From the cabinets of curiosities created in Italy during the 16th century to the prestigious cultural institutions of today, a history of museums that analyzes the social and political changes that have taken place over the centuries.
Exhibition on Screen's latest release celebrates the life and masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch brought together from around the world to his hometown in the Netherlands as a one-off exhibition. With exclusive access to the gallery and the show, this stunning film explores this mysterious, curious, medieval painter who continues to inspire today's creative geniuses. Over 420,000 people flocked to the exhibition to marvel at Bosch's bizarre creations but now, audiences can enjoy a front row seat at Bosch's extraordinary homecoming from the comfort of their own home anywhere in the world. Expert insights from curators and leading cultural critics explore the inspiration behind Bosch's strange and unsettling works. Close-up views of the curiosities allow viewers to appreciate the detail of his paintings like never before. Bosch's legendary altarpieces, which have long been divided among museums, were brought back together for the exhibition and feature in the film.
For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.
The inner world of the great painter Max Ernst is the subject of this film. One of the principal founders of Surrealism, Max Ernst explores the nature of materials and the emotional significance of shapes to combine with his collages and netherworld canvases. The director and Ernst together use the film creatively as a medium to explain the artist's own development.
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is one of the most recognised and reproduced paintings in the world. It is perhaps the most popular poster on student dorm walls from Beijing to Boston. Painted in Vienna around 1908, the evocative image of an unknown embracing couple has captivated viewers with its mystery, sensuality and dazzling materials ever since it was created. But just what lies behind the appeal of the painting – and just who was the artist that created it? Delving into the details of real gold, decorative designs, symbolism and simmering erotica, a close study of the painting takes us to the remarkable turn of the century Vienna when a new world was battling with the old.
Paris, le mystère du palais disparu
M.C. Escher is among the most intriguing of artists. In 1956 he challenged the laws of perspective with his graphic Print Gallery and his uncompleted master-piece quickly became the most puzzling enigma of modern art. Fifty years later, can mathematician Hendrik Lenstra complete it? Should he?
An account of the life and work of Swiss painter, sculptor, architect and designer H. R. Giger (1940-2014), tormented father of creatures as fearsome as they are fascinating, inhabitants of nightmarish biomechanical worlds.
A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.
Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.
A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.
Every fall, The Center for Cartoon Studies invites 20 aspiring cartoonists to White River Junction, Vermont for a no-holds-barred education in comics. Those who complete the two-year program earn a Master of Fine Arts degree and are ready to face the hardship of a career in one of the world's most drudgery-inducing art forms. This is their story.
Palazzo Vecchio: a history of art and power. Directed by Piero Messina, through a clever movement of the narration between past and present, makes a real journey into the beauty of an ancient place that still retains its undisputed charm.
For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.
Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.
In November 15, 2017, the painting Salvator Mundi, attributed to Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), was sold for an unprecedented $450 million. An examination of the dirty secrets of the art world and the surprising story of how a work of art is capable of upsetting both personal and geopolitical interests.
We go behind the scenes and into the minds of artists as they capture, commemorate, and, at times, condemn our presidents.
Already a successful portrait photographer, Hannah sets to reinvent this art form. Abandoning herself to a creative process that might easily be mistaken for madness, she's soon visited by mirror images of herself, as well as her daughter's ghost. Inspired by the life of photographer Hannah Maynard (1834-1918).
Black Is the Color highlights key moments in the history of Black visual art, from Edmonds Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context, setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era, while contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.
The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.