Summary: Beginning with the classical and biblical subjects of Diana, Susannah, and Bathsheba, this program discusses female nudity as it relates to the act of bathing. Depicted as a chaste ritual, a sensual invitation, and a terrifying opportunity for violence, the act of bathing is deconstructed and scrutinized from an artistic point of view. Topics include the inherent dramatic tension of nudity; the...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

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Summary: Physical metamorphosis as a theme in painting, sculpture, photography, and cinema reveals an ongoing fascination with all manner of transformations and distortions of the human form. Ranging from classical to modern times, this program presents zoomorphism; hybrids from mythology, the hells of Hieronymus Bosch, and the caricatures of Granville; "botanomorphism," people as plants; treatments of...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: When artists worked in the service of the state, they glorified their cities and gave them imposing facades. But as the place of artists in society has matured over the centuries, artistic expression has became increasingly more penetrating. Beginning with the Renaissance, this program describes how visual artists have represented, deconstructed, and reconstructed the cityscape as they dealt...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: If, since the beginning of the Renaissance, art has never stopped inventing new figurative scenarios based on the window, it is because the window is so closely associated with two fundamental elements of painting itself: light and the frame. This program contemplates the use of the window as a passage between the indoor and outdoor worlds. Topics include landscape, in the form of a veduta, or...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: According to some, the concept of landscape originated with the painters of northern Europe and their use of light-a light that models objects and creates successive planes that draw the eye into the distance. This program traces the evolution of the landscape in art, from its function as a stylized setting to its employment as a realistic part of a scene, and the technical challenges of...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: What do Piero della Francesca's Dream of Constantine and Edward Hopper's Summer Evening have in common with the films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Night of the Hunter? This program analyzes the lights that illuminate the night-from candles and street lights, to the moon, to Ingo Maurer's hologram of a neon-rendered light bulb-and the way artists make use of them to create revealing...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: Expressing a dead body, wrote Leon Baptista Alberti, in 1435, "is one of the most difficult things in the world." This program examines the portrayal of death in art, from ancient times to the post-World War II era. Sarcophagi, paintings, sculptures, funerary statuary, news photos, cinema, mixed media, and a living pieta reveal the intricacies and nuances of rendering incidents of natural,...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: What is it about slumber that has beguiled artists and viewers alike, down through the centuries? This program focuses mainly on depictions of sleeping women-clothed, partially bared, and totally nude-in paintings, sculptures, engravings, art photos, and film, from the medieval period to mid-20th century. Topics include the latent eroticism and voyeurism inherent in such subject matter,...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD

Summary: From the multiple perspectives in Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage to the multiple soup cans of Andy Warhol, Western art abounds with examples of "double vision." This program looks first at duplication within works of art via mirrors, naturally reflective surfaces, and shadows and then at stylized repetition, whether it be through patterns integral to a work or through patterns that in...

Format: software, multimedia

Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006

View online at AVOD