The Black Paintings seem to me to be an endgame for Goya, not just in his own life and career in his 70s, but also his feeling about an endgame for art, the art that aspired through beauty to ennoble the spirit of civilization.
Shock at his own monstrousness, Francisco de Goya,1820-1823
One of the most terrifying of all these paintings, perhaps the most famous one, shows Saturn devouring one of his children. That’s what it’s come to. The huge tradition of classical mythology reduced to a mad, antic, capering monster, chewing on the stump of a small body, but look at that body. Not a child at all. It’s the body miniaturized of a female nude. Two millennia of looking at the nude, of seeing it as a symbol of art’s perfection is reduced to this horrifying image of sadistic cruelty.
Fight with Cudgels, or Fight to Death with Clubs, Francisco de Goya, 1820-1823
In one of the paintings, he puts the lights back on. We’re able to see something, but what is it we’re seeing? The light is given to us to reveal another kind of horror. These two huge peasant-like figures beating the living daylights out of each other. Blood is streaming down the head of one of them, even as they sink deeper and deeper into a kind of sandy quagmire. This is what Spain has become. Endless, relentless, mutual slaughter.
Now, all these monsters and horrors and demons and dragons of course had appeared all over European art before, but where had they appeared? They’d appeared in images of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse, and they were always balanced by a sense of the optimism of salvation. But Goya has come to the conclusion that God is absent without leave and there is one painting, which in a sense is least likely to have the horrifying pessimistic eloquence, but it does.
There are no figures, there’s just a dog, a mutt. But for this dog, the master is gone, dead, slaughtered, missing. He’s no longer going to be fed. He’s simply faced with drowning inside this formless brown vacuum. It’s all come down to this, then. A dog without a master. Spain without its god. Humanity absolutely without civilization.
E01 Second Moment of Creation
4’53’’
We can spend a lot of time debating what civilization is or isn’t, but when it’s opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilization is; we know it from the shock of its imminent loss as a mutilation on the body of our humanity.
16’58’’
With this exquisite, intensively carved female head, we have for the first time, something immensely and movingly momentous. We have the revelation of the human face. It’s a tiny thing, it can just go in the palm of your hand and it could have only been made by an extraordinary array of dexterous skills.
39’36’’
Ultimately, all civilizations want exactly what they can’t have: the conquest of time. So they build bigger, higher and grander as if they could build their way out of mortality, and it never works.
There always comes a moment where the most populous of cities with their markets and temples and palaces and funeral tombs are simply abandoned. And that most indefatigable leveller of all, mother nature, closes in, covering the place with desert sand, or strangling it with vegetation. And then, civilization dies the death of deaths, invisibility.
E02 How do we look?
25'41"
The one thing you really get here is that size matters. These vast monumental figures, perhaps four or five times life size and with that nice hint that they’d been even bigger if they bothered to stand up for you, simply dominate. They take over your field of vision. It’s an assertion of the power of the pharaoh through his huge, superhuman, enthroned body.
33’31”
If early Athenian pottery reflects how man and women were expected to live within the social context of the city, its statues attempt to embody the interior life within.
The beginning of the fifth century BCE saw an amazing transformation in Greek sculpture. Rigid figures with the fixed gaze of phrasikleia give way to daring new experiments in the human form. One of the first of these is known as the Kritios boy, and he would transform how we see the sculpted human body.
The Kritios boy show us that you can signal anteriority through the person’s movement, through their stance. But particularly, if you lose the archaic smile, and you have an expression which isn’t necessarily blank, that immediately invites you, the spectator, to psychologise it. So with that one step, the statue acquires not just a body that is an organism rather than a mechanism, but also what we would probably call, a soul.
41’57’’
“This was quite simply the most sublime statue of antiquity to have escaped destruction. An eternal springtide, clothes the alluring virility of his mature years with a pleasing youth and plays with soft tenderness upon the lofty structure of his limbs."
49’46’’
We still have a lot of really unexamined assumptions about what constitutes a beautiful or desirable body. We have a lot of unexamined assumptions about what constitutes an attractive, or aesthetically appealing way to look. And you have only to open up the pages of a women’s magazine, as people are commonly pointing out, to see how incredibly narrow the space is in a certain kind of western aesthetic consciousness, for what a woman can look like. Similar kinds of things can be applied to men as well.
Reinforced by commercial interests, the cult of youth and beauty begun by the ancient Greeks, is perhaps more powerful than ever today.
What makes Li Cheng’s painting a masterpiece, is that it literally rises above royal propaganda.
As our eye ascends through the painting, so our whole approach to it also ascends to a higher order of question. And Li Cheng has changed the wash of the ink. It’s lighter, finer, more ethereal. It suggests deep distance. But depths of our own response as well as physical depths. What is nature? What lies beyond surface appearance? What truly moves the universe? And how above all, does the dialogue between flowing water and the adamant face of that eroded rock, bring us harmony?
18’56’’
But renaissance humanism took a different attitude to the serpent of temptation.
This is Villa Barbaro. … A place where renaissance ideals of culture and sophistication could meet the earthy pleasures of the country. A building of harmony, grace and pleasure, where it would be forever summer.
Leonardo Da Vinci wrote something fascinating. He says, “one of the values of painting is it can show you the beauty of nature and perhaps your lover in nature, in the middle of winter.” When you’re stuck inside, you’re stuck indoors, but you can remember what the meadows and what lovely picnics were like last summer by looking at a painting of it.
If you extend that into a kind of a theory of landscape art, you might say that the first way that people express the desire to escape into landscape is by actually creating escapist worlds.
Bruegel painted these compendious, visually inexhaustible masterpieces after the longest, bleakest, coldest Flemish winter anyone could remember. Let’s just think for a minute the way in which Bruegel makes us look at these pictures. On the one hand, they are an invitation into a wealth of detail, wherever our eye travels, it picks out these lovely minutiae of work and play. The skaters gliding across the ice. Our eye travels from one kind of landscape, a village huddled on the hill, to a completely different one. A frozen mountain or a storm tossed estuary out to the broad open sea. But there are moments as well when the pure compositional muscle that Bruegel can command makes everything come together in one great universal vision. It makes us stop. It makes us have a moment of contemplation. And then If we’re very, very lucky, like these wonderful paintings, it all seems to add up. A whole of the human condition and our special little place within it.
40’30”
There were a few kind of particular characteristics that marked out the American approach to the landscape. One of those was a sense of inferiority and competition with Europe that Americans in the 18thcentury and the early 19thcentury, were the poor country cousins. And they were on the outermost fringe of an European world in which they had been taught that Rome is the centre of all art, that the best landscapes, the tallest mountains are to be found in Switzerland. And here are Americans, on the threshold really of their own great continent, which they are beginning increasingly to move west across, trying to say, “wait, you know what, we have really high mountains also. And we have really big animals that we can celebrate in the same terms you guys are using but with our characters instead.” And I think that was out of inferiority in a funny sense, that a kind of American pride in the American landscape was born.
43’21”
More and more (Ansel) Adam’s photographs became preachy. But those vision sermons were radiant, mystical, ecstatic. They were passionate statements about how humanity could be redeemed through the encounter with nature.
But throughout, he remains steadfast that his job in life is to give visual form to that silken cord, tying together the fate of man with the fate of the earth.
E04 The Eye of Faith
43’49’’
What all of these movements within religions have in common is that they come along saying we have a purer form of faith than the one that is currently being practiced, and if your fundamental goal is purity, then one of the central things you might try to do would be to eliminate opulent aesthetic or potentially sinful representations of things to act as intermediaries, because then maybe you’re just worshipping the object, you’re not actually worshipping the divine. So it makes sense that protestants in the Reformation went into the monasteries and stripped everything out saying “it’s time to get rid of these images.”
51’35’’
We passionately want to rediscover the spiritual in art, we passionately want to discover that kind of power and purpose that religious art has. Whether it’s reinventing Christian art in cathedrals or whether it’s reinventing Islamic art, it’s about wanting to resacralise art, wanting to rediscover that wonderful, almost magical, charismatic purpose that religious art has.
For much of history, art has been religious art. For some, the creative impulse has been the very expression of divinity. For others, a challenge to God’s authority. For those that believe, religious art has always been transformative; yet for everyone, art retains a primal, spiritual feeling, a way to express the mysterious and it speaks to our earliest human drive to touch and define a world beyond our own.
E05 The Triumph of Art
50’49’’
Out there the western hurly burly is getting ready to make terrible mischief to smash its way into the domed heavenly vault, to stick its bloody great brutal boots right into the paradise garden. It’ll make an empire based on machines, money and muskets. Then slowly but surely, the Moghul Empire will disappear entirely inside its courtly refinement, becoming inextricably just a cultural ornament.
After centuries of extraordinary flowering, the eastern Renaissance was transformed by the twin forces of empire and colonialism. The delicate blooms and glowing jewels survived in what Europeans wore on their bodies and how they decorate their homes. While painters were mislabeled as miniaturists, as they were forced at least for a time, to rely on the patronage of their new British rulers. Western art critics increasingly called the artistic beauty of the east decorative, to distinguish it from pictures they put in frames where Europeans consider real art. But it was in the east, that the ancient meaning of ars, craft was preserved in all its splendor and still is. Because here, unlike in the west, the Renaissance wasn’t about the rebirth of classical knowledge. Unlike Europe, the east had never lost touch with its ancient heritage. A rich heritage which it continues to celebrate and share with the world to this day.
What’s regarded as his greatest work, cracked ice, combined everything Okyo knew from both eastern and western traditions.
It’s so subtle, so minimal, a work of art that almost feels like it isn’t there. And everything about it feels ephemeral and frail. It’s painted on paper not canvas as in the west, and great expanses of it are just white blank areas that seem almost untouched by the artist. And yet all of that belies the fact that this is one of the most sophisticated works of cultural synthesis that I know. It shows a sheet of ice, presumably on a lake, and these broken jagged cracks in the ice disappeared into the mist. The effect is three-dimensional space. Now, that is European vanishing point perspective. And yet, this is one of Okyo’s masterworks, just could not be more Japanese, because it’s a philosophical contemplation of two concepts, fundamental to Buddism, imperfection and impermanence. Imperfection because these lines are uncontrolled and irregular; Impermanence because of course the ice will melt. And those two are just as fundamental to Japanese art, as the classical Greek roman ideas of beauty and perfection are to European art.
So this is Okyo incorporating European ideas into his art, but in ways that are in keeping with Japanese philosophy and Japanese tastes.
32’11’’
In this frenzy of trade and wealth, Dutch art also became the object of conspicuous consumption. A modern commercial art market was born, supplying landscapes, still lifes, portraits and scenes from Dutch life to the aspirational new merchant class. What they wanted in their art was not the pomp of monarchy, or the flamboyance of the catholic church, but a new type of realism, one that reflect their protestant desire to portray the world as it truly was, often with warts and all moral lessons.
