The Shock of the New

6.0
198058m

The renowned definitive eight part series on the rise and fall of the modern art movement presented by Australian art critic Robert Hughes.

Production

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Trailers & Videos

Thumbnail for video: Robert Hughes & the 'dumb show of modern art' (tailpiece from 'The Shock of the New')

Robert Hughes & the 'dumb show of modern art' (tailpiece from 'The Shock of the New')

Seasons

8 Episodes • Premiered 1980

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 1: The Mechanical Paradise

1. The Mechanical Paradise

The irruption of the machine as a catalyst for the change in the forms and visions of artists in the early twentieth century. Cubism and Futurism as the movement of modern world and embodied in a canvas.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 2: The Powers That Be

2. The Powers That Be

After the WW1 art is not indifferent to the change that the catastrophe had been. A provocative and ironic art, Dadaism was continued by militant leftist artists in Germany. In Russia, the communist revolution attracted modern artists to the fight, believing that they would change society to a fairer world, but they soon saw their utopia failed.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 3: The Landscape of Pleasure

3. The Landscape of Pleasure

Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 4: Trouble in Utopia

4. Trouble in Utopia

The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 5: The Threshold of Liberty

5. The Threshold of Liberty

Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 6: The View from the Edge

6. The View from the Edge

The interior of the mind, the obsessions and the forces that dominate life, form the work of modern artists from van Gogh and Munch, to the American abstract expressionists.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 7: Culture as Nature

7. Culture as Nature

In the mid-twentieth century the symbols of modern culture reflect the power of the media. Advertising, radio and television became the subject of artists. Pop art broke into the scene.

Still image for The Shock of the New season 1 episode 8: The Future That Was

8. The Future That Was

The end of modernity makes Robert Hughes raise the trajectory of art and its surroundings during the twentieth century and doubts about its future and achievements.

Cast

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