Civilisations BBC 2

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- thanks 8thOb.

[jean]

...Progs seem to be following Clarkes as just a remake...

Nobody these days would ever repeat Clark's notorious assertion that the Book of Kells was more refined and elaborate than anything in Islamic art.

[Richard Tarleton]

This, from Gompertz's article, raises the question of what, indeed, art is.

We are told: "These hand stencils do what nearly all art that would follow would aspire to. Firstly, they want to be seen by others. And then they want to endure beyond the life of the maker."

Really? Was that actually the motivation behind our stencil-making ancestor? Was he or she honestly most concerned with artistic ego and posterity? Were the painted hands even intended as art? Could they not have been a functional way-finding device or a ritualistic mark or part of a magical spell?

We have no idea why the marks were made - we can guess. Can they be ritualistic, shamanistic, whatever, and still be art? Sacred choral music and church decoration have a religious/ritualistic purpose (glorifying God, etc. ) and are also regarded as art. Are we being anachronistic and wrong in superimposing our assumptions about art on cave paintings, when they might be something else entirely (the notion of art not actually having come into existence 100,000 years ago). Schama's response to this was a rather testy "of course it's art" (I paraphrase, but that was the sum of it).

He didn't attempt a definition of art. In this post-John Berger world we know there are different ways of looking at things. A book we had when my wife was doing an art and design degree and which I now can't find, and whose author's name (female) I have forgotten, was entitled "What is Art", and gave cave paintings and those early figurines as examples of things which aren't.

[eighthobstruction]

Nobody these days would ever repeat Clark's notorious assertion that the Book of Kells was more refined and elaborate than anything in Islamic art.

....certainly not me Jean....

progs could maybe need input of a couple of artists as presenters as well as historians....

[eighthobstruction]

This, from Gompertz's article, raises the question of what, indeed, art is.



We have no idea why the marks were made - we can guess. Can they be ritualistic, shamanistic, whatever, and still be art? Sacred choral music and church decoration have a religious/ritualistic purpose (glorifying God, etc. ) and are also regarded as art. Are we being anachronistic and wrong in superimposing our assumptions about art on cave paintings, when they might be something else entirely (the notion of art not actually having come into existence 100,000 years ago). Schama's response to this was a rather testy "of course it's art" (I paraphrase, but that was the sum of it).

He didn't attempt a definition of art. In this post-John Berger world we know there are different ways of looking at things. A book we had when my wife was doing an art and design degree and which I now can't find, and whose author's name (female) I have forgotten, was entitled "What is Art", and gave cave paintings and those early figurines as examples of things which aren't.

Yes RT....is there a difference made by a tiny single 's' :Civilisation - Civilisations?....of course too we have to remember that both need much more than Art for broad fruition....

[gurnemanz]

The hands, the waistline ... I wondered if there was not a case for doing without the presenter talking to camera or wandering around and just having a voiceover. It's not about them after all. Fair enough to include them, I suppose, if they are interviewing someone or actually doing something which in some way enhances the visual content. What does looking at Simon Shama looking at Picasso's bull's or those ancient carved buttocks in a gallery actually contribute to the whole thing?

Certainly worth watching but I agree with misgivings mentioned above and by Will Gompertz. Like others, I found the "atmospheric" background music with added hums, thuds and hissing irritating and superfluous. Kenneth Clark seemed to manage without it.

[ardcarp]

is there a difference made by a tiny single 's'

A huge difference. It's not just the fashion for pluralising everything (viz. strategies, harms, musics ).

To discuss 'civilisations' implies a historical, geographical and anthropological approach, e.g. to the Ancient Greeks, Mayans, etc

A discussion about 'civilisation' involves humankind's striving after higher things, ethics, morality, the arts and so on.

OK there may be overlaps, but surely there's a big semantic difference? There is in my head, anyway.

[Richard Tarleton]

Very well put, ardcarp. A series presented by, say, Jared Diamond could have the same title....

[eighthobstruction]

....Unfortunately I've just been mulling this all over in a cartoonish fashion (do I have any other) while on my afternoon dogwalk....and this whole Civilisation thing has turned all Whicker Island on me....

[Serial_Apologist]

....Unfortunately I've just been mulling this all over in a cartoonish fashion (do I have any other) while on my afternoon dogwalk....and this whole Civilisation thing has turned all Whicker Island on me....

It is not beyond the Wicker man, then...

