The Power of Art
Watching Simon Schama's Power of Art is like taking an Ivy League course in art appreciation, with the folksy but knowledgeable Schama as guide and interpreter. A collection of hour-long films on eight seminal artists and their groundbreaking works, which originally aired on British television, this boxed set is as entertaining as it is enlightening, with Schama doing for Western art what, say, Steve Irwin did for Australian natural history. Eight artists are featured--Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko--and each portrait of the artist weaves biography and historical context to help explain the true power of his works.
The segment on Van Gogh is, as expected, emotional, yet Schama convincingly portrays Van Gogh as not consumed by madness, but fighting off the episodes with painting. Van Gogh painted one of his most evocative works, Wheat Field With Crows, which even his brother, Theo, recognized was about to put his brother on the artistic map. Yet, as Schama points out, within weeks, Van Gogh had killed himself. "Now why would he want to do that?" Schama muses--and then proceeds to narrate the tormented tale of the answer. Along the way, the viewer gains new appreciation for Van Gogh's signature works, including his famous sunflowers. "Technically, these are still lives," Schama says, "but there's nothing still about them... the sunflowers [seem to be] organisms landing violently from a burning sun." If the reenactments of the artists' lives are a bit overdone, it's forgivable, since the cumulative effect, in an hour, is a new appreciation of the work and the man.
From the BBC a .pdf file introducing the series: Power of Art Introduction
From the BBC a .pdf file introducing the series: Power of Art Introduction
The schedule:
September 7th - Caravaggio: David with the Head of Goliath (1609)
The violent life and tumultuous times of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), revolutionary artist of the Counter Reformation and Baroque era, whose paintings forever changed religious art. Michelangelo Merisi left his birth town of Caravaggio in the north of Italy to study as an apprentice in nearby Milan. In 1593 he moved to Rome, impatient to use his talents on the biggest stage possible. Caravaggio's approach to painting was unconventional. He avoided the standard method of making copies of old sculptures and instead took the more direct approach of painting directly onto canvas without drawing first. He also used people from the street as his mode...September 14th - Bernini: The Ecstasy of St.Theresa (1646-50)
Italian sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) becomes the hottest artist in Rome. Born in Naples, Bernini was an exceptional talent from an early age and went on to dominate the art world of 17th century Rome. His work epitomised the Baroque style and his sculpture, church interiors and exteriors and town planning could be seen everywhere. He was also a painter, playwright, costume and theatre designer. Bernini worked under successive Popes; Pope Gregory XV made him a knight and Pope Urban VIII took him as his best friend
September 21st - Rembrandt: The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661-2)
Simon Schama:
“Claudius Civilis is a painting drunk on its own wildness. It is a painting that would not just be the ruin of Rembrandt’s comeback, but also the ruin of his greatest vision. Or so I think, for I can’t be sure. None of us can, because we don’t know what the big picture looked like. What we’re looking at here is a fragment, a fifth of the original size, the bit rescued from Rembrandt’s knife.
This may just be the most heartbreaking fragment in the entire history of painting. The painting was commissioned as a stirring depiction of the legendary story of how the Dutch nation came to be born. What they got was Rembrandt’s version of history: ugliness, deformity, barbarism; a bunch of cackling louts, onion chewers and bloody minded rebels. The paint slashed and stabbed, caked on like the make up of warriors.
Despite making him bankrupt he’s saying, ‘These are your flesh and blood, rough and honest, your barbarian ancestry. They made you Dutch.’”
September 28th - Jacques-Louis David: To Marat (1793-4)
This time Simon uses the works of the iron-monger's son, orphaned at seven by a duel and trained by a famous relative, Boulanger, in the art of 'bonbonniere' paintings to the taste of the aristocracy, as illustration of a fairly elaborate sketch of the road to and through the French Revolution rather then the other way around. David incurred a permanent jaw-mark which marked his face, speech and social skills, rather estranging him from his patrons and the Royal Academy, despite his ultimate success.
October 5th - JMW Turner: Slave Ships with Slavers Throwing the Dead and Dying Overboard (1840)
Simon argues The Slave ship, one of seven of his works causing a scandal at the 1840 Royal Academy exhibition, is typical of Turner's feeling from experience, as low-born Covent garden boy affected by family tragedy, for the common man, even prominent in his epic works, deliberately unpolished for grim effect. Despite his membership of the Royal Academy his appearance remained deliberately rough, his later life darkened by disease, loss of close one and a pain-killer which enhanced his morbid imagination.
October 12th Vincent Van Gogh: Wheat Field with Crows (1890)
Simon sketches how Vincent Van Gogh was foremost a world-improver, who cared for the common man, working as a 'lay priest' among but got fired by the Dutch Protestant establishment at age 30, and only then turned to painting as a means of continuing his social strife for the poor, while depending on his brother, who became an art gallery-keeper in Paris, for his meager livelihood, as his works' dark themes and colors didn't sell in the colorful, light-focused age of impressionism, yet made his mark on it after a visit to Paris, without becoming fashionable till long after his death.
October 19th Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)
Simon sketches how Pablo Picasso, the Andalusian (south Spanish) hedonistic king of Paris' bohemian painting scene, who for decades deliberately created pioneering modern works, far from the classical traditions of realistic resemblance (in favor of cubism) and themes serving grandeur or devotion, nor aiming at beauty, while remarkably oblivious of contemporary political context, came to paint Guernica, his giant 1937 evocation of the horror of war in the German Luftwafe (airforce) total destruction of the Basque village of that name.
October 26th - Mark Rothko: Seagram Building Murals (1958-9)
Mark Rothko, the Anglicized name of a Russian Jewish family which immigrated while he was a child to escape the abusive Cossacks, shortly before father's dead, initially followed the European painting tradition, but felt it failed to express the most meaningful emotions. After decades he developed an abstract style and got the reputation of the US's foremost painter by the 1950s, enough to be commissioned without contest a gigantic work for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram company's New York skyscraper, worth millions, which he ultimately turned down.
