By the mid-15th century the Medici family had fought their way to power in Florence. They had dictated the taste of the city, presiding over a revolution in Western culture – the Renaissance. Empires Special: Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance II: The Magnificent Medici
The greatest artists the world had ever seen. ibid.
He was an artist who would take the world apart ... Leonardo da Vinci. ibid.
Lorenzo decided to bring Michelangelo into his family. ibid.
Under Lorenzo, Florence had reached new heights of culture and sophistication. ibid.
[Sandro] Botticelli ... hurled his own paintings into the flames ... The Bonfire of the Vanities. ibid.
Fifteen years earlier the sculptor had been adopted into the greatest family in Florence. Michelangelo had moved in with the Medici. Empires Special: Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance III: The Medici Popes
They had begun to procure corpses from the city’s hospitals for ‘private research’. The pioneer of this controversial method was the city’s most talked about personality – Leonardo da Vinci. ibid.
Michelangelo’s fresco was declared indecent. Empires Special: Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance IV: Power v Truth
They had been the patrons of genius. Renaissance men who had changed the Western world. In their name daring new artists had created the greatest works of the Italian Renaissance. ibid.
In October 2018 the anonymous street artist known as Banksy published this video online. In it he can be seen preparing a custom frame for his panting, Girl with Balloon. The painting is about to be offered for sale at Sotherby’s. Banksy & the Rise of Outlaw Art, Sky Arts 2021
As the hammer struck, the work started to fall through the frame, and as it did it shredded, and everyone witnessed in horror as it was destroyed. It caused a huge stir. ibid.
Painting, or bombing, the New York subway system soon became the primary focus for young graffiti writers obsessed with having their name seen as widely as possible. The nascent art movement developed it own grammar, rules and culture. ibid.
In the summer of 1989 the British Transport Police launched a series of raids to arrest Bristol’s most infamous graffiti artists. The raids were the culmination of Operation Anderson: a year-long investigation into Barton Hill: the biggest anti-Graffiti operation ever to be undertaken in the UK. ibid.
Basquiat and Keith Haring were really the beginning of street art, modern street art. ibid.
For Banksy, there was no influence more important than the French stencil artists: Blek le Rat. Blek, who had first encountered graffiti on a trip to New York, adapted the idea of street art to the European tradition, stencilling political statements on walls … 1981: stencils of rats started to appear in Paris. ibid.
That winter, Banksy entered Tate Britain, placed a painting on the wall and walked into the history books. With incursions into museums and galleries, and other stunts that followed, Banksy pioneered a new type of performance art. ibid.
Palestine: In 2005 … he travelled to the Middle East to paint the West Bank barrier, a controversial wall erected by the Isreali government … The collection of paintings that resulted by met with international acclaim. ibid.
2007 Santa’s Ghetto: The plight of the Palestinians … he held the annual Santa’s ghetto in Bethlehem. ibid.
In 2017 he opened The Walled Off Hotel, a dystopian art installation that marked the 100th anniversary of British control over Palestine. ibid.
A year later Banksy returned home to stage Banksy vs Bristol Museum, his largest exhibition to date. ibid.
Marine art had never been so popular. Dan Snow, Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World III: High Tide, BBC 2019
The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn’t make a profit, it’s invalid, and art doesn’t make a profit in that sense. Peter Maxwell Davies
It’s 400 A.D. in what will one day become Great Britain and the Romans have just left. The population that remains is joined by other peoples arriving in increasing numbers from across the sea. And in this world a mysterious artefact is created [Spong Man, 5th century]: this is made in the period once known as the Dark Ages. But in reality it is a time of glittering art and extraordinary fusions. Art that Made Us I: Lights in the Darkness, BBC 2022
The Lindisfarne Gospels, 8th century: ‘This is a real technological accomplishment to create that range of colours.’ ibid.
It’s 1348 and a pandemic is sweeping through the British Isles … Out of the chaos comes disruptive art, survivors finding their voice questioning authority, challenging status and class. Art that Made Us II: Revolution of the Dead
The Wilton Diptych c.1396; Death and the Gallant c.1480; Great East Window, York Minster, John Thornton 1405-08. ibid.
The curtain rises on the 16th century with the country in the grip of a religious revolution … Protestants use art, language and new technology to wage a battle for power in the aisles. Art that Made Us III: Queens, Feuds & Faith
Reformers around Elizabeth want England not just to repent but to rebrand with more than words. With an image. A unique body of artwork creates a logo for defiant Protestant England. A figure of the Queen herself depicted by court painters over decades, facing down the Catholic continent and internal treachery and intrigue. ibid.
It’s 1603: the Elizabethan age gives way to an era of unrest and revolution. A political and religious splintering under the Stuart kings as culture war becomes real war. The King’s Cavaliers vs Parliamentary Roundheads. From the ashes of war comes a creative flourishing and the rise of a more questioning culture. Art that Made Us IV: To Kill a King
Painting in England with a level of skill no native artist can touch, Anthony van Dyke creates extraordinary portraits of the rich and famous. ibid.
Welcome to the 18th century: an explosion of creativity in a country obsessed with the chic of the new and rich enough from trade and conquest to pay for it. Art that Made Us V: Consumers and Conquest
An age of exploitation stirs a growing social conscience. ibid.
A British design classic: the grand country house. ibid.
It’s the 19th century. Industry is transforming the British Isles. A divide opens up between city and country. It’s the ultimate test of the artist. How to respond to the upheaval in lives and the landscape. How to portray poverty and squalor. Art that Made Us VI: Rise of the Cities
A British pioneer who captured the changing skies of his own time with fresh eyes. Arguably the first environmental artist: J M W Turner. ibid.
In the first half of the twentieth century the United Kingdom was at a state of war. And art was at war too. War with the old imperial order. War with convention. With the very idea of what it means to be human. This is the story of artists grappling with the destruction. Art that Made Us VII: Wars and Peace
For the socially committed Hepworth, Contrapuntal Forms’s final home [Harlow] is the ideal one. ibid.
The United Kingdom, the 1950s: a generation of arts who recorded the shock of global war gives way to an explosion of new voices from across the British Isles, reinventing the arts and stitching together a richer more diverse culture. Art that Made Us VIII
Young artists rebel against the establishment, kicking against the confines of class, sex, nation and race. ibid.