Summary: Throughout history, one type of individual has instinctively grasped art's power to persuade and manipulate-and indeed, images have become at least as deadly as swords or guns in the hands of political and military leaders. This program revolves around a basic question: when did art mutate from a vehicle of the imagination into a tool of the ruler? Beginning in Britain, the program looks at the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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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
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Summary: Ten thousand years ago, Magdalenian artists carved expressive faces into slabs of limestone, creating a Paleolithic portrait gallery that required sophisticated drawing skills. This program shows how the art of portraiture has been refined and expanded through the ages. Examples of Egyptian sarcophagi portraits segue into discussions of paintings by Titian, Rafael, Durer, and other...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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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: Throughout the history of painting and sculpture no muse has exerted more influence than the artist's model. This program studies the role of the human form in art, focusing on complex relationships between famous male artists and their female subjects. Works featuring the male figure are also examined. Discussing numerous artistic milestones-including classical Greek statuary, Masaccio's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Everyone has the desire to arrange things in a way that is most pleasing to the eye. In painting, composition involves arranging every ingredient-shape, color, texture, and light-so that working together, they create artistic balance. In this program, artist Ray Richardson deliberately chooses a long, slim canvas to challenge his compositional abilities. As he confronts his quest to create a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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
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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: No storytelling medium is more powerful than the modern movie-but the ability to inspire and entertain by combining words and pictures is hardly a recent phenomenon. This program reveals the age-old roots of the cinematic narrative form and their evolution over the centuries. Beginning in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh, the film points to the Epic of Gilgamesh as one of the earliest...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Described as "the artful dodger meets Einstein meets an explosion in a sequin factory," public artist Martin Firrell specializes in large-scale digital projections onto iconic architecture-text messages that raise questions about faith, human rights, cultural diversity, and other subjects. Marking the first time that Firrell has allowed cameras into his creative process, this program follows...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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: Color is perhaps the most powerful artistic element, but it is also the most difficult to control. In this program, artist June Redfern goes to Venice to see one of her favorite paintings-Titian's Assumption of the Virgin. Analyzing Titian's innovative use of color, Redfern traces other color innovations pioneered by artists like Monet, Van Gogh, and Mark Rothko.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
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
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: The rebellious artist, the attraction to the dark side, love and death, and the primacy of nature-all of these are themes that suffused the artistic and ideological revolution known as Romanticism. This program vividly conveys how new ways of thinking and seeing reshaped the humanities in the 18th and 19th centuries. The writings of Holderlin, Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Byron, Wordsworth, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Can a painting be read the way a play or movie is watched? What stories do the shapes and colors of the world's great pictures tell? This program encourages viewers to analyze the narratives in painted images, illustrating possible interpretations for a long procession of famous works. Piero della Francesca's The Flagellation, Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, Rubens' Medici Cycle,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Art may represent a quest for beauty and perfection, but throughout history it has also explored a terrifying realm of doom, decay, and darkness. This program delves into the age-old human compulsion to surround ourselves with images of death. Starting with the Neolithic relics known as the Jericho Skulls, the film identifies a pattern of morbidity and death fetishism covering a broad swathe of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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: Where do abstract painters and fashion designers find their muses? To what extent does the creative process differ between video artists, sculptors, and fine art embroiderers? How do illustrators and mixed media artists handle the business side of their work? Using capsule interviews with contemporary figures on the U.K. visual arts scene, this program draws viewers into the studio space and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Called art by some and vandalism by others, street art transforms the depersonalized, over-commercialized urban landscape into a forum for self-expression. Filmed in New York City, Pittsburgh, and Toronto, this edgy program documents the exploding underground art form of street stenciling and explores its roots in political street art, industrial signage, and freehand graffiti. John MacPhee,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: When did we begin to create images and, more importantly, find tangible meaning in them? How did this conceptual leap lay the groundwork for our modern, visually oriented culture? This program investigates when and why humanity underwent what archaeologists call the "creative explosion" and invented pictorial art. Beginning with the Altamira cave paintings in Spain, the film addresses questions...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: When setting up a shot, a photographer works with composition, lighting, and color to create a subliminal subtext that reinforces or even carries the meaning of his or her subject. This program illustrates how basic components of photography-line, shape, form, texture, balance, volume duality, point of view, depth of field, and perspective-contribute to an image's impact on the subconscious...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005