The title of this opening episode of "Civilizations" refers to what commentator Simon Schama refers to as "the cognitive revolution" that resulted in the earliest forms of art in world culture.
The program is an eclectic survey of examples of ancient art that reflected the various civilizations. A weakness of the program is the inability to link art works throughout the world with overarching themes or the aesthetic sensibilities they share in common. Each culture was presented in a vacuum without observing the obvious human elements that were part of the collective unconscious of early humankind.
We proceeded from Africa to the Middle East to Greece to Europe to China and to the Americas with examples of emerging art forms. The most memorable example was a tiny female figured called "La Dame de Brassempouy" from the Upper Paleolithic Age that was discovered in France in 1892. This segment was memorable because of Schama's analysis of the work as "the revolution of the human face" and "the dawn of the idea of beauty."
But all too often, the commentaries of the art works were pedestrian, lacking the wit and wisdom of Kenneth Clark in the landmark series "Civilization" (in the singular) in the early 1969.
Next Time: The Art of the Body
The program is an eclectic survey of examples of ancient art that reflected the various civilizations. A weakness of the program is the inability to link art works throughout the world with overarching themes or the aesthetic sensibilities they share in common. Each culture was presented in a vacuum without observing the obvious human elements that were part of the collective unconscious of early humankind.
We proceeded from Africa to the Middle East to Greece to Europe to China and to the Americas with examples of emerging art forms. The most memorable example was a tiny female figured called "La Dame de Brassempouy" from the Upper Paleolithic Age that was discovered in France in 1892. This segment was memorable because of Schama's analysis of the work as "the revolution of the human face" and "the dawn of the idea of beauty."
But all too often, the commentaries of the art works were pedestrian, lacking the wit and wisdom of Kenneth Clark in the landmark series "Civilization" (in the singular) in the early 1969.
Next Time: The Art of the Body