With art from renaissance, it’s about beauty. Dutch art, it’s not about that, it’s about reality. So you do paint rotten fruits, and you do paint fat ladies that just woke up in their bed. And you do look at dirty dogs in the street. Because it’s about nature in every sense, and not just in the sense that you want it to be, but in the sense it is.
33’22’’
One of the star artists of this golden age of Dutch painting was Vermeer. Jan Vermeer is not an artist known for his epic landscapes. Most of his paintings are famously intimate, set within a neat, ordered, almost claustrophobic world of the Dutch home.
What Jan Vermeer specialized in was the art of everyday life and his world was an interior world. What he captured on canvas were simple fleeting moments. A woman reading a letter is bathed in a delicate light that pours from a side window. But that only serves to emphasize the fact that we are in an enclosed room and the rest of the world is hidden from sight, that it’s somewhere out there. But if you look a little more closely at the details, what you realise is that Vermeer’s seemingly interior domestic space is infused with the globalism of the Dutch golden age.
From the innovative pottery of his hometown of Delft, which mimicked Chinese porcelain, to prized rugs from the orient, and a geographer wearing a fashionable Japanese robe, Vermeer captures a world built on encounters with distant civilizations and peoples.
50’05’’
Hundreds of public buildings built in the British neoclassical tradition would follow. They represented not only a separation of cultures that had before freely intermingled, they also marked the passing of the age of discovery. The world had entered an age of high empire, in which to justify their exploitations and conquests, European powers would willfully overlook the achievements of other civilisations. It was a story that would be repeated around the globe and we are only just emerging from its cultural legacy today.
In a wonderful twist, Richard Wellesley’s government house is used by the government of Bengal. It has been taken back by Indians for their own government. And so we have to unthink some of the inevitability that we tend to ascribe to encounters that ultimately led to European dominance. If you look at the history of European encounters with the non-European world, you find a huge range of ways that they took shape.
And although there is a history that has to be told, a story that is one of imperialism, but a story that is also one of globalization, one of increasing interconnection across different parts of the world that has yielded the world in which we live today.
Our modern world of digital communication has massively broaden the scope of our encounters, both with foreign cultures and civilisations and within the different cultural groupings of our own. And by connecting new audience with traditional artistic practices, the global art market continues to transform new encounters into new kinds of art. From the reemergence of the long overlooked sacred art, like that of North American first nations, the indigenous people of Australia and the carvings of the African Makonde people, to new artists such as Ghanaian born sculptor El Anatsui, who sews together bottle tops into large scale assemblages that comment on consumption, waste and the environment. Today, in our increasingly globalized civilization, the sheer variety of our encounters both foreign and at home continues to be a major source of inspiration, shaping both our art and our world.
中國（儒家山水畫）：木心 （有木心的畫好激動，他自成一派的轉印法作畫--木心美術館 烏鎮）宋 李成 晴巒蕭寺圖 ； 北宋 喬仲常 後赤壁賦（Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art）； 元 王蒙 青卞隱居圖（上海博物館藏）。
伊斯蘭國家：伊斯蘭花園； 花園地毯（The Metropolotan museum of art）。
基督教世界：
意大利： Duomo di Orvieto 教堂浮雕--Lorenzo Maitani；Ambrogio Lorenzetti（ ffetti del Buon Governo in città e in campagna-- Siena：Palazzo Pubblico 錫耶納市政廳）；維吉爾 -- The Georgics 《 農事詩 》 ；Villa Barbaro（ Veneto 避世主義）。
德國：Albrecht Altdorfer -- Laubwald mit dem Heiligen Goerg -- Landscape with a Woodcutter (Kupferstichkabinett Berlin) -- Danube landscape with castel worth（The National Gallery in London ）。。。各種巴伐利亞風景畫
荷蘭： Pieter Bruegel de Oude -- The Hunters in the Snow 雪中獵人+ The Retern of the Herd 放牧歸來+A Gloomy Day.....（Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien）； Esaias van de Velde -- Cattle Ferry（ Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 終於有一個去過的）； Pieter de Molijn -- Landscape with a cottage（The Metropolitan Museum of Art ）； Salomon van Ruysdael -- Landscape with Cornfields （Stockholm Hallwylska museet ）； Jacob van Ruisdael -- A Landscape with a Ruined （The national gallery London）
戰爭影響的藝術風格：
美國：Frederic Edwin Church -- Twilight in the Wilderness （Cleveland Museum of Art Ohio）； Thomas Moran+ Winslow Homer；Albert Bierstadt -- Looking Down Yosemite Valley （ Birmingham Museum of Art ；Yosemite National Park 約瑟米帝國家公園-- Ansel Adams 攝影作品1927）This is our land.
愛護地球，世界和平。
Ep. 4 The eye of faith
柬埔寨：吳哥窟Angkor Wat 高棉王國。
印度：Maharashtra- Ajanta Caves 阿旃陀石窟 2至7世紀的壁畫；德里鐵柱（Quw-watul Islam Mosque）。
意大利：Revenna （Basikica di san Vitale）耶穌三種時期的畫像 浮華的危機？；威尼斯 Scuola Grande di san Rocco ´´藏寶室´´-- 受難 （Tintoretto畫）。
意(梵蒂岡)：Rom St.Peter -- Michelangelo（Bromante），Sistine Chapel -- The Last Judgement 最後的審判。 藝術（Ars）：動手能力。技術工程，構造能力，非凡天賦。Il Divino。Caravaggio（David and Goliath -- Galleria Borghese Rom； Madonna di Loreto -- Basilica di Sant Eustachio in Campo Marzio）；Artemisia Gentileschi 16世紀女畫家 -- Self Portrait（ London Kensington Palace ）
Florence： Benvenuto Cellini 金匠（Leda and the Swan -- Museo Nazionale del Bargello；Saliera -- Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien ）；Donatello （Judith and Holofernes *複製品 -- Piazza Della Signoria）。
巴基斯坦：Lahore Fort
西班牙：Velázquez（Las Meninas宮娥--Museo del Prado Madrid）。
荷蘭：集體畫像：N.Pickenoy -- Civic guardsmen from the company of captain Jacob Backer (Amsterdam Museum); 倫勃朗 -- 夜巡！-- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 控制了混亂，透視法，活力與秩序；模仿細密畫。
印度： Itimad-ud-Daula Moti Bagh, Agra 太美了！！！！
藝術是一場輪迴-
Ep. 6 First contact
非洲：Benin Bronzes（British Museum, London-- 葡萄牙士兵）起源尼日利亞土著傳統藝術 Benin City; Queen mother Idia 尼日利亞首位女王象牙頭像，象征優雅與權力 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)。
葡萄牙：Lisbon里斯本 -- Torre de Belem受非洲雕塑影響；犀牛-- Albrecht Dürer 使用印刷品；未知作者的King s Fountain描繪16世紀葡萄牙出於全球化的中心時場景（Berardo Collection Museum）。
墨西哥: Aztec 阿茲特克文化 殉葬者活人獻祭 日曆石（ Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de México）；兩頭蛇 羽蛇神；金子對歐洲人的誘惑Gold Art；天主教入侵aztec文明，根除當地信仰，摧毀神像，建起天主教堂-- 亡靈節day of dead（結合了天主教的萬聖節）死亡的頭骨Calavera 。
西班牙：16世紀歐洲最富有的國家，侵略性的傳播自己的文化；Toledo -- El Greco- View of Toledo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)； 基督獻祭圖（Santa Lglesia Catrdral Primada de Toledo）。
日本：九州kyushu南海岸； Nanban screens 南蠻屏風 （Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon）描繪16世紀從葡萄牙來的商人；Tokugawas 德川家族 感受到了外來文化對自身文化的威脅，開始驅逐基督教--·閉關鎖國· 封建運動--強調自律的佛家傳統，嚴格遵循茶道禮儀，詩歌，書法；荷蘭人在日本的貿易，同時將歐洲的文化帶入日本--荷蘭鏡藝術家 Maruyama Okyo圓山應舉 葵祭 Aoi Matsuri，Bamboo in wind and rain雨竹風竹圖屏風17世紀（圓光寺收藏，京都），冰圖屏風 cracked ice 缺憾與無常（British Museum, London）。
荷蘭：海外貿易樂此不疲，富人藏有世界珍品；The Avenue at Middelharnis -- Meindert Hobbema（National Gallery, London）;Still life with Gilt cup -- W.C.Heda (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)......; Jan Vermeer足不出戶的畫家，側窗內的世界（Delft）；德裔荷蘭人 Maria Sibylla Merian 女生物學家（昆蟲變態繪畫） 1699年抵達蘇里南研究當地生物種類，是好奇心推動了科技革命。
印度：兩位宮廷畫師：Ghulam Ali Khan+Johan Zoffany 英國東印度公司和莫臥兒王朝
Ep. 7 Radiance
法國：亞眠主教堂 （Cathedrale Notre-Dame d Amiens）哥特式+彩色馬賽克窗；沙特爾主教堂；莫奈花園 (Fondation Claude Monet 浮世繪畫作收藏) -- 乾草堆Les Meules, Rouen Cathedral Series（廬恩主教堂；Musée d’Orsay, Paris; J. Paul Getty Museum......）；梵高 -- Père Tanguy 生命力（Musée Rodin, Paris ）The Harvesters (Metropolitan Museum of Art，New York），Nuit étoilée sur le Rhône隆河上的星夜 雙重三位一體（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；Henri Matisse 伊斯蘭藝術的東西結合，全新的藝術領域 -- Jazz 二戰時期，（The Rosary Chapel, Vence 不同文化的相互融合，和諧共存）。
意大利：Giovanni Belini 貝利尼 神聖的對話1505（San Zaccaria --Venezia）與文藝復興樸素的對立面；提香 A man with a Quilted Sleeve 穿棉襖的男子 約1509, Bacchus and Ariadne 酒神與阿利阿德尼 ( National Gallery, London)。
英國：18世界利用自然的力量生產工作，英格蘭中部最初工業革命開始的地方。一部分人享受著美好的世界，一部人擔心進步帶來的代價。Derbyshire — Joseph Wright of Derby懷特 - Arkwright‘s Cotton Mills （Derby Museum & Art Gallery）, Self Portrait (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), an Experiment on a bird in the Air Pump (National Gallery, London); J.M.W. Turner - Dubley, Worcestershire 工業炙熱的火爐，對舊生活被摧毀的控訴 ( Tate/ Lady Lever Art Gallery).
埃及：Giza-文明發源地，拿破崙進入埃及，對古埃及藝術的迷戀，打著啟蒙運動的名義搞研究：《the Description of Egypt 對埃及的描述》記錄了失落的國度，滿足西方人對這片土地的獵奇。實際上也把歐洲文明強加於埃及，用文字做武器。 西方開始流行東方主義題材，藝術家開始大行創作（杜撰和腦海中的意淫，實際上並沒有見過真正的埃及）描繪阿拉伯家庭的日常生活— Eugène Delacroix - Women of Algiers in their Apartment (Louvre, Paris); Marià Fortuny - The Odalisque (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona); Jean-Léon Gérôme- The Slave Market (Clark Art Institute); Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - The Turkish Bath( Louvre, Paris).
