Civilisations: Season 1

Historian Simon Schama claims art is an essential part of civilization in general and each one's identity. A retired Iraqi archaeology director preferring decapitation by ISIS to betraying where he hid unique treasures at Palmyra in Syria. Then he takes us to several early sparks of Ancient civilizations, like the possibly earliest cave paintings in Spain and France. We know the Nabataeans, an Arab desert people, settled to establish the fabulously wealthy city Petra in Jordan, having seized a monopoly on frankincense, and for lack of writings its architecture is nearly all we know of them. Interaction plays a great part in neighboring cultures' development, as Crete's Minoian and Santorini's heritage contributed to the Mycenean prelude of Classical Greece. Sometimes art is all a civilization left, like one in China's Szechuan province, parallel early to the Yellow River cradle of classical China, yet absent from all records, all that remains are magnificent metal divinity masks. Even a civilization as rich and prominent as the Maya city states ends up swallowed by the jungle, including its glorious monuments to pantheon and mighty elite.

The role of portraits, paintings and sculptures in forming early civilizations. Examples include the Olmecs, ancient Eygpt, the Greeks, the Qin Dynasty and the Romans.

Simon Schama looks into the artistic history of depictions of landscapes, both natural or idealized and man-altered. While often represented ad background, nature would only become a full Western genre in its own right during the religious wars between Catholics and protestants with Altendorfer, while in China it was ancient, especially in the form of cartoon-like scrolls. IN Islamic art, with its ban of depicting living creatures -still exceptions were allowed, as in Persian tapestry- nature was rather suggested in geometric motives and color patterns. The mills-won land was a subject of particular pride for the Dutch, the scenery of pioneer exploration and conquest in America from the Hudson Valley (NY) school of painting and again in photography especially around Yosemite Valley (California).

Religion is a major domain in art history, possibly from the start in cave paintings, with cosmogony, cultic and magical purposes, votive and funeral, even political practices. It could completely dominate a society and civilization, as in theocratic Pharaonic Egypt. Representation of divinity vary enormously, like zoomorphism, anthropomorphism, stylized or idealized, as in Classical Greek art. It could serve sacrificial, community-building, prestige and didactic purposes; even a whole theological and (socio-)political agenda. Fear of hubris may lead to banning depictions of divinity -and iconoclasm- or even of all life, as in strict interpretations of Islam, leading to alternative styles and promoting fitting techniques, such as stylized or geometric patterns as in Persian carpets, or elaborate abstract decorations in mosaics, tiles, carpentry - Religion-related controversy remains, as in pictorial arts and architecture, opposing novelty to traditions.

The fifth film in Civilisations goes east and west with Simon Schama: to Papal Rome but also to Ottoman Istanbul and Mughal Lahore and Agra.

Art plays a major part in recording or even shaping the cultural and general contacts between societies and their civilizations. Sometimes it testifies to the lack of knowledge about each-other, even stuck in legend and superstition, notably when contacts are rare. Sometimes it's at the core of imperialist annihilation, as the Spanish Conquistadores intentionally crushed the pagan Precolumbian cultures but ironically in the process left precious rare records of largely destroyed Inca, Aztec and Maya empire heritages. Complex relationships develop in the course of exploration and colonization, as in Africa. Economical and military rapports tend to lead the way, but also missionary ambition and, diplomacy involve art.

Throughout art history, achieving radiance by color and light interacting has played major part. Colorite has its own history, linked to the symbolical meaning and material composition of pre-industrial natural (mineral, vegetal or animal) pigment ingredients, sometimes as precious and exotic as Afghan lapis lazuli (for ultramarine), often traded from the Orient, contributing to the wealth and artistic prowess of Venice. On the other hand, claire-obscure dominates certain traditions, notably Gothic architecture suggesting uplifting toward Heaven, which combines it with radiant stained glass and artists, like El Greco's dark depiction of grim times.

The world changed as it adopted the principles of Enlightenment -especially after the American and French revolutions- and was physically transformed by industrialization, stressing reason (science), technology and profit. Bonaparte's conquest of Egypt stirred the Western fascination for it and started an escapist fashion of Orientalism, albeit largely a fantasy version of a romanticized East, while colonies enabled continuous confrontations in reality, in Peruvian-French Gauguin's case a never-ending sequence of frustrations even on paradisiac Tahiti. As a substitute for the Ancient history of the Old World, art schools in the New were fascinated by native American cultures, landscape and wildlife. Photography would impose harsh, vulgar realism, pioneers deviated from traditional technique and POV to create new, less aesthetic styles like expressionism.

As the world changed thoroughly, industrialized, globalizing, science-driven, art was to follow and even striving to lead. Instead of serving rich and powerful patrons, many artists would seek individual (media) fame and/or spread a social message, or rather declared art itself the highest purpose. New schools would follow rapidly, often with innovation as primary concern, deliberately questioning or even ditching every historical rule, including aestheticism itself. Thus abstract art was explored by pioneering artists like Mondriaan.