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Art and Photography |
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Allan Houser, Apache Sculptor
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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 with Geronimo in 1886, blends his people’s heritage
with his own personal spirit of adventure to create iconic figures and images that honor
the past while looking to the future. (30 minutes, color) |
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Andy Warhol: Images of an Image |
At once banal and
provocative, the works of Andy Warhol sardonically comment on the ubiquity of mass media
in modern America. This program takes a look at the Pop Art movement and the life of
Warhol through a penetrating investigation of his deadpan Ten Lizes. The painting
exemplifies his fascination with—and his indifference to—celebrities as objects
no less commodified than a simple can of soup. (31 minutes, color) |
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The Art of Barbara Hepworth |
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, her monumental public commissions, and the striking creations
of her final years. The program also uses Dame Barbara’s own words, drawn from
writings, correspondence, and archival interviews, to express the ideas that motivated
her. (49 minutes, color) |
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The Body as a Matrix: Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle |
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 installations. The locations, characters, and
symbols that organize the Cycle films; the Cycle installations as spatial content carriers
and extensions of the performances; and objectification of the body and undifferentiated
sexuality are addressed, as are the intricacies of costuming, makeup, and sculpting with
Barney’s signature materials: plastic, metal, and Vaseline. Contains nudity and
mature themes. (53 minutes, color) |
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Brushstrokes: The Painter’s Touch |
Should
brushstrokes be allowed to show—or even be shown off, like a signature—or should
they be carefully effaced whenever possible, leaving the surface of a painting smooth?
This program looks at both the mechanical side of the question—the influence of
pigments and brush types on the traces of a brush’s passage—as well as the
long-running doctrinal tension between exponents of visible and hidden brushstrokes. (27
minutes, color) |
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Charles Loloma, Hopi Jeweler |
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 the enchanting jewelry managed to break the
barriers that separated Indian traditionalism and mainstream modern art. For him, the art
world and the Hopi world were one. (30 minutes, color) |
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The Dead and the Dying |
"Expressing a dead body," wrote Leon Baptista Alberti, in 1435, "is one of
the most difficult things in the world." This program examines the portrayal
of death in art, from ancient times to the post-World War II era.
Sarcophagi, paintings, sculptures, funerary statuary, news photos, cinema,
mixed media, and a living pietà
reveal the intricacies and nuances of rendering incidents of natural,
accidental, and violent death, including Jesus’ crucifixion. The impacts of
Christianity on modern figurative painting and of historical watersheds such
as the First World War
and the Holocaust on old notions of death are explored as well. (27 minutes)
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Design Solutions |
This four-part series
takes students through the crucial stages of the design process. Each program follows a
fascinating project at a cutting-edge company from start to finish, illustrating how
design teams work together to analyze a project, plan and create a product, and evaluate
the prototype. 4-part series, 15 minutes each. |
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Double Vision |
From the multiple perspectives in Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage to
the
multiple soup cans of Andy Warhol, Western art abounds with examples of
"double
vision." This program looks first at duplication within works of art via
mirrors,
naturally reflective surfaces, and shadows and then at stylized repetition,
whether
it be through patterns integral to a work or through patterns that in
themselves
constitute the work. More esoteric aspects, such as implied and distorted
reflections, the otherness of reflected images, the weightiness of shadows,
the
fear-inducing quality of doubled images, and repeating as a means of
progressing, are also addressed. |
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Drawing: Perspectives on Line and Form |
This program
concentrates on the importance of drawing to the different artistic disciplines as it
addresses ongoing debates surrounding the representation of space. Drawing tools and
materials are presented, and special attention is given to the application of geometry,
the principal science of image construction. Classical and Renaissance theories of
perspective are considered, as is the progressive disintegration of these theories by
artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. (27 minutes, color) |
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Edouard Vuillard: The Pathways of Memory |
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 illumined by his nine-panel
masterpiece. (29 minutes)
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Electronics: Polaroid’s Passport
Photo Business in a Box |
The task: design
and build an all-in-one camera with an integrated printer that produces instant digital
pictures. This program follows a team of industrial and electronics designers at
Polaroid’s U.K. headquarters as they take on this challenge. The whole process
unfolds neatly as the idea jumps from paper to 3-D model to computer-assisted design
program to prototype. Eventually, the designers debug the prototype and a professional
