“Inside art” I saw this on television and ordered it for my daughter, an art major.
In addition to the probing insights into the mind and life of each artist, and the analyses of the works of each, the photography and visual montages are a work of art themselves.
Product Description Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 06/05/2007 Run time: 400 minutes Rating: Nr Watching Simon Schama’s Power of Art is like taking an Ivy League course in art appreciation, with the folksy but knowledgeable Schama as guide and interpreter. A collection of hour-long films on eight seminal artists and their groundbreaking works, which originally aired on British television, this boxed set is as entertaining as it is enlightening, with Schama doing for Western art what, say, Steve Irwin did for Australian natural history. Eight artists are featured–Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko–and each portrait of the artist weaves biography and historical context to help explain the true power of his works. The segment on Van Gogh is, as expected, emotional, yet Schama convincingly portrays Van Gogh as not consumed by madness, but fighting off the episodes with painting. Van Gogh painted one of his most evocative works, Wheat Field With Crows, which even his brother, Theo, recognized was about to put his brother on the artistic map. Yet, as Schama points out, within weeks, Van Gogh had killed himself. “Now why would he want to do that?” Schama muses–and then proceeds to narrate the tormented tale of the answer. Along the way, the viewer gains new appreciation for Van Gogh’s signature works, including his famous sunflowers. “Technically, these are still lives,” Schama says, “but there’s nothing still about them… the sunflowers [seem to be] organisms landing violently from a burning sun.” If the reenactments of the artists’ lives are a bit overdone, it’s forgivable, since the cumulative effect, in an hour, is a new appreciation of the work and the man. Extras include frank and very funny commentaries by Schama and his co-producer, and lots of behind-the-scenes dish on how certain scenes were achieved. The teeming French opera scene in the “David” episode, for instance, was cast using just 20 French extras and then the rest created by CGI–”the scene works better, really, than [the film] King Kong,” Schama says with delight. –A.T. Hurley |
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Not good at all  It’s astounding the high rating this gets. I watched it on n-flix and sent it back half-watched. It’s an overproduced mess, with Schama not saying much about the art but very gossipy about the artists. There are giant close-ups, with warts and spittle and twitching and portentous music, the tiresome template for every artist Schama covers, presumably to give us an idea about what the artist was “really” like. And there’s lots of Schama, tramping around scenic locations which may or may not have anything to do with the narrative. I guess if you’re into fashionable camera jerk and shake and little slice-of-life melodramas, with heavy breathing and colorful costumes, then you’ll go for this shallow survey. But if you’re into the art, Sister Wendy is far, far more illuminating. I loved Schama’s History of Britain, loved his quirky, irreverent delivery. I give two-stars because I love to watch Schama, but frankly, I think he’s consciously trying to imitate Kenneth Clark, whose Civilization, a Personal View, was a cultural history of the West through its art and remains the benchmark against which other culture documentaries are measured. Despite the 40 years of slick technology the deconstructed Schama has over the elegantly attired and debonair Clark, this effort doesn’t measure up at all…. Fascinating! Schama at His Best (Again) For this series, Schama has specially selected eight key artists to make his underlying point that art is indeed powerful, and all one need do is examine some of these personages and their key works to be convinced of just that point. Schama easily makes his case, but takes us on a riveting eight-hour journey from Caravaggio to Rothko in doing so. Our trip leads us to meet each of the artists (Caravaggio, Bernini, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, and Rothko), peer into the oftentimes emotion-charged lives in which they practiced their art, and survey of some of the major accomplishments of each, all flouted across the screen in high-resolution digital beauty. And yet, this is not really Schama’s point at all: the point which he wants us to understand, to believe, to accept, to embrace, is that art can be powerful, often IS powerful, and that these eight people served as spectacular conduits of that power into their created works. And so, for each of our eight personal witnesses called to the stand to defend Schama’s thesis, we hear an often tormented roar of testimony, each of them having a unique story to tell in how art was powerful to them, and how that power impacted their and succeeding generations. Sometimes the power is, in Schama’s words, a “lie” (for example, “Death of Marat” by David), and sometimes it is the power of guilt and redemption (Caravaggio’s “David with the head of Goliath”). Sometimes it is an open doorway to another dimension (Rothko’s works), and sometimes, the power of reminding us who we are (Rembrandt’s “The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis”). We don’t have to know about these paintings beforehand to learn Schama’s lesson: as we work through each episode, we learn more than enough to understand these works, and why they were created. As such, the series serves as an outstanding lesson on the history of western art. But we should never be misled as to Schama’s true purpose. He wants us to see the medium of art as a source of power, sometimes tapped, sometime not, sometimes legitimate, sometimes not. But powerful nonetheless. The DVD set closely follows the printed text, which was released almost two years ago. I would recommend that one purchase and work through both formats to receive the maximum insight and experience of the endeavor. The book and the documentary make use of slightly different approaches to achieve the same goal, and watching the DVD first or reading the book first will in no way spoil the pleasure and meaning of the other. Both the DVD and the book are of first-rate quality, and it is easy to recommend both. Don’t miss out on this latest of the Schama saga, and after watching, join the crowd of those that hope for more to come. A very fine series focused on great works of art created under great stress The format is a combination of commentary, narrative history, reenactments using actors, and photographs of original works of art. I can imagine some people being put off by either the reenactments or even the commentary, but I was quite taken with all of it. I usually do not like reenactments, but with only minor exceptions I found nearly all of the actors to be quite excellent. The narrative was superb. I found that I learned things about nearly all of the artists that Schama covers. Rembrandt and Turner and Rothko all mean a bit more to me than they did before the series. And the photography of the great works was simply gorgeous, as was also the photography of the wonderful landscapes. The countryside in both the Turner and Van Gogh episodes were as astonishing as any of the paintings. One of the best things about the series is the obvious passion that Schama has for art in general and for these artists in particular. I liked that he was not equally approving of each of the artists. While no sane person could challenge David’s abilities as a painter, I like that Schama expresses his dislike for the causes to which David gave his allegiance, essentially becoming a propagandist. Schama wrote a very good book on the French Revolution, CITIZENS, so this is a subject about which he possesses some very strong, and highly informed, opinions. So while David is not a painter he admires as a person, he deals with him as a painter who, in keeping with the title of the series, painted with undeniable power…. |
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