Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA episode 3: This episode looks at America’s most controversial cultural territory – the interstitial America of small towns and trailer parks. As his road trip takes him from Iowa to Tennessee, Waldemar Januszczak discovers how this much maligned territory had an immensely beneficial impact on American art. From […]
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Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA episode 2: This episode is set in the American metropolis – the soaring new cities of the East Coast with their futuristic skylines and lofty skyscrapers. But instead of looking up at the futuristic towers, Waldemar Januszczak explores the squalid boxing rings painted by George Bellows, Reginald Mash’s
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Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA episode 1 : Series looking at American art. The first episode is set in the Wild West and begins with the sublime art of the Hudson River School, whose 19th-century evocations of the vastness of America did so much to fuel the myth of the promised land. A history of
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Architects of the Divine – The First Gothic Age: Medieval historian Dr Janina Ramirez looks back to a time when British craftsmen and their patrons created a new form of architecture. The art and architecture of France would dominate England for much of the medieval age. Yet British stonemasons and builders would make Gothic architecture their own, inventing
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Treasures of Ancient Egypt episode 3 – A New Dawn: Alastair Sooke concludes the epic story of Egyptian art by looking at how, despite political decline, the final era of the Egyptian Empire saw its art enjoy revival and rebirth. From the colossal statues of Rameses II that proclaimed the pharaoh’s power to the final flourishes under Queen
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Treasures of Ancient Egypt episode 2: On a journey through Ancient Egyptian art, Alastair Sooke picks treasures from its most opulent and glittering moment. Starting with troubling psychological portraits of tyrant king Senwosret III and ending with the golden mask of boy king Tutankhamun, Sooke also explores architectural wonders, exquisite tombs and a lost city – site of
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Treasures of Ancient Egypt episode 1:In a visual treat taking in Egypt’s greatest historical sites, Alastair Sooke tells the story of Ancient Egyptian art through 30 extraordinary masterpieces. Tracing the origins of Egypt’s unique visual style, he treks across the Sahara and travels the Nile to find the rarely seen art of its earliest peoples. Exploring how this
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Civilisations episode 4 – The Eye of Faith: Professor Mary Beard broaches the controversial, sometimes dangerous, topic of religion and art. For millennia, art has inspired religion as much as religion has inspired art. Yet there are fundamental problems, which all religions share, in making god or gods visible in the human world. How, and at what cost, do you
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Looking for Rembrandt episode 3: Desperate for money, Rembrandt takes on commissions that even his pupils have passed by, pupils who are now getting the grand offers that once came through Rembrandt’s door. Bankruptcy proceedings hound him for years and, although Rembrandt tries various – sometimes fraudulent – ways to divert some money back into his own pocket,
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Looking for Rembrandt episode 2: As Rembrandt paints his most iconic work, The Night Watch, his wife Saskia lies dying. Her death begins a ten-year decline in Rembrandt’s output as he pours himself into etching instead. Many etchings are erotically charged, perhaps a result of an affair he has begun with his infant son’s nursemaid. However, that relationship
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Looking for Rembrandt episode 1 : Rembrandt’s art is much loved and admired, but his remarkable life is less well-known. 350 years after his death, his surprising story told from an unusual perspective – his own. Rembrandt arrives in Amsterdam ‘like a thunderclap’ and his star rises as he is courted by the city’s wealthy elite. But he
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Art of Scandinavia episode 3 – Democratic by Design: In the final instalment of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s windswept journey through the art of the Norselands. We arrive in Sweden – home of Ikea and a tradition of brilliant furniture design stretching back to the early years of the 20th century. Sweden has made its modern democratic mission one of
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