Summary: Promoted in its time as a celebration—or at least a fully informed study—of foreign ethnicities and customs, the 1900 World’s Fair is recognized today as a spectacle of Eurocentric myopia. This program lays bare that conceit as it interweaves archival photographs, film clips, and posters from the Fair with commentary from renowned art historians. Offerings from museum collections across the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Professor Fred Orton of the University of Leeds has a long and distinguished history as an interpreter of Jasper Johns' work. In this program, Orton looks at Flag, the mid-1950s painting that established Johns as a central figure on the postmodern art landscape; he also closely examines one of the artist's most recent paintings, Catenary (Jacob's Ladder) Through his exploration of these works,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Segment one of this program addresses the anxiety and suffering surrounding World War I through Sir William Orpen's Zonnebeke, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's Bird Swallowing a Fish, and Max Beckman's Carnival. Segment two reflects on the fear and anguish of World War II with Salvador Dali's Mountain Lake and Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Segment three...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Concerned primarily with the sociopolitical history of art, scholar T. J. Clark has, in the past, come into conflict with critic Michael Fried, a proponent of aesthetically based views of painting and sculpture. This program documents a discussion of two Jackson Pollock works in which Clark and Fried strive for common ground. Studying Lavender Mist, both commentators remark on the compressed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Segment one of this program examines the unidealized human form with Lucian Freud's nude Standing by the Rags, Arman's mixed-media sculpture Condition of Women I, and John Coplans' nude Frieze No. 2, 4 Panels. Segment two grapples with physical abuse and racial and sexual stereotyping through Nan Goldin's Nan One Month after Being Battered, Sonia Boyce's From Tarzan to Rambo Etc., and Sarah...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Segment one of this program uses four paintings by Mondrian to track his migration from impressionistic and abstract landscapes to the pure geometry of Neo-Plasticism. Segment two employs Brancusi's Fish, Dame Barbara Hepworth's Pelagos, and Joseph Beuys' The End of the Twentieth Century to analyze how abstract sculptors represent nature. Segment three explores Richard Long's fascination with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: How did modernist ideas reshape the presentation of art in museums and galleries? And how did that approach evolve in the postmodern era? This program examines intellectual and aesthetic issues associated with the display of art, using rooms in the Tate Modern as case studies. Overviewing the exhibition style Alfred Barr established during his transformation of MOMA in the 1930s, the video...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Thirty years after the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, one of its principal champions sat down with historian T. J. Clark to discuss the evolution of art criticism and issues surrounding modernist painting. This program documents their conversation, spotlighting Clement Greenberg's reflections on his career and its place in the wider arenas of art theory, art journalism, and the philosophy of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Segment one of this program offers Marcel Duchamp's urinal-cum-readymade Fountain, Michael Craig-Martin's glass of water entitled Oak Tree, and Rebecca Horn's Concert for Anarchy, a grand piano suspended upside-down, as an invitation to look at everyday things in a new way. Segment two introduces minimalism through Carl Andre's brick pile Equivalent VIII and Cornelia Parker's Thirty Pieces of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: A quarter-century following the death of Abstract Expressionist firebrand Jackson Pollock, renowned critic Clement Greenberg and art historian T. J. Clark sat down to discuss the legendary painter's career, working methods, and legacy. This program documents their talk, focusing on Pollock's work from the mid-1940s onward and highlighting Greenberg's firsthand observations of the artist in his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009