THIS IS CIVILIZATION SERIES (4 Programs)
In this series, art critic and renowned broadcaster Matthew Collings updates and expands upon the 1969 British television classic "Civilization: A Personal View" as he travels the world in search of art and architecture that illustrate pivotal moments in the history of Western civilization. Each episode in this series addresses a watershed in artistic expression and explores how that transition has shaped Western culture and thought.
There are four 49-minute programs in the series:
YE GODS: Religion and Art
This program considers the debt Western civilization owes to paganism, Christianity, and Islam, showing how each religion has influenced the other and how the art of all three continues to exert an effect on the world. Highlighting the lifelike sculptures of ancient Greece that celebrate what it is to be human; the primitive daubs in Roman catacombs, shimmering Byzantine mosaics, and Renaissance crucifixion scenes; and the dazzling arabesques of Egyptian, Turkish, and Spanish mosques, Matthew Collings points out the common humanity underlying three significantly different worldviews.
FEELINGS: Emotions and Art
The idea of using art to explore the human condition rather than the divine was a significant departure from the predominantly religious artwork that preceded this secular revelation. In this program, Matthew Collings seeks the first glimmerings of humanist art in the Italian Renaissance-particularly in the works of Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci. He also contrasts two 18th-century artists who, in diametrically opposed ways, expressed this new sense of human potential, whether noble or monstrous: Jacques-Louis David and Francisco Goya.
SAVE OUR SOULS: Industrialization and Art
Industrialization in the 19th century, and the widespread human exploitation and personal alienation that characterized it, produced a crisis of faith and shook people's confidence in the very concept of civilization. In this program, Matthew Collings follows in the footsteps of John Ruskin, a social critic who interpreted the ills of his era and believed that art could salve, and perhaps even save, the soul. J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelites are spotlighted, along with locales particularly significant to Ruskin-the Alps, Venice, his beloved Lake District, and the blasted landscape of over-industrialized northern Britain.
UNCERTAINTY: Modernity and Art
Instead of offering an idealized or ennobled vision of humankind, modern art - -an instrument of the tumultuous 20th century - communicates chaos, anxiety, and above all, uncertainty. In this program, Matthew Collings contrasts the works of Pablo Picasso with the abstracts of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian and the architecture of Le Corbusier; tells how the Nazis tried to eradicate modern art's uncertainties with some crushing certainties of their own; and shows how modern art's relationship with modern life changed - first with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, then with Pop Art. The program also stretches into contemporary art to ask: What can we still believe in? And is Western civilization nearing its end?
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