photographer puts the production model through its paces. (15 minutes, color) |
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Expressing the Inexpressible: Shirin Neshat |
An acclaimed
photographer, filmmaker, and video artist, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat addresses the
complex forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world and explores the
social, political, and psychological dimensions of women’s experiences. In this
program, she explicates her haunting video installations Shadow Under the Web; Turbulent;
Soliloquy; Rapture; and Fervor, as well as her seminal series of still images, The Women
of Allah. In addition, she discusses being both an insider and an outsider in two
different cultures, the narrative power of cinema, sexual taboos in Islamic society, the
tension between traditional and modern values, the nature of expression when expression
itself is forbidden, and the quiet strength and bravery of women that prompts them to
rebel against repression. (42 minutes, color) |
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Fritz Scholder, California Mission Painter |
The first to portray
the Native American as "real, not red," Fritz Scholder has been a major
influence on an entire generation of Native American artists. This program films Scholder,
an artist of Luiseno descent, as he takes his painting Television Indian and his
lithograph Film Indian from conception to completion. His unsentimental vision and his
technique—a blend of abstract expressionism, West Coast pop, and Bay Area
colorism—have enabled Scholder to produce a strong body of work that realistically
illustrates contemporary Native American life in the Southwest. (30 minutes, color) |
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Gary Hill: Transcending the Senses |
Gary Hill’s
transformative films, performances, and video installations offer resonant philosophic and
poetic insights as he explores the tensions that reverberate among electronic media,
language, the senses, and the self. In this program, Hill uses a number of his pieces to
investigate otherness and ambiguity, dislocation of the senses, the boundary between words
and comprehension, the physicality of text, and figurative interactivity. Featured works
include Wall Piece; Crossbow; Liminal Objects; Reflex Chamber; Conundrum; Remarks on
Color; Suspension of Disbelief; I Believe It Is an Image in Light of the Other; Why Do
Things Get in a Muddle? (Come on Petunia); CRUX; Primarily Speaking; and Mediations.
Contains brief nudity. (54 minutes, color) |
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Grace Medicine Flower and Joseph Lone Wolf, Santa Clara
Potters |
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, Camilio Sunflower Tafoya, Medicine Flower and Lone Wolf are
filmed digging and refining their clay and then molding it into pots, which they decorate
and fire. (30 minutes, color) |
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Graphic Design: What’s in a Logo? |
Graphic designers
with the consulting firm Navy Blue must produce a new corporate identity for Digital
Animations Group, a Scottish company on the cutting edge of 3-D technology. Their task is
to create a logo that captures the company’s spirit and works across different
formats, such as on paper, signs, windows, and Web pages. This program follows the entire
process, from sitting down with the client to determine the mission, to brainstorming and
pitching proposals, to unveiling the finished product. (15 minutes, color)
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Gustave Courbet: The Place of Death |
In 1848, a political revolution in
France foreshadowed a revolution in art. In 1851, Gustave Courbet’s A Burial
at Ornans scandalized the public with its unembellished portrayal of an
ordinary funeral. The shift toward Realism had begun. This program tells the
sensational story of Courbet’s Burial while analyzing the subtleties and
surprises that underlie its deceptively innocent facade. |
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Helen Hardin, Santa Clara Painter |
The abstract geometric
paintings of Helen Hardin beautifully illustrate the artist’s struggle to depict
aspects of her native heritage yet depart from the Santa Fe/Dorothy Dunn model of her
predecessors—including her mother, the acclaimed Pablita Velarde. This program takes
a close look at the work of a gifted Santa Clara painter and printmaker who acted almost
as if she knew that her time to make a mark in the art world would be short. Her
multi-layered paintings, created with a combination of brushes and drafting tools, reveal
the crisp precision that characterizes her distinctive style. (30 minutes, color) |
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Illuminating the Night |
What do Piero della Francesca’s Dream of Constantine and Edward Hopper’s
Summer
Evening have in common with the films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The
Night of
the Hunter? This program analyzes the lights that illuminate the night—from
candles
and street lights, to the moon, to Ingo Maurer’s hologram of a neon-rendered
light
bulb—and the way artists make use of them to create revealing contrasts and
to
direct the viewer’s gaze. Technical aspects of light manipulation in the
visual
arts such as the use of chiaroscuro and sfumato in painting and the creation
of cinematic night effects by underexposing film are considered as well. |
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Inside the Tate Modern: A Century of Modern Art
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What the MoMA is to
New York, the Tate Modern is to London. This stimulating five-part series draws on the
works of 35 modern masters and pop culture icons displayed at the Tate Modern to show how
art evolved during the 20th century. Each of the series’ 15 insightful segments is
ideal for stimulating discussion as well as for deepening understanding and appreciation.