Mark Rothko's Life and Works
Mark Rothko's Life and Works
The Genius of Design
Documentary series exploring the history of design. The first episode of this new series tells the fascinating story of the birth of industrial design. Alongside the celebrated names, from Wedgwood to William Morris, it also explores the work of the anonymous designers responsible for prosaic but classic designs for cast-iron cooking pots to sheep shears - harbingers of a breed of industrially produced objects culminating in the Model T Ford. Includes interviews with legendary designer Dieter Rams and J Mays, Ford Motors' global head of design.
In the crisis-stricken decades of the 1920s and 1930s, with the world at the tipping point between two global wars, design suggested dramatically different ideas about the shape of things to come, from the radical futurism of the Bauhaus to the British love affair with mock-Tudor architecture and the three-piece suite.
The Genius of Design examines the Second World War through the prism of the rival war machines designed and built in Germany, Britain, the USSR and the USA, with each casting a fascinating sidelight on the ideological priorities of the nations and regimes which produced them.
The story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with the miracles of electronic miniaturization to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation.
Picking up the story of design from the drab days of the late 70s, the final episode tracks the explosion of wild creativity that defined the 'designer decades' of the 80s and early 90s. By addressing wants rather than needs and allying themselves to the blatant consumerism of 'retail culture' designers emerged from the backrooms to claim a starring role in the shaping of modern life.
The Schedule:
November 2nd- Ghosts in the Machine
The first episode of this new series tells the fascinating story of the birth of industrial design. Alongside the celebrated names, from Wedgwood to William Morris, it also explores the work of the anonymous designers responsible for prosaic but classic designs for cast-iron cooking pots to sheep shears - harbingers of a breed of industrially produced objects culminating in the Model T Ford. Includes interviews with legendary designer Dieter Rams and J Mays, Ford Motors' global head of design.
November 9th - Designs for Living
In the crisis-stricken decades of the 1920s and 1930s, with the world at the tipping point between two global wars, design suggested dramatically different ideas about the shape of things to come, from the radical futurism of the Bauhaus to the British love affair with mock-Tudor architecture and the three-piece suite. In Europe, the 'modern movement' promoted the virtues of the machine and the machine-made with theories and products like open-plan living, the fitted kitchen and tubular steel furniture which have become absorbed into the mainstream of the designed world. In the USA, designers like Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss explored and exploited the dreams and desires of American consumers to develop a market-based approach to design which has become one of the bedrocks of the modern consumer society. Featuring Niels Diffrient and Tom Dyckhoff.
November 16th - Blueprints for War
The Genius of Design examines the Second World War through the prism of the rival war machines designed and built in Germany, Britain, the USSR and the USA, with each casting a fascinating sidelight on the ideological priorities of the nations and regimes which produced them. From the desperate improvisation of the Sten gun, turned out in huge numbers by British toy-makers, to the deadly elegance of the all-wood Mosquito fighter-bomber, described as 'the finest piece of furniture ever made', the stories behind these products reveal how definitions of good design shift dramatically when national survival is at stake. Featuring desert war veteran Peter Gudgin and designer Michael Graves.
November 23rd NO CLASS (Thanksgiving Holiday)
November 30th - Better Living through Chemistry
The story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with the miracles of electronic miniaturisation to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation. Designer Verner Panton pursued the seemingly impossible dream of a chair made from a seamless piece of plastic while Joe Colombo proposed the Austin Powers-style 'cabriolet bed', complete with built-in cigarette lighter and stereo. Meanwhile in Japan, designers at Sony were shrinking radios from pocket-size to palm-size, paving the way for the ultimate in portable lifestyle-the Walkman. But the optimism of the era came to an abrupt end when concerns about the environmental impact of plastic came to the fore.
December 7th - Forest, Field & Sky
Dr James Fox takes a journey through six different landscapes across Britain, meeting artists whose work explores our relationship to the natural world. From Andy Goldsworthy's beautiful stone sculptures to James Turrell's extraordinary sky spaces, this is a film about art made out of nature itself. Featuring spectacular images of landscape and art, James travels from the furthest reaches of the Scottish coast and the farmlands of Cumbria to woods of north Wales. In each location he marvels at how artists' interactions with the landscape have created a very different kind of modern art - and make us look again at the world around us.
December 14th - Bricks
In 1976 Carl Andre's sculpture Equivalent VIII, better known as 'The Tate Bricks', caused a national outcry. 'What a Load of Rubbish' screamed the papers, 'it's not even art'. Worse still, in the midst of a severe economic depression, the Bricks were paid for with taxpayers' money. One man was so outraged he went to the Tate Gallery and threw blue food dye all over at them.
BBC Four marks the 40th anniversary with award-winning director Clare Beavan's entertaining and revealing documentary looking back at the creation of the sculpture - which consists of 120 fire bricks - and the frenzied outcry that followed. With contributions from some of the key players involved at the time, as well as contemporary artists, historians and critics, Bricks! tells the tale of what happened when modern art and public opinion came up against a brick wall. Did Carl Andre's artwork pave the way for a greater appetite for conceptual art in Britain?
BBC Four marks the 40th anniversary with award-winning director Clare Beavan's entertaining and revealing documentary looking back at the creation of the sculpture - which consists of 120 fire bricks - and the frenzied outcry that followed. With contributions from some of the key players involved at the time, as well as contemporary artists, historians and critics, Bricks! tells the tale of what happened when modern art and public opinion came up against a brick wall. Did Carl Andre's artwork pave the way for a greater appetite for conceptual art in Britain?
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