This is a world of greed that Cole saw eating away at the heart of America. ibid.
Cole called the penultimate picture Destruction. ibid.
Eleven southern states formed the Confederacy ... It was the new medium of photography that produced the most compelling images of the Civil War. ibid.
[William Henry] Jackson’s photographs and [Thomas] Moran’s watercolours had an entirely unexpected outcome. Congressmen in Washington were so impressed by the spectacular images that they passed a bill designated the Yellowstone region, America’s first national park. ibid.
They abandoned their home city of Philadelphia and came to New York not just to live but to make the city the subject of their art ... They became known as The Ashcan School. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America II
John Sloan tended toward sentimentality in his slices of life. ibid.
A brutal image of what [George] Bellows saw as a brutalised society. ibid.
Sullivan described the skyscraper as the perfect emblem of the proud upwardly aspiring spirit of American man. ibid.
International Exhibition of Modern Art: Association of American painters and sculptors 69th Infantry Regiment Armory New York City February 15th to March 15th 1913. ibid.
This is Voice of the City of New York Interpreted painted by Joseph Stella in the 1920s. ibid.
In American Landscape [Charles Sheeler] from 1930 a huge factory dominates the scene. ibid.
This celebrated painting by Grant Wood: American Gothic. ibid.
For more than forty years [Norman] Rockwell’s pictures were an almost weekly feature of life in the United States. ibid.
But in the paintings of Rockwell’s contemporary Edward Hopper, those unsettling undercurrents are brought to the surface – what’s wrong with America is what his art is about. ibid.
Hopper’s most cinematic painting and his most famous is Night Hawks painted in 1942. ibid.
He captures this oceanic emptiness of modern American existence. ibid.
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian immigrant with a passion for modern European art ... Gorky was a considerable artist in his own right though perhaps not a genius. Though he was the catalyst for a seismic shift in American art. ibid.
Meet the abstract expressionists: these were the people who responded to Gorky’s challenge. ibid.
Barnett Newman was one of the high priests of the movement. ibid.
No-one pulvarised the world of physical appearances more thoroughly than Jackson Pollock. ibid.
If ever a studio felt like an arena this is it. ibid.
What he’s trying to do throughout is actually eliminate any suggestion of representational form. ibid.
The feat of selling out also preyed on the mind of Pollock’s friend and contemporary Mark Rothko. In 1958 he was offered a lucrative commission in Manhattan’s most talked about new skyscraper ... the Four Seasons Restaurant. ibid.
They are made of pure colour laid in translucent layers and fields. ibid.
Once you’ve got Rothko on your mind you can find his spirit or at least find yourself seeing with his abstract eyes almost everywhere you go. ibid.
The Rothko Chapel... What kind of religious space is hard to say ... It’s almost like a hall of mirrors. ibid.
Las Vegas: it isn’t just a city, it’s the world’s largest, brightest, brashest neon work of art. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America III: What Lies Beneath
In 1954 small-town southern boy Jasper Johns settled in New York City and began to paint the ultimate symbol of Americanness – the Stars and Stripes. ibid.
By the early sixties a new generation of artists was confronting the strangeness of consumer society. ibid.
Those who followed called themselves pop artists. ibid.
Claes Oldenburg made supersized floppily repulsive hamburgers out of stuffed cloth. ibid.
James Rosenquist created vast canvases of collage images. ibid.
The one pop artist whose work seemed to embrace consumerism was Andy Warhol ... An art of numb repetition. ibid.
It’s variety but it’s also a trap ... This is your world, America. ibid.
Richard Diebenkorn saw the city’s [Los Angeles] bright planes of colour. ibid.
The minimalists ... What the minimalists hated about pop art was its apparent celebration of the bright, gaudy tacky packaging in which American consumerism wrapped itself. ibid.
Equivalent V – Carl Andre. ibid.
In 1963 artist Dan Flavin began creating sculptures using nothing but that ubiquitous modern lighting unit – the fluorescent tube. ibid.
Untitled: Keith Haring: art became a means of exploring those newly formed identities. ibid.
Anyone could make it ... The artist who most perfectly captured that idea was Jeff Koons ... His work has since commanded some of the highest prices of any living artist. ibid.
Brooklyn – home to a hive of younger artists’ studios. ibid.
Jackson is one of several artists in America today who seem to exude anxiety through their work. ibid.
American artists have played a vital part in shaping the American sense of nationhood. ibid.
What does the future hold? ibid.
Welcome to the Low Countries ... An enormous tangible influence on the whole course of western civilisation. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries I: Dream of Plenty, BBC 2014
It’s the art of an Atlantis in reverse. ibid.
Created a sophisticated society from almost nothing ... a great flourishing civilisation. ibid.
Tapestry was number one luxury item. ibid.
[Jan] Van Eyck did in effect invent oil painting. ibid.
Hieronymus Bosch: the Garden of Earthly Delights c. 1500. ibid.
Bruegel’s work was popular ... warmth and empathy to these people. ibid
Peter Paul Rubens: The supreme master of a new bold style – the Baroque. ibid.
The Netherlands: The Golden Age – this tiny country boasted the most powerful empire on Earth. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries II: Boom and Bust
The first truly free art market. ibid.
The cycle of boom and bust would be repeated throughout Holland during the Golden Age. ibid.
A furious anti-Spanish backlash that began in the 1560s: The Iconoclastic Fury. ibid.
An art dedicated to the depiction of daily life ... It’s first great star was an artist called Frans Hals. ibid.
Landscape was one of the great subjects of Dutch art. ibid.
Rembrandt: he painted more self-portraits than any previous artist. ibid.
Vermeer who most memorably more hauntingly depicted the interior spaces of the Dutch household. ibid.
Dutch art would be dominated by two towering figures. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries III: Daydreams and Nightmares
You can see Van Gogh’s faith in Nature as a religion. ibid.
A work that is so dark, so murky: The Potato Eaters. ibid.
Piet Mondrian: Mondrian moves closer to grid-form abstraction. ibid.
Mondrian took his dreams elsewhere: New York. ibid.
Magritte seems to place us on the threshold of another world. ibid.