美國： 英國畫家 Thomas Cole - View of Schroon Mountain （Cleveland Museum of Art），The Course of Empire 帝國的歷程（Historical Society， NY）；年輕的美國和原住民；Frederic Edwin Church- Niagara Falls； Harriet Cany Peale- Kaaterskin Clove； George Catlin為當地原住民畫像，See-non-ty-a （National Gallery of Art，Washington D.C）。
法國：銀版攝影法 Louis-Jacques Daguerre拍攝巴黎街道，照片中第一次出現人形； Charles Marville 城市街道建築攝影；Nadar拍攝巴黎名人，攝影改變人的感受。G.E.Haussmann 城市規劃，輻射狀街道網絡型態；印象派 Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Bal du Moulin de la Galette 煎餅磨坊的舞會（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；莫奈 - La Gare Saint-Lazare 聖拉扎爾火車站（Musée d’Orsay, Paris），Un bar aux Folies Bergère女神遊樂廳的吧台 鏡中反射的場景，女神並不快樂，冷漠臉，是商品（Courtauld Institute of Art，London）；法國黃金時代 Berthe Morisot - Summer‘s Day（National Gallery， London）；Gustave Caillebotte - 雨天的巴黎街道 （The Art Institute of Chicago）；Mary Cassatt - In the Loge ‘你在看風景，別人在看妳’（Museum of Fine Arts，Boston）；Edgar Degas 德加 關注被現代社會異化的人們 - L'Absinthe 咖啡館裡 被酒精毀掉的人（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；世博會 欸菲爾鐵塔； Paul Gaugin高更 痛恨資本主義，尋找解脫，尋找天堂 大溪地- Self Portrait，D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? 我們從何處來？我們是誰？我們向何處去？（Museum of Fine Arts, Boston）；
西班牙：20世紀 蠻族工藝品 比加索 面具 - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 亞維儂少女 青樓大戲 非洲藝術 什麼是野蠻？什麼是文明（The Museum of Modern Art，New York）。
德國：第一次世界大戰 歐洲青年都上戰場，Otto Dix 素描紀錄戰爭的泥濘苦難的面孔，戰士=犧牲品；防毒面具野蠻主義 - War Triptych 三聯畫（Gallery of western Bohemia）藝術家詩人預見了未來的恐懼。
日本：Chichu Art Museum，Naoshima Island 地中美術館 直島 藝術島（Tadao Ando 安藤忠雄設計；Soichiro Fututake創立）藏有莫奈：Water-lily Pond；現代作品 -- James Turrell：Afrum Pale Blue，Open Field光纖，空間；Walter de Maria：Time/Timeless/No time 禪意。
荷蘭：Piet Mondrian 蒙德里安 -- Lighthouse in Westkapelle， Dune V (Zeeland的 燈塔和沙灘)； 抽象,符號，視覺語言，再教育（清醒，嚴肅，刻意的藝術--Play） -- Pier and Ocean（Composition No.10）（ Kröller-Müller Museum， Otterlo）；Broadway Boogie-Woogie（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；未完成的-Victory Boogie Woogie+ Composition with Large Red, Yellow, Blue，Grey and Black三原色，純平面，完美的平衡（Gemeentemuseum Den Haag ）冥想過程，四大皆空，治愈世界；William de Kooning -- Abstraction（Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid）個人英雄主義。
美國抽象與POP藝術：Jackson Pollock -- One No. 31 樂隊般的節奏（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+Blue Poles 11（The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra）; Lee Krasner -- Celebration（Cleveland Museum of Art）；Andy Warhol -- Gold Marilyn Monroe + Campbell's Soup Cans（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；Jasper Johns -- Three Flags（Whitney Museum of American Art, New York）；Wayne Thiebaud -- Lipsticks（National Gallery of Art, Washington）；Marcell Duchamp -- Foutain （複製品 Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris）；James Rosenquist -- F-111（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）。胡來，衝擊。
現代藝術家
Kara Walker -- Stone Mountian 石頭山雕像+ The Jubilant Martyrs of Obsolescence adn Ruin 剪影（High Museum of Art）+ African/American（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+ A Subtlety 糖漿做成，黑人奴隸的主題，種族主義 -- 暴力 。怎能袖手旁觀？
德國：Anselm Kiefer 新表現主義 -- 佔領（揭傷疤，召喚記憶）Walhalla炸彈（Regensburg）+ Böse Blumen+ Nigredo 天才和暴徒+ Iron Path+ Arsenal；Caspar D. Friedrich -- Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer（Hamburger Kunsthalle）。
加納： El Anatsui -- Gravity and Grace 瓶蓋壓扁拼接 城市和傳統的拼接。
中國：蔡國強 -- 火藥 轉瞬即逝 烏托邦的夢想 永恆 愉悅和毀滅； 艾 weiwei -- Law of the Journey 生死之間（National Gallery，Prague ）難民議題。
第一集，我第一次听到纪录片大量的提及三星堆文化，讲到了玛雅文明，这是我常听到的，还有几个文明真的是不太了解。看到很多文明遗址的震撼，因为是国外的感触真的比较少。先这样吧????????。 第二集是女性科学家讲的，可能还是由于我外国文明了解太少，观看起来理解困难，也记不太住，总觉得可以和河森堡最新一期的了不起的博物馆的雅典博物馆配合食用比较好，大致还是介绍了墨西哥也就是中美洲的文明以及雅典雕塑作品。真的太美了太厉害了。就公元前三世纪四世纪都能制作出这么精美的雕塑。唯一有印象的还是秦始皇兵马俑，但由于是bbc制作的所以很难在情感上产生共鸣。这个图是别人制作的，相当于第一集的总结。我再接下去看，希望今晚之前能刷完剩下的7集
01 Second Moment of Creation
早期人类艺术
这是早期与动物一同出现在壁画中的人类形象，看起来似乎是在奔跑或者狩猎？很矫健。
毕加索说自己是个现代的原始人，并且模仿原始人壁画的思路画了很多牛，因为欧洲非洲发现的原始壁画中有不少牛。
这是个渔村文明的遗址，城镇由石头砌成，城中的主要道路通向祭祀广场。
这个出场是真的震撼。感觉制作组是真心喜欢三星堆了，片头也把它放在第一个。
佩特拉古城非常壮观。这个地方因贩卖香料而繁荣，古城里融合了希腊、犹太、阿拉伯等等各地人带来的审美特征。
玛雅文明的统治者向人民保证会祈求雨神Chaac每年降雨。金字塔是给雨神祭祀的祭台。当旱灾来临后，玛雅文明就衰落消亡了。
石阶有64级，讲述了科潘王朝的历史。但由于连年旱灾，民众不满，因此这座精美的台阶底下是不牢固的碎石块。石阶最终垮塌，这是修复版。
02 How Do We Look?
人体雕像
这一集的核心观点可以说是：如何审视人类自身，是西方文明的一个重要母题。这使我想起在英国听文学课时，有一堂课专门讲到body，我还惊讶于为何会围绕这样的话题研究。确实，对比其他文明就发现，从希腊发源的西方文明如此崇拜和欣赏人体本身，是其他文明所不能及的。
本集的作者Mary Beard是个很爱从艺术中总结道理的人。她从兵马俑中看出个体与集体的边界问题来，让我有些“角度刁钻”的感受。在我看来，兵马俑还是栩栩如生而且形态各异的，如果非说这个雕塑群像有某些整齐划一的地方，那也可以从雕像身份上很好地理解。毕竟，军队就不会是一个多么有个性的地方。
但Mary在最后也提出了一个反思，西方人看待其他文明的眼光，是不是被西方文明自己给禁锢住了？墨西哥奥尔梅克文物中最出名的那个摔跤手，拥有着希腊雕塑般的协调比例和逼真形态，因此被认为拥有最高的艺术价值。但这只是西方艺术眼光的一家之言罢了。其他文明，尤其是奥尔梅克文明本身，他们是如何看待这个文明的艺术成就的？
