Summary: Life, death, heroism, tragedy-subjects that, until the latter half of the 20th century, propelled the canon of Western art. How do the abstractions of Mark Rothko figure in that tradition? Are they, in a sense, its swan song? This program depicts Rothko's engagement with timeless themes that dominated his thinking long after the mythic grandeur of Abstract Expressionism had yielded to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Abstract Expressionism was born from a joining of attitudes in American art and European avant-garde art, but was later rejected for its nonfigurative and seemingly egocentric character in favor of the ultra-objective phenomenon known as Pop Art. This program examines: Franz Kline's C & O
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program focuses on Berlin, where Hannah Hoch, George Grosz, and John Heartfield politicized the anarchist Dada movement, uniting it with the extreme Left. Nearby, the newly formed Bauhaus School, led by founder Walter Gropius and other influential architects and artists, encouraged students to reject history and embrace new techniques, materials, and styles. The film also features Gerhard...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Northern Spain has produced some of the world's most celebrated artists, including Picasso, Miro, Dali-and Goya, who foreshadowed modern painting with his dark political consciousness. This program studies the artistic and social turmoil that engulfed Spain as the 20th century loomed, dawned, and rolled forward. Recounting Franco's tyranny against free expression, the program looks at Spanish...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: It was in the Bavarian mountains that much of Germany's sense of nationhood and identity was forged. Caspar David Friedrich became the Romantic movement's first great painter, creating perhaps its defining image in Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. More explicitly nationalistic was the Nazarene Brotherhood, a group of young artists, including Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Philipp Veit, who lived...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Praised by the New York Times at the time of her death as one of the world's foremost sculptors, Barbara Hepworth left a legacy of creations that continues to inspire new generations of artists. This program reveals the beauty and the power of her sculptures through footage of her naturalistic carvings of the 1920s, her increasingly abstract sculptures of the '30s, her ambitious postwar works,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Influenced by the works of Cezanne, African tribal art, and the art of the Iberian peninsula, Cubism-the most influential style of the early 20th century-offered European artists unfamiliar, nonclassical ways to represent form and space. This program examines: Juan Gris' The Breakfast Table
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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
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Summary: This program brings 1870s Montmartre and the Moulin de la Galette to life through Renoir's romanticized vision and history's less generous account. Beginning with Renoir's life on the Rue Cortot, the video contrasts the artist's idealism with the realities of poverty and left-wing radicalism that pervaded the locale. In addition, it sheds light on the painting's composition; the art...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Georges Seurat was an enigmatic character who produced, in La Grande Jatte, an equally enigmatic work of art. What is the fishing woman really fishing for? What do the monkey-revealed by X-rays to be a last-minute add-on-and the luminous little girl symbolize? What is going on with the painting's shadows and proportions? This program considers these and other mysteries as it scrutinizes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: A moment of intense erotic union? A secular icon of the sublime? A feminist tableau in which a woman coolly disengages from a man's overheated desire? A tribute to someone special? This program debates the possibilities as it places Gustav Klimt's The Kiss within the context of Klimt's sexually charged life and fin de siecle Vienna, a locus of creative energy and societal double standards....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: 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...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Although an ardent Marxist, Diego Rivera cared little if a communist or a capitalist sponsored his murals and easel paintings, as long as the finished pieces were true to his convictions. In this program, NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye surveys the life and artwork of Diego Rivera, a larger-than-life figure and one of the 20th century's truly revolutionary artists-both creatively and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Loved by the public and spurned by its creator, Rodin's The Kiss remains controversial to this day. While telling the remarkably intricate story of how the sculpture came to be, this program illustrates the impact of Michelangelo's and Ghiberti's works on Rodin's artistic sensibilities, comments on Rodin's relationships, sketches out the character of the times, sheds light on The Kiss's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Fernando Botero's distinctive style-smooth inflated shapes with unexpected shifts in scale-reflects the Colombian artist's constant search to give volume presence and reality. This program combines commentary by Botero himself with abundant examples of his paintings and sculptures to examine the remarkable life and work of a world-renowned visionary. By integrating and reworking artistic themes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Begun partly as a European reaction to the fussiness of Art Nouveau and influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Deco found its fullest expression in America, where it was applied to everything from jukeboxes to diners, from radios to swimming pools, and from skyscrapers to seaside hotels. This program presents the lively history of the Art Deco style. With no founder, philosophy, or...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Painting America was his life's work, and Thomas Hart Benton was at the apex of his career when he painted Social History of the State of Missouri. This program explores this, the most ambitious mural by America's foremost muralist, and its depiction of Missouri's history from pioneer days to the Depression era. The program is narrated by Benton (using recorded interviews), with additional...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In this program, artists John Hoyland and Sir Anthony Caro; Charlotte Mullins, of the Irish Independent on Sunday; and others examine the history of Abstract Art. After a capsule summary of Impressionism and Cubism, the program tracks the full flowering of Abstract Art, stretching into Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Special attention is given to Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Jackson...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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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: 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: Born Helmut Herzfeld in 1891, John Heartfield adopted his English name to protest the rise of German nationalism during the first world war-one of many symbolic gestures that defined the artist's uncompromising career. This biographical program begins in Heartfield's native Berlin and progresses through his painful childhood, his involvement in the Dadaist movement, his friendships with Bertolt...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: The Dada movement, born as a reaction to World War I, and its successor, Surrealism, opened new avenues for artistic creation by striving to bypass the reasoning process and tap directly into the unconscious mind. This program examines: * Kurt Schwitters' Merzbild 25 A
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: An outgrowth of Fauvism, Expressionism emphasized color's emotional properties while demonstrating far less concern than the Fauves had with the formal and structural composition of color. Contemporary Neo-Expressionism has further developed this artistic approach.This program examines: Edvard Munch's Ashes
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010