The Shock of the New (1980)
Synopsis
The renowned definitive eight part series on the rise and fall of the modern art movement presented by Australian art critic Robert Hughes.
Episodes
The Mechanical Paradise
The irruption of the machine as a catalyst for the change in the forms and visions of artists in the early twentieth century. Cubism and Futurism as the movement of modern world and embodied in a canvas.
The Powers That Be
After the WW1 art is not indifferent to the change that the catastrophe had been. A provocative and ironic art, Dadaism was continued by militant leftist artists in Germany. In Russia, the communist revolution attracted modern artists to the fight, believing that they would change society to a fairer world, but they soon saw their utopia failed.
The Landscape of Pleasure
Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.
Trouble in Utopia
The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.
The Threshold of Liberty
Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.
The View from the Edge
The interior of the mind, the obsessions and the forces that dominate life, form the work of modern artists from van Gogh and Munch, to the American abstract expressionists.
Culture as Nature
In the mid-twentieth century the symbols of modern culture reflect the power of the media. Advertising, radio and television became the subject of artists. Pop art broke into the scene.
The Future That Was
The end of modernity makes Robert Hughes raise the trajectory of art and its surroundings during the twentieth century and doubts about its future and achievements.
Cast
Trailer
Details
Original Title
The Shock of the New
Status
Ended
Seasons
1
Episodes
8
Production
BBC