“I wanted to show artists as workers, not people who live in ivory towers.”
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“Guider’s life was a good example to show that art which is simply exploiting to the full one’s natural gifts is really bloody hard work, misery, momentary defeat and taking a lot of bloody stick – and giving it…if you want to show the hard work behind a work of art, then a sculptor is your very best subject. I was very conscious of this in the sequence where Gaudier sculpts a statue all through the night. It’s the heart, the core of the film, the most important scene to me.”
— Ken Russell on Savage Messiah (1972)