The Eye of the Heart. The paintings of Cecil Collins - ACE067.2

Caption; "‘There was a time when we were admitted to the sight of visions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enclosed in that tomb which we call our body.’ Plato." Cave interior; naked people, bound ankles and wrists; light, brief flashes of several paintings. Book blows open to show superimposed eyes. Glowing figure. Cecil Collins interviewed says his painting is "a quest … the life of a soul … in which the quest of a soul is re-enacted". The Joy of the Worlds (1937) and others including The Artist’s Wife Seated in a Tree (1976). Collins walking in busy London street. Flashes of photographs of earlier life. Sunset over sea; seascapes. Details of paintings from The Promise (1936) intercut with shot of lighthouse on headland. Collins says his face "is turned towards the dawn, towards the rising sun". VO continues over shots of him in London, talking about there being "two main groups of artists, the ones who are painting a decay, the end of a civilisation … and those, perhaps very few … who sense the beginnings of a new civilisation". Collins in Central School of Art and Design. Paintings from 1930s including details from The Cells of Night (1934). Collins’s VO saying that "we feel so strange" because "we are caught in a transitional period".