话说回中国来。这部2018年的纪录片镜头之中的中国西安，绝不会是中国人自己眼中的西安。画面里的阴暗、逼仄、陈旧，只是印证了西方人对中国的一种印象。这既无助于西方理解兵马俑，也无助于西方理解中国。
埃及底比斯的拉美西斯二世法老像。
观景殿的阿波罗，英国赛昂宫。
这座雕塑确实好看，充满光明和青春。然而我最感兴趣的还是这座赛昂宫。
03 Picturing Paradise
风景画
有什么中国山水画更适合作为风景画的开场呢。能看到山水画的介绍，我是很欣喜的。西蒙的讲解很有感染力——虽然我后来才知道这些藏品都来自国外的私人收藏家，但也毫不逊色于国内知名藏品给我的感受。
西蒙点出了画面中心的寺庙。
意大利巴巴罗别墅Villa Barbaro
绘于美国南北战争之后。倒下的麦子如同战场阵亡的士兵。老兵仍在辛勤劳作，面前是金黄的丰收的田野。
04 The Eye of Faith
宗教艺术
吴哥窟最早是一座印度教寺庙，供奉保护神毗湿奴（Vishnu）。随着佛教在柬埔寨兴起，吴哥窟逐渐成为佛教寺庙。庙山中心五座尖塔象征须弥山。图为最中心的塔尖。吴哥窟是最早的高棉式建筑，也是柬埔寨的象征，被印在国旗上。
意大利Ravenna的San Vitale教堂
教堂顶部有三幅耶稣像，分别是少年时期、代表为人类牺牲的羔羊形象和年长时期的耶稣。
雅科波·丁托列托《耶稣受难》
这幅画有意思的地方，一是它的构图：受难的耶稣在正中，画面两边向上延伸；二是它把三个时间点放在同一空间里，打破了时空限制。
西班牙塞维利亚，Macarena教堂圣母像
土耳其桑卡克拉清真寺。清真寺采用了大胆的后现代设计，去除了一切多余的装饰，只保留最质朴的、虔诚的核心。
土耳其蓝色清真寺。
伊斯兰教不允许为真主或先知画像，也不允许给活物画像，因为只有真主才有这项权利。但是植物花卉可以作为花纹出现在地毯、墙壁上。
真主通过古兰经的经文存在，清真寺穹顶、墙壁、立柱上的古兰经书法就代表了真主。
15世纪西班牙的犹太教圣经。
书中的图画、装饰非常华丽，也体现了当时基督教、犹太教和伊斯兰教在西班牙的融合。
《十诫》第二戒律：不可制造偶像。这一条引发了长久的争议，但在这本圣经中，第二戒律的同一页上就画着两个光屁股的小伙。
作者在圣经最后一页上光荣地署上了自己的大名。
希腊帕特农神庙。最初用于供奉智慧女神雅典娜，后来改为基督教堂，在奥斯曼帝国时期又变为清真寺。
Mary Beard在结尾提到了宗教与“文明”的共性。文明也在试图解释人类的起源与宿命，为人类凝聚共同的信仰。这一个观点让我想到中国人的崇拜——我们不信奉一神教，但却将祭祖的习俗传承了几千年。凝聚中国人的不是神，而是祖先、土地、文化，某种程度上说，这就是文明本身。
05 The Triumph of Art
东方与西方
穹顶是通向神和天堂的通道。基督教与伊斯兰教进行了这样一场“竞赛”，各自建出了极为伟大的教堂。
圣索菲亚大教堂最初是拜占庭帝国的东正教大教堂，后来成为拉丁帝国的天主教大教堂。奥斯曼土耳其帝国占领君士坦丁堡后，将圣索菲亚大教堂改为清真寺，一直保留到现在。
奥斯曼帝国苏丹苏莱曼一世下令建造一座真正为真主而建、胜过圣索菲亚大教堂的清真寺。建筑师米马尔·希南设计出了苏莱曼清真寺，也采用了大穹顶。但在清真寺中，只有四角与墙壁融为一体的大立柱支撑着这个穹顶，再无其他分隔空间的立柱。
在差不多同一时期，文艺复兴中的意大利也建造出了一座开阔、通透的天主教堂。米开朗琪罗在伯拉孟特构想的基础上，设计了圣伯多禄大教堂，支撑教堂穹顶的立柱都在建筑外部。这是当时世界上最高的穹顶，被称为神圣之作。
经历了文艺复兴后的西方绘画越来越多地流露出个人色彩，和对权威的挑战。而被莫卧儿王朝统治的南亚也进入绘画的辉煌时期，阿克巴大帝本人就很喜爱绘画——“有很多人讨厌绘画，但我不喜欢这种人”。莫卧儿时期的细密画反映出很多西方的元素，体现了阿克巴时代前后的文化融合。
贾汉吉尔是阿克巴大帝的儿子，也是继任的皇帝。这幅细密画中，贾汉吉尔位于中心，光芒四射，向衣着朴素的苏菲派谢赫（穆斯林圣人）递了一个礼物。左下方从上至下依次是戴着土耳其头巾、双手合十表示尊敬的奥斯曼苏丹，处于贾汉吉尔脚下、一脸怨恨的英王詹姆斯一世，以及姿态谦卑的画家比奇德尔本人。
拉合尔的拉合尔堡是莫卧儿王朝的代表性建筑之一。这座城堡在莫卧儿王朝之前就存在，但经过阿克巴、贾汉吉尔、沙·贾汗（他建造了泰姬陵）、奥朗则布四个莫卧儿皇帝的修建，城堡融合了印度、伊斯兰、波斯等多样的风格。
拉合尔堡壁画是当时世界上最大的壁画，运用波斯传入的一种马赛克技术绘成。绘画题材丰富，包含欧洲的天使，中国的龙，本土的神话传说。壁画像一本立体的书，是莫卧儿王朝向臣民们敞开的艺术博览会。
同一时期的欧洲画家已经开始在画作中大胆地表现自我了。《宫娥》这幅画是受西班牙国王腓力四世及王后所托而作，然而画面中心站着国王的小女儿，周围拥簇着她的侍女和侏儒，画面左边巨大画布前的委拉斯开兹本人则若有所思地看向观众——国王夫妇被缩小在后面的小小镜子里。
镜子里的国王夫妇，究竟是前方画布的反射，还是突然造访的国王夫妇本人的倒映？
《夜巡》是伦勃朗为荷兰贵族所画的群像。画面中的人物神色各异，形态生动，就好像是用相机定格了一个瞬间，人们在那瞬间的动作都被鲜活地记录下来。
他没有墨守成规，把贵族一字排开，而是将发号施令的贵族放在中心，其他人物在两边排开，用旗帜、枪管和长矛分隔出方向，使画面乱中有序。
伦勃朗本人很喜欢细密画，他自己也经常用细密画的手法和题材作画。他将莫卧儿细密画中的阿克巴和贾汉吉尔画成一对其乐融融的父子，把帝王的威严转变为柔和的亲情。
文艺复兴时期的欧洲与莫卧儿王朝都不乏女性艺术家的作品。
莫卧儿王朝的第一座大理石陵墓位于阿格拉，是贾汉吉尔的皇后努尔·贾汗为她父亲、也是贾汉吉尔的重要谋士设计的陵墓。她的父亲是一名波斯人，因此建筑的装饰风格有很强烈的波斯色彩。陵墓的内外纹饰都精美绝伦，被称为“印度最完美的建筑”。
由此发展出的大理石建筑技术也运用在十年后的泰姬陵上。泰姬陵是沙·贾汗为皇后建造的大理石陵墓，耗时大约二十年，通体都是圣洁的白色，洋葱形状的穹顶美丽非凡。
意大利女画家真蒂莱斯基具有大胆的自我表达的勇气。她的这幅自画像构图很具有突破性——女画家好像要冲出画布，转身打量自己。
自画像遵循了《图像学》中的画家形象。画家的头发是黑色的，并由于艺术的激情而显得有些凌乱；脖子上戴着金链，下端是面具挂饰，象征着临摹或模仿；一手拿着画笔，一手拿着颜料盘。
但唯一不同的地方是，画家本应该蒙住自己的嘴巴，因为绘画是无声的。但曾在十八岁被强奸的真蒂莱斯基没有照做，在男性主导的世界中，她坚持自己发声的权利。
最后，关于莫卧儿建筑：
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/86676014
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/92317145
06 First Contact
文明的冲撞
欧洲殖民者可以算是全球化的第一代先驱了。这个全球化过程有时伴随着文明的融合，更多时候却带来了文明的掠夺和毁灭。
西非的贝宁王国位于现在的尼日利亚境内。贝宁青铜器的精美生动令人赞叹，其技艺一代一代传承至今，但是英国殖民者在19世纪掠夺走的那一批贝宁青铜如今陈列在大英博物馆中，没有再回到家乡。
在16世纪西班牙人到来之前，中美洲的居民是阿兹特克人。阿兹特克文明属于印第安文明，是美洲古代三大文明之一。他们有自己的文字、历法、信仰，还有活人献祭的仪式。
在遭到西班牙人攻击之前，阿兹特克统治者曾试图向这些强盗表现友好或者是安抚，赠送了大量礼物。然而西班牙人对各种金器、雕像的艺术价值不感兴趣，许多金制品被融化为黄金。
西班牙人征服阿兹特克文明后，对其包含活人献祭的信仰进行彻底清洗，把基督教传入中美洲。但是阿兹特克文明还是以另一种形式流传下来。墨西哥人的亡灵节是天主教万圣节与阿兹特克献祭仪式的结合。人们不认为死亡是件令人哀恸的事情，每到亡灵节，他们会在祭坛上摆上死去的亲人的照片，周围放满面包和水果，等待亡灵在午夜回家。
这些文明如何看待外来的欧洲人，也是很有意思的地方。对于16世纪的贝宁王国而言，他们看见的欧洲人，大多是高鼻深眼的水手。
在16世纪，全球化中心非葡萄牙的里斯本莫属。里斯本街头上行走着形形色色的黑人白人。但肤色并不是阶层划分的标志。既有黑人奴隶，也有白人奴隶；甚至还有黑皮肤的上等人。
与非洲、美洲的经历不同，当葡萄牙人来到印度和中国后，发现当地的本土统治和文化十分强盛，没有被掠夺的可能，于是葡萄牙人转而与他们成为贸易伙伴。16世纪，葡萄牙人意外地登上了日本岛，此后他们与日本开展了稳定的贸易关系。
日本人用一种新的艺术形式记录下这些欧洲人，那就是南蛮屏风。他们把这些面貌奇异的外国人成为“南蛮”，因为他们总是从南部登岛，而且卫生习惯和举止行为不太招人喜欢。
欧洲人走到哪，就要把上帝带到哪。欧洲来的传教士在日本发展出近二十五万信众。但在17世纪以后，手段强硬的德川家族统治了日本，基督教被禁止，教徒被屠杀，推崇简朴、克制的禅宗佛教开始兴起。大部分对外通商也被取消，荷兰人是唯一获得贸易许可的欧洲人。
凸透镜由荷兰人传入日本。此后日本流行起一种荷兰镜风景画——用凸透镜观赏用透视法作出的画，画面会更加立体。日本画家圆山应举擅长荷兰镜绘画。他更善于把西洋画与日本的禅宗结合起来。
破裂的冰面向远延伸，消失在浓雾中。画面运用了西洋画的透视法，但又完美地表达了佛教思想中的缺憾和无常。
17世纪的荷兰则依靠贸易和殖民进入了黄金时代。荷兰画家维米尔一生都待在代尔夫特，画作大多在室内取景，但也丝毫不难窥见当时荷兰的全球化程度。在荷兰人的室内陈设中，不乏高档的中东地毯，精美的中国瓷器，美洲的海狸皮帽子等等。
这一集的镜头总是对准“水”。水既是文明之源，也是文明交流的通道之一。当然文明交流的渠道有很多，曾经有丝绸之路，现在有飞机和互联网。16-17世纪的艺术碰撞达到了前所未有的地理跨度，尽管过程是缓慢、渐进的，且充斥着流血与抵抗。一方面是用本土艺术来刻画外来的“他者”，另一方面是将外来的文化与本土的文化杂糅在一起，创造出新的艺术风格和形式。
正好看见一个讨论帖，楼主认为《文明》中介绍的内容几乎都不属于主流艺术史。其实这正是它的价值所在。文明与历史大浪淘沙，这个过程中有许多“他者”被主流忽视。况且主流也分地域。被某一个框架中的“主流”限制住目光，往往会走向偏见与狭隘。去凝视“主流”以外的文明，试着从那些不同的角度回望“主流”，正是一个观察人类文明的宝贵角度。
07 Radiance
色彩与光辉
威尼斯画派：在商业繁华的威尼斯，人们喜爱色彩艳丽的装饰品与艺术品，并不以此为俗气。
