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: Charles Loloma was one of the first Native American jewelers to use gold instead of silver and diamonds and other precious gems in addition to turquoise, coral, and shell. His innovative designs, so sculptural in quality, were internationally acclaimed. And his clients included celebrities, monarchs, and presidents. This program examines the work of Charles Loloma-and how the visionary behind...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program examines the pottery of Grace Medicine Flower and her brother Joseph Lone Wolf, members of the renowned Tafoya family of Santa Clara Pueblo. They revived and expanded the traditional forms and techniques of their pre-Columbian ancestors, the Mimbres, to create exquisite works featuring abstract designs and emphasizing sgraffito and polychrome techniques. Together with their father,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Amid the clamor of business and technological advances, a reverence for age, custom, and craftsmanship endures in Japan. There, the title of "Living National Treasure" is bestowed on some seventy master artisans and performers who are charged with passing on the country's cultural heritage to future generations. This program takes viewers into the studios, workshops, and homes of the remarkable...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Sculptor Allan Houser won international recognition for his depiction of the stoic, powerful figures of his Chiricahua Apache and Navajo families in wood, stone, and metal. This program follows Houser-also acclaimed for his murals and paintings-from quarry to studio, where he sculpts a face in marble, and to the Shidoni Foundry, where he casts a bronze head. The art of Houser, whose father was...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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: Although rendered in stone, the sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini convey a sense of weightlessness perhaps unequalled in the history of Western art. This program illustrates Bernini's nearly miraculous ability to turn marble into a vessel of rapture, both spiritual and sexual. With The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa as his principal focus, presenter Simon Schama examines numerous works by the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: One of the rare few who have managed to excel in both art and architecture, Maya Lin creates places of refuge and contemplation in highly public spaces. Constructed on an intimate human scale, they invite visitors to touch, feel, respond, and reflect. In this program, the acclaimed sculptor and architect talks with Bill Moyers about a life and a career that has been shaped by her Asian-American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: From the immense golden sun of The Weather Project at the Tate Modern to his New York Waterfalls, Olafur Eliasson has created large-scale installations that situate viewers in the ambiguous zones between communal and individual awareness. Filmed over a period of five years, this program follows the Danish-Icelandic artist's work in locations around the world. English-language interviews with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Charming, Mercuria. Mystifying, Overpowering, the list of adjectives used to describe Anish Kapoor's installations and public sculptures seems endless. And yet, as varied as the responses to his work are, Kapoor has precise goals in mind for each piece, and his creative outlook, while certainly wide-ranging, is enriched by specific influences and traditions. This program follows the Indian-born...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: With the five-part Cremaster Cycle of films, multi-award-winning artist Matthew Barney invented a densely layered and interconnected sculptural world that surreally combines sports, biology, sexuality, history, and mythology as it organically evolves. In this program, Barney, Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector, and others deconstruct the Cycle's filming and subsequent translation into sculptural...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Albert Paley is world-renowned for his metal work in jewelry and large-scale sculpture. This program provides a comprehensive overview of his life and work, including his studies at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, his early work in jewelry design, and more contemporary works such as the Renwick Gates and his decorative architectural sculpture for Bausch & Lomb. Commentary from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Henry Moore's work is so representative of mid-20th-century modernist concerns that a generation of art viewers may be unfamiliar with it. This program facilitates a rediscovery of the brilliant sculptor and draftsman by freshly examining many of his drawings, graphics, and monuments. From his most iconic pieces to his lesser-known works, including the amazingly relevant WWII-era tube shelter...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: One day.I had a vision: I saw the Earth as sculpture. Isamu Noguchi often said that the space around a thing is as important as the thing itself. This program shows Noguchi turning landscapes into participatory works of art as it follows in dramatic detail the struggle to bring his ideas to fruition at Miami's Bayfront Park and at Moere Numa Park, outside Sapporo. His austere sets for Martha...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Beneath its apparent thematic simplicity, Edouard Vuillard's The Public Gardens raises numerous historic and technical questions that this program seeks to resolve. Entries from Vuillard's journal unify the narrative as it travels from his art education, to his painting technique, to the effects of symbolist theater on his work, to his practice of photography-all of which shed light on or are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program is a timeless retrospective on the life and career of Isamu Noguchi, whose binational heritage sent him back and forth between Japan and America seeking a new artistic synthesis. He started his career in Paris as Constantin Brancusi's apprentice. He made his name in New York. And, after World War II, he brought a fresh modernist wind to Japan, putting his mark on Japanese ceramics,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The word "YES" morphs into "NO." A man with a hat becomes a rabbit. A human face doubles as the space between two other faces. These are some of the visual challenges at the core of Markus Raetz's art-tricks that call into question the viewer's fundamental assumptions about reality, movement, and change. In this program, the Swiss artist allows cameras into his studio to record his creative...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: More than just a manufacturer of goods, the craftsperson is an artist who draws on a bountiful lineage to create objects that are as beautiful as they are useful. This three-section program profiles a variety of craft artists to explore the origins, techniques, and significance of that process. 'Memory' provides a historical overview, and then introduces craftspeople whose work is informed by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
Summary: Despite his famous quip about the enduring patience of his client, the man known as "God's architect" never intended his masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, to remain unfinished 80 years after his death. This program examines efforts to bring Antonio Gaudi's work to completion in a manner consistent with his original goals and ideas. Viewers meet Mark Burry, the New Zealand architect charged with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Where do craft practices come from? How are they preserved? And how do today's artists acquire the skills to carry on the handmade tradition? This two-section program visits instructors, apprentices, and the self-taught to survey both the roots and the flourishing branches of American craft. The artists featured in 'Origins' honor African, Native American, and European sources as they pass...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Enigmatic and remote, yet very much present and perhaps all too real: that is the Little Dancer Aged 14, by Degas. Beginning with information on the artist's life, this program brings to light the genesis of Degas' immortal wax sculpture, background on the unusual model who posed for it, and the uproar the piece caused at its debut, where it stood at stark odds with the ideas of feminine beauty...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Famous for sculptures that combine fluidity with monolithic bulk, Richard Serra favors two basic materials: compressed steel, which he manipulates in a factory setting, and the natural spaces found at his installation sites. This program takes viewers inside Serra's creative process while documenting his work at locations across the globe. Featuring detailed interviews with the artist-and with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Renowned for her extraordinary pottery and highly respected as a teacher, Toshiko Takaezu is one of the most significant ceramic artists of the 20th century-and the 21st. This program, filmed both in New Jersey and the artist's native Hawaii, presents the life story of the internationally acclaimed potter. Film clips of Ms. Takaezu at work-shaping clay in her studio, demonstrating pottery...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005