isn’t it, is a focus of all the grief one has to express. Like it or not, you know, it’s there and it’s very wise.

Those roadside memorials, I mean they’re in the other programme; we did film one about these ghost bikes. I mean I didn’t know they were familiar. They’re melancholic in ways which are maybe not quite intended. When you go, you know, six weeks after, all the flowers are dead and all the postcards are dirty and tattered with debris from the road, it is awfully sad. And, you know, pinning their toys and teddy bears, oh this poor girl, some girl, it’s awful. I think it is in the other film. This is new, isn’t it, in this country these things. Memorials do help. They can be very personal, very peculiar, not even necessarily related to the body. I mean the First World War taught that didn’t it, thousands of young men blown, atomised, there are no bodies and there’s still great memorials. Yeah, the memorial as an object is important.

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Carol Komaromy: I’m Carol Komaromy. I’m here with Dan Cruickshank to talk to him about his experience of filming The Art of Dying. We’re doing this interview in St Michael’s Church, which is in the grounds of the Open University. In the programme, you set out on a quest to find out something about the relationship between art and the mystery of death.

Dan Cruickshank: I should say that the programme was extraordinary. I’ve made quite a few television programmes, none as real and as worrying in a sense, because it was a proper journey, it wasn’t a simulated exercise for the camera. For the thing to work for everybody, and for me too, it had to be a real examination of the astonishing question about whether art can help with my own death, the death of people I love and mourning, and that is the question, and it’s a big real question - a question which all of us have to face. I was exploring art and then the other world was really how this relates to me, and I remember standing in front of this painting, a lovely painting, fascinating tale, but I’m just talking about it in a detached way, I’m telling a story based on research. Later that day I was talking about myself, my feelings, my grandfather’s death, my own death, how my daughter would relate to my death, and that’s why I thought it was quite emotional, an explosion because it’s these two collisions of worlds in a very personal, also rather detached.

Carol Komaromy: You take us on a journey, which I don’t think is a comfortable journey to watch and I think that the viewer gets a strong sense of your struggle.

Dan Cruickshank: It wasn’t comfortable. The very making of a programme cracks this. You know, you’ve got to suddenly confront something which you tend not to. None of us really want to, it’s a bleak story. If one does have a religious belief, whether Christian or Muslim or any of the religions of the book, or Buddhist, we may not fully embrace it but there is an explanation in the secular world which is what I was exploring. It is very difficult.

Carol Komaromy: My view of the programme, overall, is that religion comes out quite well.

Dan Cruickshank: If one is fortunate to have faith and belief then obviously the preparation for death theoretically easier, isn’t it, there’s a framework. All religions tend to have the same idea. You know, there is an afterlife and there's some form of judgement, some level you are answerable. In the end, you know, is there a soul or not a soul, is the afterlife not afterlife, is the soul clearly something else going on - I minded to think there's, you know and I think, I hope that comes across in the film.

Carol Komaromy: It’s interesting that the contemporary research shows that people facing death are equally afraid regardless of their faith.

Dan Cruickshank: Yes, I mean that, I must say, was used, I think. It doesn’t really matter, well, if there is or isn’t an afterlife. Obviously it’s healthy to believe there is because it gives you optimism.

Carol Komaromy: Watching the programme, for me, the most profound part was the Kollwitz statues.

Dan Cruickshank: Well, now that’s interesting. I mean the Kollwitz really I think came, well, from you, from the Open University, I mean through discussions about what relatively contemporary art, 20th Century, would work, and I knew that, from photographs, incredible tomb images, herself and her husband confronting the death of their son in 1914. Well, I should say of course there are two statues, of a father who’s sort of stoic as he’s kneeling sort of upright grasping himself in his arms, and she is bowed broken. So she has this sort of strange form, sheathed in this sort of shawl, so she has a weird sort of Egyptian feeling like in a mental shape, isn’t she. She’s just sort of, just a strange bowed figure, and it’s in her face one should say, very clearly as a portrait of her, a self portrait, and she’s looking down just crushed. You’ve visited the Käthe Kollwitz statues, and I mean what impression did they make on you?

Carol Komaromy: I was very deeply affected by them. I’d read something about her struggle. And I read a lot more after I’d seen them. I can’t describe why they affected me so much. The image of the, it’s a very beautiful cemetery as you know but the image of the tombs with ten German soldiers in each one and the way in which the statues in the three dimensions – which you don’t get from a photograph – are actually asking forgiveness just moved me beyond words.

