ARH 1000: Art Appreciation / Art in the Humanities: Videos

In its strictest sense, the term art brut refers to art created outside the boundaries of official culture and often focuses on the work of people who live in mental institutions. This program focuses on the art of Josef “Pepi” Hofer and several other artists with mental retardation and similar disabilities as it captures them in workshops and at a showing and award ceremony at The House of Art, Munich. Although not designated as art therapy, the effects of creating art are visibly therapeutic as these individuals explore issues of sexuality and other areas of human experience and imagination through depictions both complex and deceptively simple. (37 minutes)

In many ways, including artistic ones, Russia appears forever on the brink of revolution. This program examines Russian visual art as it progressed—or regressed, depending on one’s opinion—during the 20th century. Host Andrew Graham-Dixon roots out portraits of Stalin stashed in museum storerooms, notes the transformation of the Moscow Metro into a public art gallery, and visits a stunning creation of postwar Communist rule: the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. He also looks at examples of Russian art today, from sculptures in liquid oil and the insides of a giant erotic apple to heroic sculptures of Vladimir Putin and a re-creation of the imperial family facing the firing squad. A BBC Production. (50 minutes)

It was in the Bavarian mountains that much of Germany’s sense of nationhood and identity was forged. Caspar David Friedrich became the Romantic movement’s first great painter, creating perhaps its defining image in Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. More explicitly nationalistic was the Nazarene Brotherhood—a group of young artists, including Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Philipp Veit, who lived like monks in a deconsecrated monastery. This program also examines the German 19th century itself, a period in which Bavarian nationalism met German Romanticism in the extraordinary buildings of Ludwig I and his heirs. Viewers then enter historic Dresden, where the early 20th-century work of Ernst Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Otto Dix fused modern art styles with those of the German Renaissance 400 years before. A BBC Production. Part of the series The Art of Germany. (50 minutes)

Is beauty found only in the eye of the beholder or is there something more universal we can conclude about it? In this visually stunning program, renowned art critic Matthew Collings takes us on a thoughtful and memorable exploration of beauty in art. He explores the timeless visual principles that form the basis of all great art, and which produce the rush of pleasure one experiences when encountering a beautiful painting or sculpture. Examples are drawn from the works of Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, Magritte, Gauguin, Rauschenberg, and others. From the prehistoric cave art of the Dordogne to the masterpieces of the Renaissance to the much more debatable pleasures of contemporary art, viewers discover underlying aesthetic tenets which, in Collings’s view, run through all of art history. (59 minutes

Forbidden by Islamic law to represent the human form, Moslem art burst forth in the characteristic decorative style we know as arabesque. This program discusses the architecture and sculpture of mosques and Koranic schools, the illumination and calligraphy of sacred texts, music, the art of the garden, and the influence of the abstract arabesque on Western art. (32 minutes)

In this program, Andrew Graham-Dixon shows the role of 19th- and 20th-century artists in helping America to establish its own culture. He goes to Manhattan to examine the grimy world of John Sloan and George Bellows, to Massachusetts for a fresh take on Norman Rockwell, and to Chicago for a look at the work of Louis Sullivan. Graham-Dixon explains how the Great Depression affected Edward Hopper and Arshile Gorky and inspired America’s first internationally acclaimed art movement—Abstract Expressionism. He visits Jackson Pollock’s Long Island studio before flying across America to take in Mark Rothko’s incredible chapel in Houston, Texas. A BBC Production. Part of the series Art of America. (50 minutes)

Instead of offering an idealized or ennobled vision of humankind, modern art—an instrument of the tumultuous 20th century—communicates chaos, anxiety, and above all, uncertainty. In this program, Matthew Collings contrasts the works of Pablo Picasso with the abstracts of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian and the architecture of Le Corbusier; tells how the Nazis tried to eradicate modern art’s uncertainties with some crushing certainties of their own; and shows how modern art’s relationship with modern life changed—first with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, then with Pop Art. The program also stretches into contemporary art to ask: What can we still believe in? And is Western civilization nearing its end? Original broadcast title: Uncertainty. (49 minutes)

Called art by some and vandalism by others, street art transforms the depersonalized, overcommercialized urban landscape into a forum for self-expression. Filmed in New York City, Pittsburgh, and Toronto, this edgy program documents the exploding underground art form of street stenciling and explores its roots in political street art, industrial signage, and freehand graffiti. John MacPhee, author of Stencil Pirates, and other stencil artists pose critical questions about the role of free speech in public spaces as they describe their motives and demonstrate their methods. Transgressive, subversive, creative—that’s the rebel art of the street stencil. (24 minutes)

Program host Griff Rhys Jones continues his quest to understand non-Western art forms by travelling to West Africa. Looking beyond the astonishing monetary worth of antique carvings from the region, Jones asks: what makes a piece “authentic” and are such objects still produced by artists today? Is there an exact definition for what constitutes African art? Has there ever been? The investigation starts on Mali’s Bandiagara Escarpment, a hub of Dogon civilization, which invests certain carvings and sculptures with spiritual significance. Wondering if belief in the power of these objects can survive the march of modernity, Jones shifts his focus to Accra, the capital of Ghana. There he encounters further reasons to think of art in the context of time’s passage, as he learns more about invention and creativity on the continent that gave birth to the human species. (59 minutes)

A definitive survey of Korean art and culture, this program spans the ages from 3000 B.C. to the 20th century. Views of burial mounds, temples, ancient cities, and other historical sites are interwoven with footage of recovered art treasures such as gold crowns and jewelry, celadon pottery, landscape and genre paintings, and Buddhist relics including the gilt bronze Maitreya (Buddha of the Future). The program also shows art objects from the National Museum of Korea exhibition "5000 years of Korean Art." (58 minutes)

Its influences include comic books, B-movies, rock ’n’ roll, surfing, hot rods, and Cold War imagery. Art historians call it Pop Surrealism; practitioners call it Lowbrow. With dozens of artist and gallery curator interviews, along with hundreds of examples, this program chronicles Lowbrow’s evolution, its iconoclasm and often antagonistic relation to Abstract Expressionism, as well as the rise of female artists to its forefront. Artists interviewed include Lowbrow pioneer Robert Williams; Isabel Samaras; The Pizz; Shag; Anthony Ausgang; Lisa Petrucci; I, Braineater; 12 Midnite; Nicole Steen; and Vicki M. Other interviews include gallery curators Doug Nason and Billy Shire, author Sherri Cullison, Gearhead magazine editor Mike LaVella, and Annie Tucker, managing editor of Juxtapoz magazine. (49 minutes)