这幅画充满动感与情欲，天空和阿里阿德涅的衣服呈现出透亮的宝石一般的蓝色，与之形成强烈对比的是巴克斯和阿里阿德涅身上的红色服装，还有右下角棕色人群的扭动狂欢。
巴洛克式宫殿往往追求肃穆的古典主义风格，但德国一位采邑主教的巴洛克宫殿内，威尼斯画派的流光溢彩造就了有史以来最大的天花板壁画。
最先映入眼帘的是金光万丈的太阳神。
但壁画真正的主角是四周这些千姿百态的人。
而宫殿的主人——采邑大主教，被放在一个小小的画框里。
所以说，壁画不仅有鲜亮的色彩，还有鲜活的世俗气息。
印度侯丽节。
侯丽节时，人们互相泼洒颜料，嬉戏打闹，庆祝春天到来。相传是毗湿奴的忠实信奉者钵罗诃罗陀在被女妖侯丽卡火烧时，受到毗湿奴庇护，劫后余生，人们向他泼洒五颜六色的颜料，以示庆祝。
布拉奇《绝对的三个方面》（1823），印度。（Bulaki, Three Aspects of the Absolute）
虚无（金箔）→大成就者（Mahasiddha）的意识正在觉醒，手里拈着一朵花，寓意世界含苞待放→世界初步形成（金银相错）
西班牙画家戈雅的两幅有关圣伊西德罗节的油画。
前一幅色彩明快，人物欢欣自在。后一幅作于拿破仑入侵西班牙之后，画面里充满绝望和死亡的气息。画中的人们似乎都在无声地嚎叫，脸上是疯狂扭曲的神色。（或许与戈雅变聋有关。）戈雅在经历了战争的血腥和生灵涂炭的绝望之后，绘画风格转变为阴沉、恐怖。
日本浮世绘。最初是描绘市井生活和娱乐风月场所的木版画，主题多是歌舞伎或妓女，还有春宫图。颜色鲜艳，线条很有表现力。
后来浮世绘逐渐发展成为风景画。西蒙认为，这是西方现代绘画的灵感之源，浮世绘将自然风景转化为一种图案设计。
西蒙给这幅画作的评价相当高：凡人绘画的巅峰。画作是浮世绘的典型蓝白配色，蓝色的海水，白色的浪花。一人站在岩石之巅，奋力拉着绳索，表现出一种勇士的孤独。远处是日本的守护神：富士山。
印象派与浮世绘。
葛饰北斋的《富岳三十六景》系列，就包括了不同季节、不同颜色的富士山。显然这是莫奈绘制28幅鲁昂大教堂的灵感来源——莫奈很喜爱浮世绘，他收藏了231幅，挂满了家中的墙壁。
浮世绘给印象派画家的启示有：不再执着于阴影，而是专注于颜色、光线本身；构图不再拘泥于透视法，更大胆地重构前景与后景的关系；用拥挤的人潮来表现城市或市郊的繁华。
梵高《隆河上的星夜》。
梵高也深受日本版画的影响，他比莫奈等印象派画家更为奔放，把颜料直接挤在画布上，用画笔粗犷地把颜料摊开，表现出更浓重的色彩。《隆河上的星夜》在深蓝的夜幕上铺开了三层金黄的光线——夜空中的星星、岸上的灯火、河中的倒影。
西蒙称之为“三位一体”，梵高笔下的光辉有神性。
有意思的是，西蒙在这一集的落脚点还是艺术与宗教。艺术给人的愉悦代替宗教，带来宽慰与救赎。色彩大概就像是教堂彩色玻璃中漏下来的五颜六色的光，将福泽洒入人间。我觉得现代艺术发展的路程是“去神”的过程，是从神到人、到自然的过程，本集的作品也显然表现出了这一点。印象派之所以效仿日本浮世绘，就是因为后者的世俗、烟火气，而印象派所处的时代，正是工业革命带来物质繁荣、科学技术带来日新月异的时代。神性有光芒，但是光不是神独有。现代艺术的光和色彩是人文主义的光芒。
08 The Cult of Progress
原始与现代
欧洲人向东扩张，考察了中东、非洲的文化遗迹（尤其是法国人来到埃及，他们认为这是文明的起源），运回了各种当地艺术品，也在本土掀起了东方热。
只不过，当时大多数描绘东方的画作都是在欧洲找模特完成的，只是画家的想象作品。
当欧洲艺术家来到美洲片处女之地时，他们把美的渴望寄托在自然上。画家们从未像在美洲大陆上这样热衷于自然风景画。自然风景画先驱托马斯·科尔认为这是“神的纯粹之作”，并总是在山水之中点缀土著人的生活，就像描绘世外桃源一般。
英国画家特纳则描绘了工业化的英国本土，画面上总是烟雾蒙蒙，机器、工厂占据了原本属于田园生活的地方，人们原本的生活方式和宗教信仰被挤到了一边。
美洲土著人的原始生活在欧洲侵略者的镇压之下渐渐消失。当时的殖民者认为“天命昭昭”（Manifest Destiny），土著人是注定要灭亡的人。
画家乔治·卡特林穷尽一生，游览西部的土著人居住点，在他们灭亡之前，用人像的方式把他们记录下来。他忠实地记录了这些土著人的部族、地位、佩戴的纹饰，把他们当做个体，而不是群体。
但是从土著人的角度来看，这是一种对将要灭亡的印第安人的浪漫化描绘，是向付钱看展的白人的猎奇展览。印第安人在兽皮上记录了他们抵御外敌的战争，画面里是鲜血和死亡。
另一名画家戈特弗里德·林道尔也做了类似的工作——为殖民地的原住民画像。他为欧洲客户绘制了许多新西兰毛利人的画像，画中的模特大多穿着民族服饰，脸上文着“塔莫克”，也就是他们的文身艺术。（毛利人的塔莫克没有一个是重复的。）
但是，毛利人没有灭亡。一些经常与欧洲人接触和贸易的上层毛利人也花钱雇林道尔画像。毛利人为自己画像的要求，往往不是展现民族特点，而是相反，他们希望展现自己游走在两种文明之间的成功。
巴黎、奥斯曼的城市改造与印象派
奥斯曼在1850年代对巴黎进行了现代化的改造，奠定了现代巴黎的基础。杂乱、破旧的街区被整齐的联排公寓和宽敞的林荫大道所替代。富庶的中产阶级在这个世界文化之都游玩、享乐、纸醉金迷。
爱德华·马奈《女神游乐园的吧台》。
这幅画表现出巴黎的繁华背后，还有阴暗、残酷、挣扎。富人肆意享乐，穷人待价而沽。
巴黎的标志性建筑埃菲尔铁塔，是为1889年的世界博览会而建。博览会上展出了欧洲的现代工业产品，也展出了亚非地区的原始艺术。欧洲人似乎想表明，他们的文明是高级的，应该引领全球。
但破产股票交易员高更看倦了巴黎的世态炎凉，逃往塔希提岛，想在自然和原始生活总会探寻新的艺术和人生意义。他觉得自己既有文明人的血统，也有野蛮人的基因。他想在塔希提岛上找到完整的自己。也许，最终他并没有找到答案。
毕加索也痴迷于他从博览会上看到的非洲脸谱艺术，这为他后来的人像创作带来了不可磨灭的印记。
毕加索在原始艺术的激发下，开启了前所未有的艺术革新。他借鉴异域的、甚至是野蛮的图像，颠覆了传统欧洲艺术。
毕加索把非洲面具画在妓女脸上，将色情、暴力、野蛮、恐惧等元素奇妙地连在一起。在现代的欧洲，人们真的摆脱了野蛮吗？
这一集对文明和野蛮的讨论，让我想起中国文学里对乡土和城市的情结。透纳的画就像是对田园牧歌的乡愁，高更的画就像是对野蛮又质朴的乡土的讴歌。中学语文遇到的散文文本，常常是怀着这种乡愁的，因为作家们和当年的欧洲人一样，经历了翻天覆地的工业化时代。但是，恐怕乡土终究是回不去了。说起像高更一样逃到小岛上做隐士（还是一个把画拿到欧洲卖的隐士）的现代人，我想起的竟然是李子柒。不过李子柒当然和艺术家差得很远，她所展现的也不是猎奇的他者文化，而是向城市中的焦虑症患者贩卖浪漫化的乡野生活。
人总是有惯性，忍不住要怀念以前的日子。但历史的车轮总是无情地滚滚而来。另一方面，历史又是螺旋上升的，到某一个时刻，你可能发现好像回到了一个似曾相识的时代，但事实上却并不相同。我们都是历史的一瞬罢了。艺术也是历史的一瞬，但是它能将一瞬定格下来，从而得以不朽。
09 The Vital Spark
现代艺术
奥斯维辛集中营。犹太艺术家弗利德·迪克-布朗德斯将一箱美术用具带进集中营，教这里的孩子们画画。孩子们的作品被她保留并藏了起来。战争结束后，这些画作被人发现，收藏在布拉格犹太博物馆。
1987年，怀着对拜金主义、消费主义的厌倦，日本企业家福武总一郎买下一座小岛，请建筑师安藤忠雄设计了地面下的地中美术馆。这是一座现代艺术的殿堂，寂静，极简，充满禅意。
抽象主义
蒙德里安试图用绘画艺术的基础形式——点、线、面，来革新现代绘画。1914年，他独自一人在海边得到了灵感，将海面上的波光与海岸上的墩柱简化为极富韵律的短线条，完成了抽象主义的革命之作。
在巴黎，蒙德里安用几何图形、完美的比例和颜色搭配，画出了许多先锋作品。
在繁华、活力四射的纽约，蒙德里安将色彩打散成一个个小方格，就像纽约闪烁的霓虹灯。
表现主义
画家用直觉作画，但整体却又是和谐、充满韵律的。
波普艺术
一切都可以是艺术。
现实题材的艺术作品
瓦尔哈拉是德国路德维希一世建立的名人殿堂，在纳粹时期被赋予重要象征意义。基弗创作了许多反思纳粹的艺术作品，其中一个名为《瓦尔哈拉》的展览，陈列的不是荣耀的日耳曼名人，而是战地医院中的残破的病床。
卡拉·沃克是一名非裔美国人艺术家。她有很多作品揭露了（或者说是回顾了）白人殖民者对黑人的奴役和犯罪。
艾尔·安纳祖的父亲是加纳的节庆布料制造商。他继承了编织的工艺形式，把啤酒瓶盖压平，编织成巨型的毯子。把废物化为美，化为传统。
蔡国强的烟花艺术。瞬间也能定格永恒。爆炸之前，没有人知道成品是怎样。“冥冥之中自有天意”。
艾未未《法道》The Law of the Journey
黑色充气人纪念了各个时代、各个地区的难民。人们看不清他们的面貌，他们是文明的牺牲品。
以色列艺术家米哈尔·罗夫纳。也许是因为犹太人饱受战乱和分离的历史，她的投影艺术作品中的人要么在不停地迁徙，要么缄默如蝼蚁。
她的实景作品《Makom》，在希伯来文和阿拉伯文中的意思是“place”。她在以色列、巴勒斯坦收集被炮火毁坏的房屋石头，雇用以色列人、阿拉伯人、巴勒斯坦人，将石头堆成各式各样的房子。
这些房子在卢浮宫的广场上展出。
前几集的艺术作品更多是在展现美、记录文明。这一节选取的艺术作品似乎更多是在变革、批判和反思。因为有了大胆的革新，所以艺术才会越来越多样化；因为有了多样化，所以艺术与现实、大众议题越来越紧密。
在第一集的开头，西蒙曾说，当我们看到文明的对立面——暴力、残忍——的时候，我们就会明白文明意味着什么。其实，文明包括了所有这一切。美是文明，批判也是文明；精湛的技艺是文明，残忍的破坏也是文明；自由精神是文明，集体主义也是文明；歌舞升平是文明，战火纷飞也是文明。正如有上帝就有撒旦、有天堂就有地狱，有残垣断壁才更能突出真善美。
最后一幕，西蒙在朝阳中走过千禧桥，走向泰特现代美术馆。文明是历史的沉淀，艺术是文明的精华。
=The End =
解说写的实在太漂亮，决定挑一些喜欢的誊下来。
时隔一年半，我终于把剩下的三集看完了。一集一集写。
E06 Radiance
26’20’’ Goya
The Black Paintings seem to me to be an endgame for Goya, not just in his own life and career in his 70s, but also his feeling about an endgame for art, the art that aspired through beauty to ennoble the spirit of civilization.