5-part series, 15 minutes each. |
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Introduction to Modern Art |
Segment one of this
program presents Rodin’s The Kiss, Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space, and Picasso’s The Three Dancers to chart the progression of distortion as a
means of expressing more than what a figurative subject can represent. Segment two uses
Kandinsky’s Cossacks and Pollock’s Summertime: Number 9A to illustrate how
color, line, and shape communicate ideas and emotions without a recognizable subject.
Segment three spotlights Sir William Nicholson’s The Lowestoft Bowl, Cézanne’s
Still Life with Water Jug, and Picasso’s Still Life to demonstrate how the still
life, in moving from realistic to abstract, made possible the concept of mixed media. (15
minutes, color) |
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Isamu Noguchi: The Sculpture of Spaces |
"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 classic 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 Graham, which helped define modern
dance, and his UNESCO garden in Paris, which shaped earth, water, and greenery into a
series of multisensory surprises, are featured as well. A brilliant glimpse of an artist
at work. (53 minutes, color) |
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Landscape as Backdrop |
According to some, the concept of landscape originated with the painters of
northern Europe and their use of light—a light that models objects and
creates
successive planes that draw the eye into the distance. This program traces
the
evolution of the landscape in art, from its function as a stylized setting
to its
employment as a realistic part of a scene, and the technical challenges of
depicting a landscape’s constituent parts. Paintings, film clips, and
photographs
show how visual devices such as gardens and estrades are used to separate
foreground and background and how the artistic tension is resolved between
landscapes and the humans that often inhabit them. |
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Late Gothic Art and Architecture: England, 1400-1547 |
This program
beautifully captures the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance through the
Late Gothic art of England and its Perpendicular architecture. Spanning the reigns of
Henry IV to Henry VIII—the era of the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses,
and the early Tudors—artists and artisans in England produced exquisite jewelry,
glorious devotional sculptures and images, dazzling illuminated manuscripts, and
monumental structures. Leading historians reinterpret the period, with revealing
discussions of patronage, England’s artistic relations with the Continent, and the
fundamental importance of religion to society of that time. (47 minutes, color) |
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Making Masterpieces: A History of Painting Technique |
This remarkable
six-part series analyzes the history of painting technique in a way that is at once both
highly focused in approach and encyclopedic in content. Each video critically examines an
individual aspect of the painting process using well-known masterpieces as examples. The
sheer abundance of high-quality art images makes the series an excellent reference
work—and video special effects and scientific processes such as infrared
reflectography enable viewers to see for themselves how some of the world’s greatest
paintings were made. An outstanding asset for art history and fine arts programs where the
evolution of painting is the focus. 6-part series, 27 minutes each. |
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Objects |
Segment one of this
program offers Marcel Duchamp’s urinal-cum-readymade Fountain, Michael
Craig-Martin’s glass of water entitled Oak Tree, and Rebecca Horn’s Concert for
Anarchy, a grand piano suspended upside-down, as an invitation to look at everyday things
in a new way. Segment two introduces minimalism through Carl André’s brick pile
Equivalent VIII and Cornelia Parker’s Thirty Pieces of Silver, suspended pools of
flattened metalware. Segment three features Damien Hirst’s room-filling installation
Pharmacy, the meaning of which is explained by the artist himself. (15 minutes, color) |
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The Painter’s Studio: Art Workshop,
Art Laboratory |
The
painter’s studio: at once an open forum for exchanging skills with other artists and
a private retreat for experimenting with technique. Beginning with the Renaissance and
concluding with the 20th century, this program covers an assortment of studio-related
topics, including life as a painter’s apprentice; the birth and growth of art schools
and academies; the progress of the painter’s status in society; the development and
proliferation of art tools; the use of nude models; the hard-won success of women in
gaining acceptance for female painters; and the continually evolving creative space known
as the studio. (27 minutes)
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People |
Segment one of this
program examines the unidealized human form with Lucian Freud’s nude Standing by the
Rags, Arman’s mixed-media sculpture Condition of Women I, and John Coplans’ nude
Frieze No. 2, 4 Panels. Segment two grapples with physical abuse and racial and sexual
stereotyping through Nan Goldin’s Nan One Month after Being Battered, Sonia
Boyce’s From Tarzan to Rambo Etc., and Sarah Lucas’ Self-Portrait with Knickers
