Boche Broadcasting Corporation

[Tubby Isaacs]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

ooh had no idea Messerchmidt did "normal" sculpture at all, let alone for royalty.

[Levin]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

The last of the Art of Germany was on last night and it was again very good. I'd have liked more on the post war stuff though, did we really need to spend 1/6th of the series on Nazi Germany?

I know that history gets more detailed as you get towards the modern day and that you shouldn't just sweep the nazi's under the carpet of history but if there was one era that people will already know about its that. And given that Dixon-Graham only had 3 hours to cover 600 years of art history why spend so long on well trod paths?

Three hour long episodes really aren't enough are they? Why not have shorter programs focussing on one or two artists each time? And a much longer series? More a series of monographs? Or is that far too much like tv past to happen now?

I'll tell you what though, I want to go to lots of galleries in Germany now. I also really want to see that Klein mural. It looked stunning.

[sw2borshch]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Enjoyed the repeat of the Krautrock docu, particularly as I missed it the first time round, and last night’s “Art of Germany” had some good stuff on George Grosz and also the Entarte Kunst exhibition, making the point that one of the main themes of early Nazism was that it was a reaction to modern art.

[Wyatt Earp]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Ricky Lenin wrote:

The last of the Art of Germany was on last night and it was again very good. I'd have liked more on the post war stuff though, did we really need to spend 1/6th of the series on Nazi Germany?

Yeah, I think you have to, really, and 1/6th of a series is about right. After all, art was so central to the whole Nazi cultural project. You can't talk about German modernism without talking about "entartete Kunst", and you can't talk about contemporary German art without talking about what it's had to deal with.

I've felt more progress, and more rapid progress, towards people in Britain thinking of Germany in broader terms than "Nazi bastards", in the last half a decade than ever before. But that can't involve our tactfully pretending the whole nasty business has been blown out of all proportion, or something. It remains a huge, huge deal. I don't reckon contemporary German culture can be understood except against the backdrop of the Third Reich, the catastrophic defeat, the shock of collective realisation of the enormity of the crime, and the division of the country for four and a half decades.

I agree that the contemporary segment was a bit squeezed, but I can see why the felt they had to do that. Otherwise, you'd either have had to squeeze the middle, Hitlery bit (and as I say, I don't think in conscience that was doable) or shifted more of the Weimar stuff to last week, which would have had the disadvantage of not being able to put the Third Reich in its cultural context.

[Ek weet nie]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Was there anything on German film, particularly German Expressionism?

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Tubby Isaacs wrote:
[quote]Wyatt, watching the first Graham-Dixon show properly now. It's very good indeed.

Btw, I think you'd enjoy this book

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Landscape-Memory-Simon-Schama/dp/0006863485

Some fascinating Germania stuff in there.[/quote
]
Ooh. I lifted large parts of that book for my MA Photography dissertation.

[Wyatt Earp]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Ek weet nie wrote:

Was there anything on German film, particularly German Expressionism?

No, which I think is fine, to be honest. That's a fascinating story, but because film is a dramatic and narrative medium as well as a visual one, it might have muddied the waters a bit.

(Speaking of which, though: anyone who hasn't seen the restored full-length Metropolis, and who even remotely likes that sort of thing: please, please, please find a way to see it.)

[Tubby Isaacs]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

Did the Expressionists have much to do with the Expressionist artists, Kirchner and the others I can't remember?

[Wyatt Earp]

Boche Broadcasting Corporation

I don't know if they moved in the same circles, but they're usually thought of a belonging to the same movement, I think.