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/saturn/18110a75-b0e7-430c-bc73-2a4d55893bd6
One of the most terrifying of all these paintings, perhaps the most famous one, shows Saturn devouring one of his children. That’s what it’s come to. The huge tradition of classical mythology reduced to a mad, antic, capering monster, chewing on the stump of a small body, but look at that body. Not a child at all. It’s the body miniaturized of a female nude. Two millennia of looking at the nude, of seeing it as a symbol of art’s perfection is reduced to this horrifying image of sadistic cruelty.
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/duel-with-cudgels-or-fight-to-the-death-with-clubs/2f2f2e12-ed09-45dd-805d-f38162c5beaf
In one of the paintings, he puts the lights back on. We’re able to see something, but what is it we’re seeing? The light is given to us to reveal another kind of horror. These two huge peasant-like figures beating the living daylights out of each other. Blood is streaming down the head of one of them, even as they sink deeper and deeper into a kind of sandy quagmire. This is what Spain has become. Endless, relentless, mutual slaughter.
Now, all these monsters and horrors and demons and dragons of course had appeared all over European art before, but where had they appeared? They’d appeared in images of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse, and they were always balanced by a sense of the optimism of salvation. But Goya has come to the conclusion that God is absent without leave and there is one painting, which in a sense is least likely to have the horrifying pessimistic eloquence, but it does.
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-drowning-dog/4ea6a3d1-00ee-49ee-b423-ab1c6969bca6
There are no figures, there’s just a dog, a mutt. But for this dog, the master is gone, dead, slaughtered, missing. He’s no longer going to be fed. He’s simply faced with drowning inside this formless brown vacuum. It’s all come down to this, then. A dog without a master. Spain without its god. Humanity absolutely without civilization.
E01 Second Moment of Creation
4’53’’
We can spend a lot of time debating what civilization is or isn’t, but when it’s opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilization is; we know it from the shock of its imminent loss as a mutilation on the body of our humanity.
16’58’’
With this exquisite, intensively carved female head, we have for the first time, something immensely and movingly momentous. We have the revelation of the human face. It’s a tiny thing, it can just go in the palm of your hand and it could have only been made by an extraordinary array of dexterous skills.
39’36’’
Ultimately, all civilizations want exactly what they can’t have: the conquest of time. So they build bigger, higher and grander as if they could build their way out of mortality, and it never works.
There always comes a moment where the most populous of cities with their markets and temples and palaces and funeral tombs are simply abandoned. And that most indefatigable leveller of all, mother nature, closes in, covering the place with desert sand, or strangling it with vegetation. And then, civilization dies the death of deaths, invisibility.
E02 How do we look?
25'41"
The one thing you really get here is that size matters. These vast monumental figures, perhaps four or five times life size and with that nice hint that they’d been even bigger if they bothered to stand up for you, simply dominate. They take over your field of vision. It’s an assertion of the power of the pharaoh through his huge, superhuman, enthroned body.
33’31”
If early Athenian pottery reflects how man and women were expected to live within the social context of the city, its statues attempt to embody the interior life within.
The beginning of the fifth century BCE saw an amazing transformation in Greek sculpture. Rigid figures with the fixed gaze of phrasikleia give way to daring new experiments in the human form. One of the first of these is known as the Kritios boy, and he would transform how we see the sculpted human body.
The Kritios boy show us that you can signal anteriority through the person’s movement, through their stance. But particularly, if you lose the archaic smile, and you have an expression which isn’t necessarily blank, that immediately invites you, the spectator, to psychologise it. So with that one step, the statue acquires not just a body that is an organism rather than a mechanism, but also what we would probably call, a soul.
41’57’’
“This was quite simply the most sublime statue of antiquity to have escaped destruction. An eternal springtide, clothes the alluring virility of his mature years with a pleasing youth and plays with soft tenderness upon the lofty structure of his limbs."
49’46’’
We still have a lot of really unexamined assumptions about what constitutes a beautiful or desirable body. We have a lot of unexamined assumptions about what constitutes an attractive, or aesthetically appealing way to look. And you have only to open up the pages of a women’s magazine, as people are commonly pointing out, to see how incredibly narrow the space is in a certain kind of western aesthetic consciousness, for what a woman can look like. Similar kinds of things can be applied to men as well.
Reinforced by commercial interests, the cult of youth and beauty begun by the ancient Greeks, is perhaps more powerful than ever today.
E03 Picturing Paradise
6’34’’
http://collection.sina.com.cn/zgsh/20121116/152092655.shtml
What makes Li Cheng’s painting a masterpiece, is that it literally rises above royal propaganda.
As our eye ascends through the painting, so our whole approach to it also ascends to a higher order of question. And Li Cheng has changed the wash of the ink. It’s lighter, finer, more ethereal. It suggests deep distance. But depths of our own response as well as physical depths. What is nature? What lies beyond surface appearance? What truly moves the universe? And how above all, does the dialogue between flowing water and the adamant face of that eroded rock, bring us harmony?
18’56’’
But renaissance humanism took a different attitude to the serpent of temptation.
This is Villa Barbaro. … A place where renaissance ideals of culture and sophistication could meet the earthy pleasures of the country. A building of harmony, grace and pleasure, where it would be forever summer.
Leonardo Da Vinci wrote something fascinating. He says, “one of the values of painting is it can show you the beauty of nature and perhaps your lover in nature, in the middle of winter.” When you’re stuck inside, you’re stuck indoors, but you can remember what the meadows and what lovely picnics were like last summer by looking at a painting of it.
If you extend that into a kind of a theory of landscape art, you might say that the first way that people express the desire to escape into landscape is by actually creating escapist worlds.
30’41”
https://www.wikiart.org/en/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/hunters-in-the-snow-1565
Bruegel painted these compendious, visually inexhaustible masterpieces after the longest, bleakest, coldest Flemish winter anyone could remember. Let’s just think for a minute the way in which Bruegel makes us look at these pictures. On the one hand, they are an invitation into a wealth of detail, wherever our eye travels, it picks out these lovely minutiae of work and play. The skaters gliding across the ice. Our eye travels from one kind of landscape, a village huddled on the hill, to a completely different one. A frozen mountain or a storm tossed estuary out to the broad open sea. But there are moments as well when the pure compositional muscle that Bruegel can command makes everything come together in one great universal vision. It makes us stop. It makes us have a moment of contemplation. And then If we’re very, very lucky, like these wonderful paintings, it all seems to add up. A whole of the human condition and our special little place within it.
40’30”
There were a few kind of particular characteristics that marked out the American approach to the landscape. One of those was a sense of inferiority and competition with Europe that Americans in the 18thcentury and the early 19thcentury, were the poor country cousins. And they were on the outermost fringe of an European world in which they had been taught that Rome is the centre of all art, that the best landscapes, the tallest mountains are to be found in Switzerland. And here are Americans, on the threshold really of their own great continent, which they are beginning increasingly to move west across, trying to say, “wait, you know what, we have really high mountains also. And we have really big animals that we can celebrate in the same terms you guys are using but with our characters instead.” And I think that was out of inferiority in a funny sense, that a kind of American pride in the American landscape was born.
43’21”
More and more (Ansel) Adam’s photographs became preachy. But those vision sermons were radiant, mystical, ecstatic. They were passionate statements about how humanity could be redeemed through the encounter with nature.
But throughout, he remains steadfast that his job in life is to give visual form to that silken cord, tying together the fate of man with the fate of the earth.
E04 The Eye of Faith
43’49’’
What all of these movements within religions have in common is that they come along saying we have a purer form of faith than the one that is currently being practiced, and if your fundamental goal is purity, then one of the central things you might try to do would be to eliminate opulent aesthetic or potentially sinful representations of things to act as intermediaries, because then maybe you’re just worshipping the object, you’re not actually worshipping the divine. So it makes sense that protestants in the Reformation went into the monasteries and stripped everything out saying “it’s time to get rid of these images.”
51’35’’
We passionately want to rediscover the spiritual in art, we passionately want to discover that kind of power and purpose that religious art has. Whether it’s reinventing Christian art in cathedrals or whether it’s reinventing Islamic art, it’s about wanting to resacralise art, wanting to rediscover that wonderful, almost magical, charismatic purpose that religious art has.
For much of history, art has been religious art. For some, the creative impulse has been the very expression of divinity. For others, a challenge to God’s authority. For those that believe, religious art has always been transformative; yet for everyone, art retains a primal, spiritual feeling, a way to express the mysterious and it speaks to our earliest human drive to touch and define a world beyond our own.
E05 The Triumph of Art
50’49’’
Out there the western hurly burly is getting ready to make terrible mischief to smash its way into the domed heavenly vault, to stick its bloody great brutal boots right into the paradise garden. It’ll make an empire based on machines, money and muskets. Then slowly but surely, the Moghul Empire will disappear entirely inside its courtly refinement, becoming inextricably just a cultural ornament.
After centuries of extraordinary flowering, the eastern Renaissance was transformed by the twin forces of empire and colonialism. The delicate blooms and glowing jewels survived in what Europeans wore on their bodies and how they decorate their homes. While painters were mislabeled as miniaturists, as they were forced at least for a time, to rely on the patronage of their new British rulers. Western art critics increasingly called the artistic beauty of the east decorative, to distinguish it from pictures they put in frames where Europeans consider real art. But it was in the east, that the ancient meaning of ars, craft was preserved in all its splendor and still is. Because here, unlike in the west, the Renaissance wasn’t about the rebirth of classical knowledge. Unlike Europe, the east had never lost touch with its ancient heritage. A rich heritage which it continues to celebrate and share with the world to this day.
E06 First Contact
28’07’’
https://theartsdesk.com/tv/civilisations-first-contact-bbc-two-review-david-olusoga-goes-gold
What’s regarded as his greatest work, cracked ice, combined everything Okyo knew from both eastern and western traditions.
It’s so subtle, so minimal, a work of art that almost feels like it isn’t there. And everything about it feels ephemeral and frail. It’s painted on paper not canvas as in the west, and great expanses of it are just white blank areas that seem almost untouched by the artist. And yet all of that belies the fact that this is one of the most sophisticated works of cultural synthesis that I know. It shows a sheet of ice, presumably on a lake, and these broken jagged cracks in the ice disappeared into the mist. The effect is three-dimensional space. Now, that is European vanishing point perspective. And yet, this is one of Okyo’s masterworks, just could not be more Japanese, because it’s a philosophical contemplation of two concepts, fundamental to Buddism, imperfection and impermanence. Imperfection because these lines are uncontrolled and irregular; Impermanence because of course the ice will melt. And those two are just as fundamental to Japanese art, as the classical Greek roman ideas of beauty and perfection are to European art.
