Simon Schama Describes the Horse in Western Art as Being a Universal Symbol of
Tv Review | 'Simon Schama'due south Power of Fine art'
Matching Masterpieces With History's Wink Points
There was a time, not so long agone, when "popularizer" was a derogatory term used by academics to dismiss the popularity of a more successful colleague.
When Robert Graves wrote "I, Claudius," many classicists sneered. Even Kenneth Clark, the art historian who in 1969 wrote and presented "Civilization," the BBC's hugely successful survey of Western fine art, was mocked in some circles as a sellout.
That fusty line between art and entertainment faded long agone. Stephen Westward. Hawking, the British physicist, starred in his own series on public television about the origins of the universe without any damage to his reputation. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists line up to announced on "Oprah." So it's not surprising that Simon Schama, a Columbia University professor, is turning into the Bob Barker of art criticism, a genial television host who excitedly invites viewers to come on down to loftier culture.
In "Simon Schama's Ability of Art," a serial that begins tonight on PBS, Mr. Schama walks through wheat fields that van Gogh painted and strolls beaches where Picasso quarreled with his first wife, Olga. Most documentary-way series present include re-enactments, but this ane too offers a re-enactment of the narrator equally a young man. In the final segment on Mark Rothko, an thespian with long pilus and mod glasses recreates the moment when Mr. Schama strolled through the Tate Gallery in London and get-go spied that artist's murals in 1971.
Sometimes the professor even strikes up a chat with dead artists.
"Yeah, correct, led off-target were you?" Mr. Schama says with dripping sarcasm to Jacques-Louis David'southward highly flattering 1794 self-portrait, which Mr. Schama explains was David'south attempt to airbrush out his culpability in the Terror of the French Revolution. "But doing your job? I don't call back then."
"Power of Fine art" teaches as much near the power of storytelling on television receiver as information technology does about the history of art. Mr. Schama, who nigh recently undertook "A History of Great britain" for the BBC and the History Channel, is taking a faster and more furious look at Western civilization.
He does non lead viewers on a stately stroll through the centuries, as Kenneth Clark did. Mr. Schama leapfrogs across time and place, focusing on eight artists and their masterpieces, like Caravaggio's "David With the Head of Goliath" and Picasso's "Guernica," framing each work with a dramatic turning point in history: the Counter-Reformation in Italy ( "the greatest propaganda entrada Christendom has ever seen") or the rise of fascism in Europe.
Mr. Schama justifies the title of his series past showing how these artists transformed and transcended their times; he rests his case with "Guernica." That painting shatters even the thickest complacency and breaks what he calls "the habit of taking vehement evil in our stride."
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Mr. Schama is a passionate and persuasive docent, but unfortunately there is no "we" in art appreciation. Plenty of people can remain unmoved past all kinds of groovy works.
"Power of Art" succeeds not because of the power of the chosen masterpieces only because Mr. Schama masterfully weaves engaging mysteries around each artwork. And he walks and talks viewers through it all in a "History Boys" manner that is so chatty and disarming that even the flintiest museumphobe wants to stick around to find out what happened next.
The serial begins with two episodes shown back to back, on van Gogh and Picasso. Information technology is understandable but unfortunate that Mr. Schama opens with the two most famous artists. It's the less familiar stories that he tells best, from David's agitprop to the Rothko murals that were commissioned by the Seagram Company to hang in the Four Seasons eatery, but ended upwardly in London instead.
Mr. Schama explains, with great gusto, that Rothko but tardily understood that those great works would fade in the groundwork décor, ignored by plutocrats gorging on foie gras and sole meunière. "Anybody who would eat that kind of food, for that kind of coin," an actor playing Rothko says on the phone earlier slamming down the receiver, "will never look at a painting of mine."
The van Gogh segment opens with his suicide in 1890, presently afterwards painting one of his greatest works, "Wheat Field With Crows," which Mr. Schama describes equally "the painting that begins modern art."
Just Mr. Schama can also be boyishly irreverent well-nigh genius. He characterizes van Gogh, a maniacal bookworm, as "the scary one who'll buttonhole y'all in the parlor and bang on and on about George Eliot and Dickens, and you'll exist backing off from the atrocious pong."
Picasso's tale begins in his Paris studio in 1941, with the image of jackboots stomping upwardly a staircase. Mr. Schama recounts the story, maybe apocryphal, of a Nazi who barged in and poked effectually, picking up a postcard-size reproduction of "Guernica."
The German officeholder said, "Did you do this?" Picasso replied, "Oh, no, you did."
Mr. Schama ends the segment with some other chestnut, describing the moment in 2003 when Colin 50. Powell, so the secretary of country, went to the United Nations to make the case for war against Saddam Hussein, and United Nations officials covered the tapestry version of "Guernica" with a large blueish material, concerned that Picasso's dead children, weeping mothers and screaming horses might clash with Mr. Powell's message.
Mr. Schama says this is proof that art has a ability that even a superpower cannot defuse. "Y'all're the mightiest state in the world, you lot can throw your armies effectually, yous can go rid of dictators," he says. "But, hey, don't tangle with a masterpiece."
SIMON SCHAMA'Southward POWER OF Fine art
Tonight on most PBS stations (check local listings).
Basil Comely, BBC, and Margaret Smilow, WNET, executive producers; Clare Beavan, BBC, series producer; Kristin Lovejoy and Junko Tsunashima, supervising producers for 13 Civilization and Arts; Bill O'Donnell, director of program development. Simon Schama, author and host. Produced by WNET, New York, and the BBC.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/arts/television/18stan.html
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