Simon Schama's Power of Art
Starring: Simon Schama, Andy Serkis, Paul Popplewell, Alan Corduner
Director: David Belton
The series: Award-winning historian Simon Schama focuses on eight men whose work, in his opinion, changed the way the world saw art. And the results - over eight episodes - provide a fascinating and opinionated foray into the lives and times of these artists and what led them towards creating what Schama believes are their most impressive pieces.
That Schama is forthright in his words simply adds to the mixture. You might not entirely agree with the pieces he focuses on or what he says about them (or, indeed, the artists), but what he does do is make you think about what he has to say. In his own words, 'it is a descent into the volcano of the creating imagination, into the fires where some of the greatest things humans have ever wrought were fashioned.' And such is the genius of the BBC-backed production that you're left wanting more.
The eight - Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi), Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacques-Louis David, J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko - are certainly giants in their fields. But Schama never minces his words, acknowledging, for instance, that Turner's Slave Ship may appear to many like the contents of a spittoon, as one critic described it, but delving deeper into just what the artist set out to achieve, he states his case for the work's greatness. As he proved in his groundbreaking History of Britain series, also originally screened on the BBC, Schama makes for an impassioned host. And his enthusiasm is infectious.