So this is Okyo incorporating European ideas into his art, but in ways that are in keeping with Japanese philosophy and Japanese tastes.
32’11’’
In this frenzy of trade and wealth, Dutch art also became the object of conspicuous consumption. A modern commercial art market was born, supplying landscapes, still lifes, portraits and scenes from Dutch life to the aspirational new merchant class. What they wanted in their art was not the pomp of monarchy, or the flamboyance of the catholic church, but a new type of realism, one that reflect their protestant desire to portray the world as it truly was, often with warts and all moral lessons.
With art from renaissance, it’s about beauty. Dutch art, it’s not about that, it’s about reality. So you do paint rotten fruits, and you do paint fat ladies that just woke up in their bed. And you do look at dirty dogs in the street. Because it’s about nature in every sense, and not just in the sense that you want it to be, but in the sense it is.
33’22’’
One of the star artists of this golden age of Dutch painting was Vermeer. Jan Vermeer is not an artist known for his epic landscapes. Most of his paintings are famously intimate, set within a neat, ordered, almost claustrophobic world of the Dutch home.
What Jan Vermeer specialized in was the art of everyday life and his world was an interior world. What he captured on canvas were simple fleeting moments. A woman reading a letter is bathed in a delicate light that pours from a side window. But that only serves to emphasize the fact that we are in an enclosed room and the rest of the world is hidden from sight, that it’s somewhere out there. But if you look a little more closely at the details, what you realise is that Vermeer’s seemingly interior domestic space is infused with the globalism of the Dutch golden age.
From the innovative pottery of his hometown of Delft, which mimicked Chinese porcelain, to prized rugs from the orient, and a geographer wearing a fashionable Japanese robe, Vermeer captures a world built on encounters with distant civilizations and peoples.
50’05’’
Hundreds of public buildings built in the British neoclassical tradition would follow. They represented not only a separation of cultures that had before freely intermingled, they also marked the passing of the age of discovery. The world had entered an age of high empire, in which to justify their exploitations and conquests, European powers would willfully overlook the achievements of other civilisations. It was a story that would be repeated around the globe and we are only just emerging from its cultural legacy today.
In a wonderful twist, Richard Wellesley’s government house is used by the government of Bengal. It has been taken back by Indians for their own government. And so we have to unthink some of the inevitability that we tend to ascribe to encounters that ultimately led to European dominance. If you look at the history of European encounters with the non-European world, you find a huge range of ways that they took shape.
And although there is a history that has to be told, a story that is one of imperialism, but a story that is also one of globalization, one of increasing interconnection across different parts of the world that has yielded the world in which we live today.
Our modern world of digital communication has massively broaden the scope of our encounters, both with foreign cultures and civilisations and within the different cultural groupings of our own. And by connecting new audience with traditional artistic practices, the global art market continues to transform new encounters into new kinds of art. From the reemergence of the long overlooked sacred art, like that of North American first nations, the indigenous people of Australia and the carvings of the African Makonde people, to new artists such as Ghanaian born sculptor El Anatsui, who sews together bottle tops into large scale assemblages that comment on consumption, waste and the environment. Today, in our increasingly globalized civilization, the sheer variety of our encounters both foreign and at home continues to be a major source of inspiration, shaping both our art and our world.
不得不说，只有高度发达的国度才能有这样的能力，这样的气魄拍出这样水平的纪录片。
不囿于本土的文化，不急于证明自己的祖先有多么多么伟大，不标榜自己的“丰功伟绩”，不顾影自怜。他们将目光投注于全世界、全人类，超越宗教、国度、文化、时间，试图不带偏见地，去欣赏、赞叹、从解读中理解自己，从凡俗中理解不朽。在这个过程中，我们从多元的形式中窥见了相通的情感，对美的追求，对爱的渴望，对英雄的膜拜，战争的伤痛，死亡的神秘与苦楚，神明赋予的救赎。
最后我们发现，我们之间的共同点比想象中要多得多，而这是对话的基础，是谋求一切全人类福祉的开端。
话语权理该属于能引导这一切的强者，也从来属于这样的强者。
式微的原文明不可避免地需要借助西方的解读理解自身，一味的抱残守缺、偏狭、傲慢，只能加速衰落而已。正如麦克斯·缪勒所说：“如果只知道一种宗教，对宗教就一无所知。”
如果只了解一种文明，对文明就一无所知。
謝謝大家的支持
Ep. 1 Second Moment Creation
西班牙：Cuevas de Altamira 阿爾塔米拉山洞（壁畫）-- Picasso 的猛牛作品的靈感來源。
德：Archäologische Staatssammlung 慕尼黑考古博物館。
法：Musee d´Archeologie Nationale (St. Germain-em- Laye).
希臘：Akrotiri （部分古城遺址）Santorini；Crete（壁畫）。
中國：三星堆。
約旦（今）：Al-Kahazneh 卡茲尼神殿 Petra.
墨西哥：瑪雅文化 象形文字 墨西哥考古博物館。
洪都拉斯：瑪雅邦 Copan Ruinas.
Ep. 2 How do we look？
埃及：Colossi of Memnon 門農像 1300BC； Luxor Temple Thebes- Ramesses
希臘：Athens 700BC 追求人體形象，不怎麼關心風景。通過塑像傳達文明理念。日常雅典瓷器； Phrasikleia 女塑像，尋找她裙子上的紀梵希標誌 550BC； 棺蓋 Artemidorus （Mummy）拒絕死亡？
Naxos 大理石採石場 半人半山雕像
中國：陝西兵馬俑 The Terracotta Army 1974挖掘 大躍進？
英國：Syon House 收藏品 - Apollo Belvedere （複製品）
墨西哥：Tabasco - Olmec奧爾梅克文明 巨石頭像
Ep. 3 Picturing Paradise
中國（儒家山水畫）：木心 （有木心的畫好激動，他自成一派的轉印法作畫--木心美術館 烏鎮）宋 李成 晴巒蕭寺圖 ； 北宋 喬仲常 後赤壁賦（Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art）； 元 王蒙 青卞隱居圖（上海博物館藏）。
伊斯蘭國家：伊斯蘭花園； 花園地毯（The Metropolotan museum of art）。
基督教世界：
意大利： Duomo di Orvieto 教堂浮雕--Lorenzo Maitani；Ambrogio Lorenzetti（ ffetti del Buon Governo in città e in campagna-- Siena：Palazzo Pubblico 錫耶納市政廳）；維吉爾 -- The Georgics 《 農事詩 》 ；Villa Barbaro（ Veneto 避世主義）。
德國：Albrecht Altdorfer -- Laubwald mit dem Heiligen Goerg -- Landscape with a Woodcutter (Kupferstichkabinett Berlin) -- Danube landscape with castel worth（The National Gallery in London ）。。。各種巴伐利亞風景畫
荷蘭： Pieter Bruegel de Oude -- The Hunters in the Snow 雪中獵人+ The Retern of the Herd 放牧歸來+A Gloomy Day.....（Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien）； Esaias van de Velde -- Cattle Ferry（ Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 終於有一個去過的）； Pieter de Molijn -- Landscape with a cottage（The Metropolitan Museum of Art ）； Salomon van Ruysdael -- Landscape with Cornfields （Stockholm Hallwylska museet ）； Jacob van Ruisdael -- A Landscape with a Ruined （The national gallery London）
戰爭影響的藝術風格：
美國：Frederic Edwin Church -- Twilight in the Wilderness （Cleveland Museum of Art Ohio）； Thomas Moran+ Winslow Homer；Albert Bierstadt -- Looking Down Yosemite Valley （ Birmingham Museum of Art ；Yosemite National Park 約瑟米帝國家公園-- Ansel Adams 攝影作品1927）This is our land.
愛護地球，世界和平。
Ep. 4 The eye of faith
柬埔寨：吳哥窟Angkor Wat 高棉王國。
印度：Maharashtra- Ajanta Caves 阿旃陀石窟 2至7世紀的壁畫；德里鐵柱（Quw-watul Islam Mosque）。
意大利：Revenna （Basikica di san Vitale）耶穌三種時期的畫像 浮華的危機？；威尼斯 Scuola Grande di san Rocco ´´藏寶室´´-- 受難 （Tintoretto畫）。
西班牙：Seville （Basilica de la Macarena）聖母像-- 盲目崇拜？
土耳其；伊斯坦布爾（Sancak Mosque 21世紀現代主義）；Blue Mosque 伊斯蘭國家書法；Kennicott Bible （複製品藏於Oxford）。
英國：Ely Cathedral 遭破壞的建築。。。
希臘：Parthenon .
