Civilisation is what we do to not just be our basic appetite-driven selves. It’s the higher realm. It’s people talking to each other through the objects and monuments they leave for future generations. Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation II: Feelings
David and Goya depict the new startling world of human emotion … Their art is our witness. ibid.
Reason leads to basic laws and premises about the world works; from that we can get batter and more just humane society. ibid.
Before Giotto the heavenly beings of religious art had been flat symbolic beings for a thousand years. With Giotta they’re rounded, they’re physical, they have human life. ibid.
See David’s mind whirring: Renaissance opened a door for him to appreciate the art of the ancient past. This noble way of life he thinks is an attack on the corruption of life now … David takes Renaissance space and makes it menacing. ibid.
Goya descends into the subterranean depths [of the soul]. Goya in the 1790s is the moment when the artist doesn’t just paint what he’s told, he also paints his imagination: the unasked for, the uncomfortable, the unwanted. ibid.
He is an art guru: John Ruskin. His life’s work is about the power of art to save our souls. Ruskin was a great battling critical mind. He taught Victorians to see clear, and through that to understand what they could be, they were better than themselves. Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation III: Save Our Souls
The redeeming power of art. Art is not just a distraction from the gruelling trip of life, it is life. ibid.
Ruskin is the prophet of why art matters. ibid.
The man who fires up Ruskin to become the guru of the age is the great landscape painter J M W Turner. Turner paints nature … the emotion of that experience. ibid.
Ruskin is the guy who comes up with the idea of a bad Renaissance instead of a good one. ibid.
Pre-Raphaelites: These artists present Ruskin’s revolutionary social ideas in the form of metaphors – nature is the main one … The Pre-Raphaelites all read Ruskin’s books and adored the idea that reality is changing in ways that seem inhumane. ibid.
With Morris’s stuff there’s a direct connection between the maker and the object. It’s all about the simplest, most direct thing. ibid.
Modern art in a museum: our version of the Delphic oracle. How can we know ourselves with this? Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation IV: Uncertainty
The burning issue for us is uncertainty. ibid.
Hitler’s Degenerate Art show highlights in a peculiarly horrific bizarre and sick way something that’s been there all along with modern a art - its deliberate outsidedness, its refusal to be normal. ibid.
Guernica had become the icon of modern art’s goodness. ibid.
Why a painting by Willem de Kooning looks like a de Kooning is because of the way it’s done: that fantastically battered impacted look is achieved by constantly working at it. ibid.
The abstract expressionists were profoundly disillusioned with modern society. ibid.
That song was All You Need is Love … We were swept up by the sense of hope that love was all you needed. The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e1: All You Need is Love, National Geographic 2017
Is it really naive to think that love can change the world? ibid.
Human society may not have made it without this kind of love … It’s the basic glue that hold mankind together. ibid.
Mississippi: This state was segregated: it was Us and Them. Jim Crow may be long behind us but the state is still separate, still divided … Is this tribalism part of human nature? The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e2: Us and Them
Leaders have come into power who promise division, not unity. ibid.
Nationalism is on the rise. ibid.
Freedom. You say America and it’s probably the next word that comes to mind. It’s our fundamental right to live our lives however we want. But freedom isn’t something we’ve always had. The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e3: The March of Freedom
Around the world there is a growing tide of freedom. ibid.
It never occurred to me that the rights to freedom spelled out in the Declaration of Independence were deliberately phrased to exclude slaves and women. ibid.
They believed the wars they fought were necessary and just. The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e4: The Fight for Peace
Drones might be the biggest distrupters yet making war possible at merely the push of a button. ibid.
Northern Ireland isn’t alone in equating the separation of warring sides with peace. ibid.
We are only here because of good luck not good management. ibid.
Sometimes we disagree with the person at the top … Does society work best when organised around a strong leader? Or is there another better way? What makes a good leader? The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e5: The Power of Us
Any society that stops people from being who they truly are is bound to fall. ibid.
Lobbying, greed and corruption strip voters of their power. (Civilisation & Humanity & Leader & Society) ibid.
These rebels changed the world. But countless others failed. What makes a rebellion succeed? Why do rebellions start? How do rebel movements spread? And what makes the rebels’ spirit ignite a revolution? The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman s1e6: The Spirit of Rebellion
Hackers are a new form of rebel. ibid.
Real rebellion is a marathon. ibid.
I’ve always felt at home in the past. For after all what is the present except an endless chain of memories? Some of them are translated into stone. We are all the inheritors of those memories. And we look after them as best we can. All this so we can pass on their revelation to the future. Simon Schama, Civilisations I: Second Moment of Creation, BBC 2018
The significance of Palmyra was at once both local and universal. ibid.
We know what civilisation is: we know it from the shock of its imminent loss as a mutilation on the body of our humanity. ibid.
We are the art-making animal. ibid.
When did it begin that second moment of creation, the dawning of human creativity? Where did it begin? ibid.
Europe’s first great civilisation: the culture of the Minoans … This is the first truly social art the world had seen. ibid.
The Nabataeans had what you might call an instinct for cultural ecology; they worked with the rock in their desert home … This is Petra. ibid.
A garden city of fountains, swimming pools, groves and orchards … A city of 30,000 people … A cosmopolitan playground. ibid.
Mayan art and architecture was a prayer – an appeal to the weather … But Mayan art wasn’t all enormous and formal – far from it – it was hugely varied. One of the most spectacular flourishing of creativity in human history. ibid.
All civilisations want what they can’t have – the conquest of time. ibid.
Tabasco State, Mexico: There are many places where you can come face to face with the ancient world. But I have to say this is hard to beat. This colossal stone head is almost 3,000 years old. Mary Beard, Civilisations II: How Do We Look, BBC 2018
When civilisations first made art they made it about us. ibid.
One of the most distinctive things about the Athenian culture was an intense focus on a youthful athletic body. ibid.
Terracotta Army: The biggest tableau of sculpture made anywhere in the planet ever. ibid.
This is the figure of Ramesses II who ruled Egypt around 1200 B.C. He was the pharaoh who invested more in his image than any other. His figure is found all over Egypt. ibid.
The Boxer: The body beautiful was not so very far from the body brutalised. ibid.
A barometer of civilisation itself. ibid.
When your world is collapsing, when everything is closing in, what you want is to be somewhere else, somewhere you can breathe in peace, a scrap of beauty far from the noise and the ugliness. But if there is no escape then you get there in your dreams and you paint that landscape into existence. Simon Schama, Civilisations III: Picturing Paradise
Landscape art has always been an antidote to the anarchy brought by the hand of man. ibid.