It’s all coming back: every controversial, irritating and contentious moment of it. It’s all coming back. The Turner Prize – the bloody Turner Prize – every year the great and the good of the art world get together and award a gong to the best display of British art of the preceding twelve months. Waldemar Januszczak, Artsnight: What Has the Turner Prize Ever Done For Us? BBC 2016
But in 1991 a brave new mood entered the Turner: the short list included a group of young Turks in their 20s barely out of college: inc. Rachel Whiteread 1990 Ghost & Anish Kapoor 1990 At the Hub of Things. ibid.
Tracey Emin herself was nominated for an infamous work called My Bed. ibid.
It’s commendably tangible, it’s commendably Hogarthian. ibid.
The man who lived here invented the Renaissance. There he is – Giorgio Vasari – the one with the interested cherub looking on. Vasari was a painter and as you can see not a particularly good one. His work lacked elegance and grace: in a word it was clunky … For the rest of his career Vasari remained a Michelangelo groupie … The most influential art book ever written. Waldemar Januszczak, The Renaissance Unchained: Gods, Myths and Oil Paints, BBC 2016
Vasari’s Lives set the agenda for all art books that followed. ibid.
Roughly between 1400 and 1600 … Civilisation returns to Italy … Unfortunately, it’s just not true … Vasari’s Renaissance is the creation of a jingoistic Florentine. ibid.
Vasari ignored the north in his story of the Renaissance. ibid.
The artists of Bruges were already seeing as clearly as this. ibid.
It’s Van Eyck’s greatest achievement – the Ghent Altar, a masterpiece of spectacular complexity and mysterious ambition. With so much going on in it. ibid.
The armour painter’s delight - St George … the new paints transformed armour into a delicate metal mirror. ibid.
The era’s greatest talent: Albert Durer: everyone knew how great he was. ibid.
In some bits of the Italian Renaissance the Greeks and the Romans are definitely being remembered, and modern thought is perhaps being invented. And it’s certainly getting more secular … Very few bits of it, very few indeed, are actually trying to do what it says in the books. Waldemar Januszczak, The Renaissance Unchained II: Whips, Deaths and Madonnas
When people go on about the pioneering art of Giotto they talk about the new solidity of his figures, the classical influences at work on his anatomies, this new naturalism of his landscapes and all that is true but it misses the point … Giotto has found a way to imagine the unimaginable. ibid.
It’s about making the impossible feel vivid and real. And if you can do that, that’s an enormous power. ibid.
When they painted the baby Jesus the artists of the Renaissance were trying imagine a baby who was also a God. ibid.
The Renaissance never was as enlightened or as progressive as we’ve been taught. ibid.
Michelangelo: he’s such a huge Renaissance presence. ibid.
I’m hoping to discover why Venetian art was so different from everyone else’s. Waldemar Januszczak, The Renaissance Unchained III: Silk, Sex and Sin
Giorgione: he was born in Castel Franco in around 1477 – revolutionised Venetian art then died young. ibid.
This is where Tintoretto was born just a 100 feet away from the Madonna dell’Orto. ibid.
Titian painted his enormous altar-piece. ibid.
It was Venice that invented the reclining Venus. ibid.
Another story painted by Titian was Europa and the Bull. ibid.
The cloth-painter supreme among the Venetians was Paolo Veronese. ibid.
Mountains have a powerful effect on people. Mountains cloud your judgement. They heighten your emotions and intoxicate you. And in Renaissance times, the times we’re looking at, they intoxicated that especially disquieting Renaissance presence, Leonardo da Vinci. Waldemar Januszczak, The Renaissance Unchained IV: Hell, Snakes and Giants
One look at his paintings tells you there was something strange about him, something peculiar and visionary. ibid.
We’ll turn to all the other wild-eyed eccentrics who began popping up in the Renaissance in increasing numbers: Hieronymus Bosch, Arcimboldo, El Greco. ibid.
When it comes to pessimism even Leonardo has some way to go to match the despair of Hieronymus Bosch. ibid.
His most famous picture The Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado, that extraordinary theme-park of sin, is a triptych packed with so much bad news that I can’t deal with it all once. ibid.
This is a film about a woman who probably never existed but whose story changed history. It’s a story that’s soaked into our culture … sweaty, sensuous and naughty. It’s the story of Mary Magdalene. Waldemar Januszczak, Mary Magdalene: Art’s Scarlet Woman, BBC 2018
Artists through the ages have loved the idea that Mary Magdalene was a temptress. ibid.
How little we know about her and how much we’ve imagined. ibid.
Darkness and punishment were now creeping into the story. ibid.
See, for instance, Titian’s Magdalene: big-haired and beautiful in a plump Venetian way. ibid.
This is a film about a place people used to call the Promised Land. They came here to follow their dreams and change their lives. But I’m here to look for art … How the spirit of America soaked into the art that was created here and made it unique. Waldemar Januszczak, Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA s1e1, BBC 2018
When Moran painted the Green River this was already a squalid little town with a railway running though it … but you wouldn’t know it from his sublime evocations of it. ibid.
These are by Clyfford Still, the loner of Abstract Expressionism. ibid.
Jackson Pollock: hero of the American West. ibid.
Remington’s paintings had a reputation for being strikingly authentic … To me they look like the covers of cowboy comics … Remington’s sculptures are as ambitious as any statues produced in the Renaissance. ibid.
You can find mysterious art carved on to the boulders and painted on to the rocks. ibid.
Murals became the chosen art of Mexico. ibid.
Benton’s most loyal and celebrated pupil – that is Jackson Pollock. ibid.
In 1945 he [Pollock] moved to a house on Long Island and began making his celebrated drip paintings. ibid.
Abstract expressionism – the first truly American art movement. ibid.
New York: It’s inspired so much exciting art … This Grand Canyon made of bricks and glass … The pulsing futuristic excitement of the American city thrusting into the heavens, conquering the sky. Waldemar Januszczak, Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA s1e2
Brooklyn Bridge: This is [Joseph] Stella’s masterpiece: It’s in the museum in Newark and it is called The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted. ibid.
A great artist was at hand to record these sleazy backroom clubbings … George Bellows knew darkness when he saw it. ibid.
Guston: Some of the slobbiest imagery in the whole of modern art. ibid.
These days you don’t hear much about Reginald Marsh, that urban exuberance he captured here on Coney Island. ibid.
No-one in art has peeped in as many windows as Hopper. ibid.
The impact of foreigners on American art has been game changing. ibid.
Gorky’s art like his identity kept changing shape. ibid.
Wilfred was originally from Denmark: Lumia … he was seeking to blur the boundaries between art and music. ibid.
Robay discovered Theosophy when she was 14. ibid.
This is the Rothko chapel in Texas … Rothko like Gorky before him committed suicide. ibid.
This idea that people in small towns have small minds, that small towns hold you back, restrict you, has become one of our cultural certainties. Waldemar Januszczak, Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA s1e3
Pretty much every small town you go to there’s a mural in the post office. ibid.
The Shakers were ahead of their times in all sorts of things. ibid.
The Detroit Institute of Art: at its centre a mural masterpiece by Diego Rivera … in eight months of furious effort. ibid.
The angry Philip Guston never forgot or forgave the Klan. ibid.
American Gothic by Grant Wood: the most famous American painting. ibid.