何謂文明，就是比信仰多一點點。
Ep. 5 The Triumph if art
○ No beginning no end
土耳其：Istanbul Hagia Sofia 圣索菲亞 （Turk Mimar Sinan）
意(梵蒂岡)：Rom St.Peter -- Michelangelo（Bromante），Sistine Chapel -- The Last Judgement 最後的審判。 藝術（Ars）：動手能力。技術工程，構造能力，非凡天賦。Il Divino。Caravaggio（David and Goliath -- Galleria Borghese Rom； Madonna di Loreto -- Basilica di Sant Eustachio in Campo Marzio）；Artemisia Gentileschi 16世紀女畫家 -- Self Portrait（ London Kensington Palace ）
Florence： Benvenuto Cellini 金匠（Leda and the Swan -- Museo Nazionale del Bargello；Saliera -- Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien ）；Donatello （Judith and Holofernes *複製品 -- Piazza Della Signoria）。
巴基斯坦：Lahore Fort
西班牙：Velázquez（Las Meninas宮娥--Museo del Prado Madrid）。
荷蘭：集體畫像：N.Pickenoy -- Civic guardsmen from the company of captain Jacob Backer (Amsterdam Museum); 倫勃朗 -- 夜巡！-- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 控制了混亂，透視法，活力與秩序；模仿細密畫。
印度： Itimad-ud-Daula Moti Bagh, Agra 太美了！！！！
藝術是一場輪迴-
Ep. 6 First contact
非洲：Benin Bronzes（British Museum, London-- 葡萄牙士兵）起源尼日利亞土著傳統藝術 Benin City; Queen mother Idia 尼日利亞首位女王象牙頭像，象征優雅與權力 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)。
葡萄牙：Lisbon里斯本 -- Torre de Belem受非洲雕塑影響；犀牛-- Albrecht Dürer 使用印刷品；未知作者的King s Fountain描繪16世紀葡萄牙出於全球化的中心時場景（Berardo Collection Museum）。
墨西哥: Aztec 阿茲特克文化 殉葬者活人獻祭 日曆石（ Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de México）；兩頭蛇 羽蛇神；金子對歐洲人的誘惑Gold Art；天主教入侵aztec文明，根除當地信仰，摧毀神像，建起天主教堂-- 亡靈節day of dead（結合了天主教的萬聖節）死亡的頭骨Calavera 。
西班牙：16世紀歐洲最富有的國家，侵略性的傳播自己的文化；Toledo -- El Greco- View of Toledo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)； 基督獻祭圖（Santa Lglesia Catrdral Primada de Toledo）。
日本：九州kyushu南海岸； Nanban screens 南蠻屏風 （Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon）描繪16世紀從葡萄牙來的商人；Tokugawas 德川家族 感受到了外來文化對自身文化的威脅，開始驅逐基督教--·閉關鎖國· 封建運動--強調自律的佛家傳統，嚴格遵循茶道禮儀，詩歌，書法；荷蘭人在日本的貿易，同時將歐洲的文化帶入日本--荷蘭鏡藝術家 Maruyama Okyo圓山應舉 葵祭 Aoi Matsuri，Bamboo in wind and rain雨竹風竹圖屏風17世紀（圓光寺收藏，京都），冰圖屏風 cracked ice 缺憾與無常（British Museum, London）。
荷蘭：海外貿易樂此不疲，富人藏有世界珍品；The Avenue at Middelharnis -- Meindert Hobbema（National Gallery, London）;Still life with Gilt cup -- W.C.Heda (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)......; Jan Vermeer足不出戶的畫家，側窗內的世界（Delft）；德裔荷蘭人 Maria Sibylla Merian 女生物學家（昆蟲變態繪畫） 1699年抵達蘇里南研究當地生物種類，是好奇心推動了科技革命。
印度：兩位宮廷畫師：Ghulam Ali Khan+Johan Zoffany 英國東印度公司和莫臥兒王朝
Ep. 7 Radiance
法國：亞眠主教堂 （Cathedrale Notre-Dame d Amiens）哥特式+彩色馬賽克窗；沙特爾主教堂；莫奈花園 (Fondation Claude Monet 浮世繪畫作收藏) -- 乾草堆Les Meules, Rouen Cathedral Series（廬恩主教堂；Musée d’Orsay, Paris; J. Paul Getty Museum......）；梵高 -- Père Tanguy 生命力（Musée Rodin, Paris ）The Harvesters (Metropolitan Museum of Art，New York），Nuit étoilée sur le Rhône隆河上的星夜 雙重三位一體（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；Henri Matisse 伊斯蘭藝術的東西結合，全新的藝術領域 -- Jazz 二戰時期，（The Rosary Chapel, Vence 不同文化的相互融合，和諧共存）。
意大利：Giovanni Belini 貝利尼 神聖的對話1505（San Zaccaria --Venezia）與文藝復興樸素的對立面；提香 A man with a Quilted Sleeve 穿棉襖的男子 約1509, Bacchus and Ariadne 酒神與阿利阿德尼 ( National Gallery, London)。
德國：Redidenz Würzburg 巴洛克宮殿（世界最大的天花板壁畫）-- Giambattista Tiepolo 自由。
印度：Hindu Festival of Holi 印度教的盛大節日，春天的歡愉，色彩是因果的象征；Three Aspects of the Absolute -- Bulaki金箔畫，虛無與具象，形而上學（Mehrangarh Museum Trust）。
西班牙：Francisco de Goya 戈雅-- El perro,The San Isidro Meadow, The Great He-Goat......（Museo del Prado, Madrid）恐怖氣氛畫作，拿破崙入侵西班牙的歷史背景，對神聖秩序的徹底失望，從光明走向黑暗。
日本：江戶（今東京）新型都市文化，批量生產的木版畫 -- 浮世繪畫家 Suzuki Harmobu 鈴木 春信；Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川 歌麿 歌女圖；Utagawa Kunisada 歌川 國貞 平等主義的春宮圖；Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北齋 描繪Fuji 自然風景圖，佛教精神，永生的靈符，大自然的靈性（富岳三十六景 對莫奈影響很深的圖集）。
藝術為我們的啟迪之光
Ep. 8 The cult of progress
英國：18世界利用自然的力量生產工作，英格蘭中部最初工業革命開始的地方。一部分人享受著美好的世界，一部人擔心進步帶來的代價。Derbyshire — Joseph Wright of Derby懷特 - Arkwright‘s Cotton Mills （Derby Museum & Art Gallery）, Self Portrait (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), an Experiment on a bird in the Air Pump (National Gallery, London); J.M.W. Turner - Dubley, Worcestershire 工業炙熱的火爐，對舊生活被摧毀的控訴 ( Tate/ Lady Lever Art Gallery).
埃及：Giza-文明發源地，拿破崙進入埃及，對古埃及藝術的迷戀，打著啟蒙運動的名義搞研究：《the Description of Egypt 對埃及的描述》記錄了失落的國度，滿足西方人對這片土地的獵奇。實際上也把歐洲文明強加於埃及，用文字做武器。 西方開始流行東方主義題材，藝術家開始大行創作（杜撰和腦海中的意淫，實際上並沒有見過真正的埃及）描繪阿拉伯家庭的日常生活— Eugène Delacroix - Women of Algiers in their Apartment (Louvre, Paris); Marià Fortuny - The Odalisque (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona); Jean-Léon Gérôme- The Slave Market (Clark Art Institute); Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - The Turkish Bath( Louvre, Paris).
美國： 英國畫家 Thomas Cole - View of Schroon Mountain （Cleveland Museum of Art），The Course of Empire 帝國的歷程（Historical Society， NY）；年輕的美國和原住民；Frederic Edwin Church- Niagara Falls； Harriet Cany Peale- Kaaterskin Clove； George Catlin為當地原住民畫像，See-non-ty-a （National Gallery of Art，Washington D.C）。
新西蘭：捷克畫家Gottfried Lindauer為當地毛利人畫像，成為毛利後裔對祖先的紀念；紋身藝術。
法國：銀版攝影法 Louis-Jacques Daguerre拍攝巴黎街道，照片中第一次出現人形； Charles Marville 城市街道建築攝影；Nadar拍攝巴黎名人，攝影改變人的感受。G.E.Haussmann 城市規劃，輻射狀街道網絡型態；印象派 Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Bal du Moulin de la Galette 煎餅磨坊的舞會（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；莫奈 - La Gare Saint-Lazare 聖拉扎爾火車站（Musée d’Orsay, Paris），Un bar aux Folies Bergère女神遊樂廳的吧台 鏡中反射的場景，女神並不快樂，冷漠臉，是商品（Courtauld Institute of Art，London）；法國黃金時代 Berthe Morisot - Summer‘s Day（National Gallery， London）；Gustave Caillebotte - 雨天的巴黎街道 （The Art Institute of Chicago）；Mary Cassatt - In the Loge ‘你在看風景，別人在看妳’（Museum of Fine Arts，Boston）；Edgar Degas 德加 關注被現代社會異化的人們 - L'Absinthe 咖啡館裡 被酒精毀掉的人（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；世博會 欸菲爾鐵塔； Paul Gaugin高更 痛恨資本主義，尋找解脫，尋找天堂 大溪地- Self Portrait，D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? 我們從何處來？我們是誰？我們向何處去？（Museum of Fine Arts, Boston）；
西班牙：20世紀 蠻族工藝品 比加索 面具 - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 亞維儂少女 青樓大戲 非洲藝術 什麼是野蠻？什麼是文明（The Museum of Modern Art，New York）。
德國：第一次世界大戰 歐洲青年都上戰場，Otto Dix 素描紀錄戰爭的泥濘苦難的面孔，戰士=犧牲品；防毒面具野蠻主義 - War Triptych 三聯畫（Gallery of western Bohemia）藝術家詩人預見了未來的恐懼。
Ep. 9 The Vital Spark
捷克：Theresienstadt，Terezin（納粹集中營，18世紀軍事基地）惡魔的遊戲場景，文化的騙局。Arbeit macht frei 工作使人自由（放在這裡是多麼諷刺的一句話）；Pinkas Synagogue+ Jewish Museum Pragze 集中營中被關的兒童作的畫（ Friedl Dicker-Brandeis包豪斯畢業，在被關起來後一直教孩子們畫畫，直到遇害。偉大！！！！！！），反抗大屠殺的證明，拷問，藝術面對戰爭和恐怖的意義？革命的100年，恐怖的100年。避世之所。
此刻 何為藝術？深刻？持久？裝飾？生命之光？
日本：Chichu Art Museum，Naoshima Island 地中美術館 直島 藝術島（Tadao Ando 安藤忠雄設計；Soichiro Fututake創立）藏有莫奈：Water-lily Pond；現代作品 -- James Turrell：Afrum Pale Blue，Open Field光纖，空間；Walter de Maria：Time/Timeless/No time 禪意。
荷蘭：Piet Mondrian 蒙德里安 -- Lighthouse in Westkapelle， Dune V (Zeeland的 燈塔和沙灘)； 抽象,符號，視覺語言，再教育（清醒，嚴肅，刻意的藝術--Play） -- Pier and Ocean（Composition No.10）（ Kröller-Müller Museum， Otterlo）；Broadway Boogie-Woogie（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；未完成的-Victory Boogie Woogie+ Composition with Large Red, Yellow, Blue，Grey and Black三原色，純平面，完美的平衡（Gemeentemuseum Den Haag ）冥想過程，四大皆空，治愈世界；William de Kooning -- Abstraction（Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid）個人英雄主義。
美國抽象與POP藝術：Jackson Pollock -- One No. 31 樂隊般的節奏（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+Blue Poles 11（The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra）; Lee Krasner -- Celebration（Cleveland Museum of Art）；Andy Warhol -- Gold Marilyn Monroe + Campbell's Soup Cans（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；Jasper Johns -- Three Flags（Whitney Museum of American Art, New York）；Wayne Thiebaud -- Lipsticks（National Gallery of Art, Washington）；Marcell Duchamp -- Foutain （複製品 Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris）；James Rosenquist -- F-111（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）。胡來，衝擊。
現代藝術家
Kara Walker -- Stone Mountian 石頭山雕像+ The Jubilant Martyrs of Obsolescence adn Ruin 剪影（High Museum of Art）+ African/American（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+ A Subtlety 糖漿做成，黑人奴隸的主題，種族主義 -- 暴力 。怎能袖手旁觀？
德國：Anselm Kiefer 新表現主義 -- 佔領（揭傷疤，召喚記憶）Walhalla炸彈（Regensburg）+ Böse Blumen+ Nigredo 天才和暴徒+ Iron Path+ Arsenal；Caspar D. Friedrich -- Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer（Hamburger Kunsthalle）。
加納： El Anatsui -- Gravity and Grace 瓶蓋壓扁拼接 城市和傳統的拼接。
中國：蔡國強 -- 火藥 轉瞬即逝 烏托邦的夢想 永恆 愉悅和毀滅； 艾 weiwei -- Law of the Journey 生死之間（National Gallery，Prague ）難民議題。
以色列：Michal Rovner 石頭上記錄文明。
勇於突破的藝術家，從世界一端將文明傳遞至另一端。
美 在不停的轉化 不停地被重新定義
永存
不朽