[Richard Tarleton]

I thought last night's Mary Beard episode was dire. And the camera direction - those backlit shots of windblown hair, chiffony scarves.... Let's hope David O can salvage something from the wreckage.

Did she say that Apollo statue was a copy? Does that mean it was a cast?

[Belgrove]

I agree Richard. Especially ironic that her comments about Ramesses II self-aggrandizing images were juxtaposed with her being in practically every shot.
The composition during her discussion about the statue of Phrasikleia was atrocious, the statue being left-field with head chopped out of shot whilst Beard occupied centre stage. Little here that has not already been covered by Berger.

[eighthobstruction]

....yes, twaddle babble in the extreme [put some apprpriate words in a cup, throw them in the air and deliver them as they fall(or for the pedantic - as they have fallen)] ....surely will not appeal to most....and surely one is almost better off having not watched the prog'....yet ....

....here's a much better watch https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...-to-be-painted includes a short interview with Augustus John from Face to Face (from 60's I guess)

[Richard Tarleton]

Better programme last night, on a topic I’m most interested in. Schama has written an excellent book, “Landscape and Memory”, in which among much else he discusses Yosemite, featured last night, and its “guardian father” John Muir whom he did not name last night. At least he mentioned the unfortunate native Americans who were evicted to create the pristine wilderness with its “lonely beauty” .

I was much struck by the common thread running from the Chinese painter at the start (forgotten his name) through Altdorfer to the photographs of Ansel Adams. Remarkable similarities in vision. I didn’t quite get the “crucifixion” in the Altdorfer, but never mind.

He could have gone in several directions, but basically went with escapism (unlike in the book). John Berger in “Ways of Seeing” treats landscape painting briefly, but is interested in the development from the Dutch, whom he credits with painting the first “pure landscapes”, through to the innovations of Turner, Monet and the Impressionists which “led progressively away from the substantial and tangible towards the indeterminate and intangible”. Schama ended with photography.

As for Breugel the Elder – I was left wishing he’d given us more of a philosophical definition of “landscape”, or at least “landscape painting”. George Santayana in “The Sense of Beauty” says “The natural landscape is an indeterminate object; it almost always contains enough diversity to allow…great liberty in selecting, emphasising and grouping its elements [a point well illustrated by that Dutch painting with its larger-than-life windmill] and it is furthermore rich in suggestion and in vague emotional stimulus…”. No two people see the same landscape, even if they're standing next to eachother. That first Chinese painting was far from being a pure landscape, with the people working and cooking at the bottom, and the temple in the middle…. I felt the Breugels were a category error, they’re not landscapes so much as village scenes packed with human life, with landscape as backdrop. Interesting as that segment was I didn’t feel it belonged.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn’t quite get the “crucifixion” in the Altdorfer, but never mind.

Nor did I - when he said that the painting might remind us of something, I thought he was going to point out the similarities with the Wang Meng Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains painting he'd shown us earlier. (The other Song dynasty artists he mentioned were Li Cheng - A Solitary Temple; the first artwork discussed in the programme - and Qiao Zhongchang - the scroll illustration.*)

As for Breugel the Elder – I was left wishing he’d given us more of a philosophical definition of “landscape”, or at least “landscape painting”. George Santayana in “The Sense of Beauty” says “The natural landscape is an indeterminate object; it almost always contains enough diversity to allow…great liberty in selecting, emphasising and grouping its elements [a point well illustrated by that Dutch painting with its larger-than-life windmill] and it is furthermore rich in suggestion and in vague emotional stimulus…”. No two people see the same landscape, even if they're standing next to eachother. That first Chinese painting was far from being a pure landscape, with the people working and cooking at the bottom, and the temple in the middle…. I felt the Breugels were a category error, they’re not landscapes so much as village scenes packed with human life, with landscape as backdrop. Interesting as that segment was I didn’t feel it belonged.

It seemed, too, that he sort-of contradicted himself in discussing the "escapist" nature of these paintings almost immediately after pointing out the misery of the returning hunters; the feebleness of their "spoils" and the utter fed-upness in the dogs' expressions.

I'm not sure where this programme "fits" in the Civilisations context - it could have been a self-contained art documentary in its own right - but for all its contradictions, I greatly enjoyed it.



* = It would be handy if the website had a list of "Works Shown" similar to the playlists on some R3 websites - save me having to go through the early part of the programme to check names and spellings!