and Self-Portrait with Fried Eggs. Segment three seeks to understand issues of identity
and to discern the roots of cruelty with Louise Bourgeois’ Cell (Eyes and Mirrors)
and Annette Messager’s The Pikes. (15 minutes, color) |
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Pigments: From Lascaux to Picasso |
This program
explains how artists’ colors are made and applied by charting the development of
various families of pigments—and by demonstrating that the compounding of colors is
always a mixture of tradition and technology, experience and innovation. Pigments prepared
from natural sources and derived from industrial processes are closely studied, noting
failures as well as successes. Decorative applications of color to cloth-making, glass
staining, and printing are considered as well. (27 minutes, color)
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Places
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Segment one of this
program uses four paintings by Mondrian to track his migration from impressionistic and
abstract landscapes to the pure geometry of Neo-Plasticism. Segment two employs
Brancusi’s Fish, Dame Barbara Hepworth’s Pelagos, and Joseph Beuys’ The End
of the Twentieth Century to analyze how abstract sculptors represent nature. Segment three
explores Richard Long’s fascination with organizing nature through his Line Made by
Walking, Red Slate Circle installation, and Waterfall Wall Painting, created by finger
painting with a white clay slurry on a large black wall. (15 minutes, color) |
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Product Design: A Hand-Made Stereo for a Hand-Made Car |
The sound system
that goes into a hand-assembled Aston-Martin sports car must be special indeed. In this
program, designers at Linn, a precision-engineering company specializing in
state-of-the-art sound reproduction, draft and build a compact stereo for this elite
automobile. Project leaders demonstrate the use of 3-D CAD in the drafting process. The
outsourcing of a component provides a good example of how to work with subcontractors. (15
minutes, color) |
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R. C. Gorman, Navajo Painter |
Unconventional"
and "paradoxical" are two of the more common words people use to describe R. C.
Gorman, an award-winning Navajo painter and printmaker who treats Native American subjects
ranging from geometrics to nudes with a distinctly Mexican artistic sensibility. This
program films the man The New York Times dubbed "The Picasso of American Indian
Art" as he works, capturing his fascination with mass and shape as he paints both on
paper and on a lithography stone. At once timeless and contemporary, Gorman’s idiom
unites the Indian and mainstream art scenes. (30 minutes, color) |
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Rothko: An Abstract Humanist |
This program offers a
rare examination of the life and work of Mark Rothko. Rothko gave abstraction the
emotional power of music and poetry. He painted ideas rather than objects and, in the
process, created a deeply original pictorial language. One of the most important artists
of his generation, Rothko is perhaps best known for his work in the style of the New York
School and was a peer of many other illustrious abstract artists: Jackson Pollock, Barnett
Newman, Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell, to name only five. (52
minutes, color) |
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Video Artists, Video Art: Film at the Fringes of Experience |
Enlightening or
mystifying, intriguing or repulsive, the works of Gary Hill, Shirin Neshat, Matthew
Barney, and William Kentridge demand a reaction. This in-depth four-part series showcases
these renowned video artists and their creations, giving viewers an opportunity to immerse
themselves in a cinematic world where experimenting with the limits of filmmaking and
testing the boundaries of societal acceptance are the norm. 4-part series, 42-54 minutes
each. |
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War |
Segment one of this
program addresses the anxiety and suffering surrounding World War I through Sir William
Orpen’s Zonnebeke, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Bird Swallowing a Fish, and Max
Beckman’s Carnival. Segment two reflects on the fear and anguish of World War II with
Salvador Dalí’s Mountain Lake and Francis Bacon’s triptych Three Studies for
Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. Segment three captures the doubts and deep-seated
grief of post-war Europe through Jean Fautrier’s Large Tragic Head, Alberto
Giacometti’s Standing Woman, and Hannah Collins’ In the Course of Time II, a
chilling reminder of the Holocaust. (15 minutes, color) |
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The World of the Lindisfarne
Gospels |
Filmed on
location across England and Ireland, this program takes a close look at the Lindisfarne
Gospels—a priceless work of art and one of Christianity’s most enduring symbols
of faith—and the historical and religious contexts in which it was created. Michelle
Brown, curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library, explains who made it and
why, presents new findings about its dating, and shows how it unites a remarkable range of
motifs and styles from the Celtic Iron Age, Germanic prehistory, ancient and Christian
Rome, Coptic Egypt, and Byzantium. A wealth of other devotional objects and images from
early Christianity are also featured. (48 minutes, color) |
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