Watch 1990s Jarvis Cocker Travel Art Environments All Over the World in This BBC Mini-Series

We recently stumbled upon a vintage gem on the art environment beat:

The English musician Jarvis Cocker, largely known as the frontman of the popular 90s Britpop group Pulp, traveling the world over to visit art environments and meet with the makers behind them in his 1999 three-part television series on BBC 4, "Journeys Into the Outside With Jarvis Cocker."

Journeys Into the Outside with Jarvis Cocker

 Who better to bring the world of self-taught art to the public than the idiosyncratic performer behind the 1995 hit, "Common People." In the introduction, Cocker explains his inspiration for the series, in school at London's St. Martin's School of Art:

"So desperate to find a spark of inspiration, something that would help to put these feelings into words, I began to scour the college library. There was no shortage of material on offer, but none of it seemed to fit the bill. I needed to find something outside all this, something that had not been analysed to death. And then when I had all but given up hope of such a thing existing, I found it: in a book called Outsider Art."


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"The book was about art made by people from all walks of life, who didn't think of themselves as artists, but were creating things because they thought they had to, rather than because they had been taught to. Although the book featured paintings and sculptures it was the photographs of unusual buildings and monuments that really caught my imagination. How could there be a gap between art and everyday life, if every day you lived inside the work of art you had created? This was exactly what I was looking for."

 

Journeys Into The Outside with Jarvis Cocker (ep#1)

 

Part One: FRANCE

Cocker visits each of these art environments. Visit the links to see their page on our SPACES Online Archive:

 

Journeys Into the Outside with Jarvis Cocker (ep#2)

 

 Part Two: UNITED STATES 

Cocker visits each of these art environments. Visit the links to see their page on our SPACES Online Archive:

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 "I'd found much more than just a subject for an essay, I'd found something that I could really get excited about. And I vowed if I ever got the chance, I'd go and find more about these incredible places and the people who'd made them. Now almost a decade later that time has come."

 

Journeys Into the Outside with Jarvis Cocker (ep#3)

 

Part Three: INDIAN, MEXICO, BELGIUM, AND SWITZERLAND

Cocker visits each of these art environments. Visit the links to see their page on our SPACES Online Archive:

 

 We hope Jarvis Cocker's enthusiasm rubs off, and you find yourself on your own "Journey!"

 

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