Dan Cruickshank: It’s to do with grief and mourning and not in any way celebrating war. Although mind when she starts, she just begins to think about 1914 sort of somehow heroic youth had given their lives for the country, but that’s all stripped away, isn’t it, and basically over years her own art couldn’t help her. 1914, her son is killed, and it’s early ‘32 the work finally arrives onsite. The Diary, you know, just charts the emotional anguish, the search, almost an extract from the elemental clay which is working this appropriate image, and it’s stripped away isn’t it, and it starts with the conventional that their son and it’s just her.

And of course it worked very powerfully in the programme because it is exactly this marriage, she’s an artist, her son dies, she has to think how she as a mother can represent her grief and the grief of her husband. But also of course represent the grief of all mothers whose children have been killed in war. And so that was an absolute moment wasn’t it, modern work which fused these ideas of art and personal grief. Because it was this personal strand, my grandfather, my father, myself and my daughter, even as I speak about Ethel, a bit of a shiver goes quite exposing. Then of course, you know, therefore this relationship was to a degree paralleled because there’s me and my daughter. And because I, you know, my daughter’s interviewed in the programme talking about my memorial and the Kollwitz and her son and all confronting death and thinking about how art can help.

Do you remember what she said when she went there about looking at the other grades, the British ones of course arts and craft making pretty gardens and - and she didn’t like those! You know, death should be horrible; you shouldn’t make it a pretty garden. But that’s the power of her piece is that it’s extraordinarily solemn.

Carol Komaromy: I suppose we should say that they’re huge.

Dan Cruickshank: Yes.

Carol Komaromy: The statues are huge aren’t they? I thought that she was asking for forgiveness for sending the youth of Germany to war.

Dan Cruickshank: October wasn’t it in 1914, so only a few months after the start of the war, masses were mobilised and so he was a volunteer. I guess there was nothing she could do about it really; he’d obviously made the decision. But she would have felt horribly responsible, and she did.

Carol Komaromy: What would make a good death?

Dan Cruickshank: Just preparation isn’t it, preparation, contemplation, of course repentance. But it was living in a state where you accept that death will happen, and you don’t expect it any moment. Any moment, that’s the idea. You’ve got to take this with you in your daily life that death is imminent and it will happen, it can happen, will happen at any moment; every day is your last day. I mean one of the great things I suppose one says about art, the fact that, you know, what artists can do is put death in focus and it helped to make it less mysterious, less almost obscene. People, you know, don’t want to talk about it, which is ridiculous. You’ve got to confront it, you’ve got to deal with it, and I suppose paintings can do that.

Carol Komaromy: I think you’re saying, in the programme, this is what comes across to me, that having some form of material memorial is useful.

Dan Cruickshank: My grandfather had a bad death, fighting through the First World War, dying about six weeks before the end in a ridiculous way, a little steamer being torpedoed going back to Britain just off the south coast, and of course the U-boat crew themselves, thirty-eight Germans were dead within a few days. You know the whole futility, the utter pointlessness of it, and so the family, and those bodies were never recovered. But it is the bad death in ever sense, no body, untimely. I suppose he may have been prepared but it was an unlikely moment to die having gone through so much. It kind of haunts the family. It does help, it does help in deep and strange ways, and I mean that pushes me on to think about my own father who has no memorial, the … didn’t require one, the family did not provide one, and I think that was a mistake because memorial is a focus, isn’t it, is a focus of all the grief one has to express. Like it or not, you know, it’s there and it’s very wise.

Those roadside memorials, I mean they’re in the other programme; we did film one about these ghost bikes. I mean I didn’t know they were familiar. They’re melancholic in ways which are maybe not quite intended when you go, you know, six weeks after, all the flowers are dead and all the postcards are dirty and tattered with debris from the road, it is awfully sad. And, you know, pinning their toys and teddy bears, oh this poor girl, some girl, it’s awful. I think it is in the other film. This is new, isn’t it, in this country these things. Memorials do help. They can be very personal, very peculiar, not even necessarily related to the body. I mean the First World War taught that didn’t it, thousands of young men blown, atomised, there are no bodies and there’s still great memorials. Yeah, the memorial as an object is important.