Survey the history of art, from antiquity to the present, on a global scale. Programs reveal the role art and creative imagination have played in forging humanity, and introduce viewers to works of beauty, ingenuity and illumination across cultures.
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Civilizations
What Is Art Good For?
Civilizations
The Cult of Progress
Civilizations
Color and Light
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0:30
Civilizations
Teaser Trailer
Clip
2:20
Civilizations
Mondrian's New Visual Language
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1:43
Civilizations
The Multitudes of the Displaced
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Full Episodes
Episode
53:06
Civilizations
What Is Art (Good for)?
Explore art in the age of revolution, war and profound scientific change and consider the question: Should art create a separate realm, a place of escape, or should it plunge into the chaos, transforming the way we see and live in the world?
Season 1
Episode 109
Episode
53:34
Civilizations
The Cult of Progress
Examine the rise and fall of "progress" as an ideology, and see how the "civilizing" project that arose from Enlightenment ideas was fraught with contradictions that troubled European artists in different ways.
Season 1
Episode 108
Episode
53:00
Civilizations
Color and Light
Explore the story of light and color in art both in the search for greater realism and spiritual ecstasy.
Season 1
Episode 107
Episode
53:16
Civilizations
Paradise On Earth
Explore one of humanity's deepest artistic urges: the depiction of nature.
Season 1
Episode 106
Episode
53:36
Civilizations
Renaissances
Travel east and west to explore the connections and rivalries between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic empires that experienced their own cultural flowering in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Season 1
Episode 105
Episode
53:46
Civilizations
Encounters
See how advances in seafaring and a thirst for trade and exploration sent human beings around the planet. Distant and disparate cultures met for the first time, and art became the great interface by which civilizations understood each other.
Season 1
Episode 104
Episode
53:16
Civilizations
The Second Moment of Creation
Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in the forging of humanity itself. Images and artifacts found in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and South America testify to the urge to develop civilizations. Liev Schreiber narrates.
Season 1
Episode 101
Episode
53:06
Civilizations
What Is Art Good For?
Explore art in the age of revolution, war and profound scientific change.
Season 1
Episode 9