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.
Bauer: he had Guggenheim cash coming out of his ears. ibid.
Junkyard textures and industrial forms. ibid.
David Smith: making art of exceptional delicacy out of things he’d found at the side of a road. ibid.
Sean Greenhouse was once a prolific forger, from ancient carvings to modern paintings, there was nothing he couldn’t make. But a spell in prison convinced him to renounce his past. So he’s teamed up with Oxford historian Dr Janina Ramirez to rediscover the secrets of the ancients, and to try and match their skills … My job is to keep tabs on them. Waldemar Januszczak et al, Handmade in Bolton, BBC 2019
Art is full of mysteries. And mysteries need solving. This is Van Gogh’s famous Self Portrait, a self-portrait with bandaged ear at the Courtauld Gallery in London. It’s famous because Van Gogh’s ear is so famous. Everyone knows the story of him cutting it off with a razor. And this picture painted soon after in 1889 commemorates that tragedy. The Art Mysteries with Waldemar Januszczak: Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, BBC 2020
It’s a picture full of mysteries: why does this easel look like a cross? Why is the bandage so prominent? And what’s this Japanese print doing here at the back? … And the biggest mystery of all, why did he cut off his ear in the first place? ibid.
It’s a hidden crucifixion; the easel at the back is his cross; and where Christ had his loincloth, Van Gogh has this grubby bandage that covers his wounds. ibid.
Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte: ever since it was painted in 1886 La Grande Jatte has fascinated people. It shows a parade of fashionable weekenders strolling along a riverbank in Paris. And everybody here is made entirely of dots. It’s one of the 19th century’s best known pictures and one of the most mysterious. The Art Mysteries with Waldemar Januszczak II: Seurat’s Island of La Grande Jatte & Les Poseuses
Les Poseuses: Why here in the corner Seurat has added La Grande Jatte. Why is it here? What’s it trying to say? Why are we getting two masterpieces at once? ibid.
The Bathers was also a picture with an important social message, a message aimed at Paris, the modern world. Look at all these factory chimneys belching smoke to the sky. ibid.
Between 1520 and 1590 a new movement appeared in art. It produced art that was strange, wild and inventive. And it filled the world with wonders. Waldemar Januszczak, Art’s Wildest Movement: Mannerisms I: Goodbye Renaissance, Sky Arts 2024
That’s The Madonna of the Long Neck by Parmigianino. It’s his most famous painting, painted in around 1535. As you can see, it’s very unusual. For a start the Madonna is absurdly tall. ibid.
This gangly boy is old enough to be playing teenage football. ibid.
That’s what you get from Mannerism: Disruption, Adventure, Excitement. ibid.
We’re talking about a movement that changed everything. ibid.
Before it, we definitely have the Renaissance … Later, starting in about 1590, 1600, we have the Baroque age … art went dark on us. ibid.
What it always did was break the rules. ibid.
For 80 years art went on a bender. ibid.
High above the Vatican, lost in a world of his own, Michelangelo unleashed a new palette on art. Colours so active and bright they make your eyes pop. ibid.
Pontormo’s Visitation in the church of Santi Michele e Francesco in Carmignano. One of the true masterpieces of Mannerism. ibid.
Mannerism loved transformations. ibid.
Saint Sebastian: Here he is painted by Dosso Dossi. ibid.
Tall Pete specialised in these deceptive market scenes. ibid.
Sex is all Vincenzo Campi seemed to think about. ibid.
Michelangelo: Mannerist architecture broke every rule going. ibid.
He opened the doors to a wonderful craziness. ibid.
Mannerism, brilliantly inventive movement that it was, liked to keep you on your toes. So you never know what’s coming next. It’s a movement full of surprises. It liked to travel as well popping up unexpectedly everywhere. Waldemar Januszczak, Art’s Wildest Movement: Mannerisms II: The Crazy Age
To top is all Giulio Romano’s masterpiece. One of Mannerism’s greatest achievements. The Hall of the Giants. It’s insane, isn’t it? ibid.
3-D cinema is being invented 500 years early. ibid.
The Mannerism revolution did everything differently. ibid.
The Renaissance didn’t do women artists. But Mannerism did. Three words: Properzia de Rossi. ibid.
And it was Properzia de Rossi who showed them the way. ibid.
Welcome to Bomarzo. A Mannerist garden near Rome. Also known as the Park of the Monsters. ibid.
They invented wacky water games to play. ibid.
Grottoes sprang up everywhere … I can’t forget those prehistoric caves. ibid.
Mannerist portraiture was excitingly different from what went before. ibid.
1530: [Antonio da] Corregio’s dome is both magnificent and confusing. ibid.
Corregio has created the powerful illusion that we are looking up at a hole in the roof through which we can see the heavens. ibid.
Parmigianino: His real name was Francesco Mazzola … a child prodigy. ibid.
Parmigianino’s paintings of women are notoriously spooky. ibid.
Male artists dramatising themselves as well. ibid.
That building behind me is one of his. So it has to be Andrea Palladio … how brilliant and revolutionary he was. ibid.
This strange and exciting Mannerist – Guiseppe Arcimboldo. Waldemar Januszczak, Art’s Wildest Movement: Mannerisms III: The Great Escape
The art grew wilder and wilder. ibid.
In the Mannerist Prague of Rudolf II Mannerist art went completely off the rails. ibid.
Mannerism went international and spread across Europe. ibid.
The strange Mannerist genius from Florence, Rosso Fiorentino. ibid.
Mannerism was besotted with the female nude. ibid.
Matthias Grunewald: The Isenheim Altar. ibid.
El Greco: Teledo ... One of the first landscapes in Western art without any figures in it. ibid.
He started out as an icon painter. ibid.
El Greco’s momentous: The Opening of the Fifthth Seal. ibid.
Rudolf assembled the largest collection of Mannerist art ever assembled. He was insatiable. ibid.