ART OF THE WESTERN WORLD: IN OUR OWN TIME {POST-WWII} (TV)
Summary
The last in this nine-part series exploring the history of Western art. This program, hosted by Michael Wood, examines the directions art has taken in Europe and America since the end of World War II, including the abstract expressionist school, pop art, minimalist art, postmodernism, and the earthworks movement. Art critic and curator Germano Celant offers a European perspective, while art historian Rosalind Krauss presents an American point of view. Highlights include the following: a discussion of the differing impact of World War II on U.S. and European artists; the development of the abstract expressionist movement in New York; the post-war shift as New York began to lead the art world; commentary by author and art critic Clement Greenberg on abstraction as an inherent part of Western tradition, and recollections of his first meeting with artist Jackson Pollock, whose kinetic work is examined; images of death and destruction in European post-war work; comments on the work of Italian artist Lucio Fontana; a comparison of European and American abstract expressionism; a survey of works by Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko; a discussion about the generation that was influenced by the abstract expressionists, including Helen Frankenthaler; the new American avant-garde of the mid-1950s, including the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, which signalled a new era -- an art of disposable popular culture; the 1960s pop art movement and the joyful nihilism of pop artists; the works of Andy Warhol as demonstrations of the deadening effect of media saturation; the work of European artists Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys, dealing with the idea of the "artist as shaman"; an examination of minimalist art as a movement of abstract sculpture concurrent with the rise of pop art; an examination of an outdoor sculptural work by Sol LeWitt in Muenster, Germany; the effects of the international wave of student protest culminating in 1968; an examination of Maya Ying Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. -- enveloped in controversy because it was not heroic; footage of Storm King Art Center in upstate New York and the dissipation of minimalist sculpture as it became an acquisition of choice for corporate collections during the 1970s; a discussion of the crisis surrounding the end of the Western myth of progress; the return to nature in the last twenty-five years, as evidenced by Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" (1970), a coiled jetty of rock in the Great Salt Lake that exemplifies the earthworks movement, in which artists manipulate the natural world; "Running Fence," a 1976 environmental work by Christo, which includes six miles of fabric in Sonoma, California; Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, a revolutionary approach to a museum that typified the desire of 1970s artists to move out of the museum and interact with the city; a visit to New York's Soho -- the fashionable art center of the 1980s -- exemplifying the way distinctions between art and commodity became blurred; the roots of postmodernism as an art movement in architecture of the 1970s, illustrated with Michael Graves's Portland Building in Oregon; comments by Gilbert & George on the conformity and media bombardment of the 1980s; a controversial sculptural work created for the courtyard of the Palais Royale in Paris, featuring columns of various heights in ruins; the museum as church in a postmodern age; the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer, who examines universal symbols; violence, irrationality, and a world-out-of-balance as themes in the work of Robert Morris; the emerging importance of woman artists like Cindy Sherman, Alexis Smith, and Jenny Holzer, who parody the traditional role of women as mute symbols in Western art; an installation work -- employing sound effects -- in an abandoned tower in Germany that was used for torture; a look at an environmental work in Arizona that uses elements of ancient tribal works; and the goal of environmental art to restore the power of ancient earthworks. The program concludes with Wood's final comments on the nine-part series, suggesting the global nature of twenty-first century art. This program is closed-captioned.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: November 27, 1989 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:58:03
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:23920
- GENRE: Arts documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Abstract expressionism; Art, American; Pop art; Postmodernism; Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1989
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Perry Miller Adato … Executive Producer, Developed by
- Carolyn Neipris … Coordinating Producer
- Gail Jansen … Coordinating Producer
- Tony Cash … Series Producer
- Andrew Snell … Series Producer
- Suzanne Bauman … Producer, Director, Writer
- Jane Alexander … Associate Producer
- Susan Benaroya … Production (Misc.), Production Manager
- Robert Kotlowitz … Production (Misc.), WNET Executive in Charge
- Nancy Spector … Researcher
- Diane Best … Researcher
- Robert Seidman … Writer
- Wilfred Josephs … Composer, Original music by
- Brian Keane Music … Music by
- John Adams … Music (Misc. Credits), Music supervision by
- Rosemary Fishel … Music (Misc. Credits), Music supervision by
- Michael Wood … Host
- Germano Celant … Narrator, Art Historian
- Rosalind Krauss … Narrator, Art Historian
- Joseph Beuys
- Centre Georges Pompidou
- Christo (Christo Vladimirov Javacheff)
- Willem de Kooning
- Niki de Saint-Phalle
- Lucio Fontana
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Gilbert and George
- Michael Graves
- Clement Greenberg
- Jenny Holzer
- Jasper Johns
- Anselm Kiefer
- Yves Klein
- Franz Kline
- Lee Krasner
- Sol LeWitt
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Maya Ying Lin
- Robert Morris
- Jackson Pollock
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Mark Rothko
- Cindy Sherman
- Alexis Smith
- Robert Smithson
- Andy Warhol