22 Times Higher Education8 February 2018
On 23 February 1969, Kenneth
Clark opened his landmark BBC
seriesCivilisationby admitting that
he couldn’t “define [civilisation] in
abstract terms – yet. But I think
I can recognise it when I see it.”
Although Lord Clark was often
mocked for such patrician self-
assurance, the art historian’s 13 pro-
grammes proved a revelation.
Among those who remember them
well is Mary Beard, now professor
of Classics at the University of Cam-
bridge, who at the time had only
been abroad once, on a family holi-
day to Belgium. She recalled being
thrilled to discover all the famous
cultural sites that Lord Clark vis-
ited, as well as his broader “argu-
ments about art and culture”.
Simon Schama, university profes-
sor of history and art history at Col-
umbia University, remembered
Civilisationas “the most spectacu-
lar colour television...up to that
point colour seemed to have been
about outside broadcasts featuring
the Queen and the occasional foot-
ball match”, he said. “It was a rav-
ishing breakthrough.” Even more
radical, and still radical today, was
the way that the directors were
“happy to let the camera just drink
in art without anything else going
on apart from the music”.
In terms of its impact, Professor
Schama believed thatCivilisation
made a deep impact on public
understanding because it “brought
home to an incredible number of
people...a heroic narrative of the
classical heritage and Western cul-
ture leading to the Enlightenment
and then going slightly downhill
from the time of Mozart”.
Such a Eurocentric “heroic nar-
rative” feels far less comfortable
today. Even at the time, Lord Clark
was widely criticised for his assump-
tions that “civilisation” was in
essence European and included pre-
cious few women. (Professor Beard
“counted the number of active
women in the series – and you don’t
get many after the Virgin Mary”.)
As the 50th anniversary of the
broadcast approaches, therefore, the
BBC will mark the occasion with a
new nine-part series titledCivilisa-
tions. Presented by ProfessorSchama, Professor Beard and David
Olusoga, a broadcaster and historian
of empire (all three pictured below),
it will screen from 1 March.
Revisiting the earlier pro-
grammes now, Professor Beard said
that she felt “an admixture of total
admiration for them and a feeling
my blood might boil at any
moment”. Although the new series
“obviously has Clark in mind, it’s
not a remake of Clark but a dia-
logue with Clark, a conversation
with the earlier series”.
In her own two programmes – on
representations of the body and reli-
gion and art – Professor Beard was
“not desperately scrambling to find
some female artists, but constantly
gender-aware”.
“Often you can’t find any female
artists, though there is a myth saying
the first portrait artist was female.
You can put women in the picture
by finding female observers and
female commentators,” she said.
At one point, Professor Beard
shows viewers a celebrated ancient
sculpture of Venus and notes how
it already embodies “the link
between a statue of a woman and
an assumed male viewer, which has
never gone away”. She also points
to the way that the long-standing
assumption that Greek sculpture
represents “a beacon of superior
Western civilisation” has acted as
“a distorting and sometimes divisive
lens” through which Europeans
have viewed the rest of the world.
Similarly, Professor Schama’s pro-
gramme about the Renaissance chal-
lenges the centrality of Italy, showing
how Rome and Istanbul were com-
peting with each other in the 1550s
to build the world’s most impressive
dome, and also explores connections
and rivalries with Mughal India.
Today, he explained, we are “prob-
ably more aware of the constant
cross-fertilisation and rivalry”Analysis
Beard and Schama
give ‘Civilisation’ a
50-year makeover
Leading academics to present contemporary take
on iconic TV series. Matthew Reisz reports
between cultures than would ever
have occurred to Lord Clark.
SoCivilisationscan certainly
claim to be more diverse in its cov-
erage thanCivilisation. But that
raises two obvious questions. Given
the challenges of compressing the
whole of human culture into nine
hours, what about the things that
the new programmes have had to
omit (and which may form the focus
of another revisionist series in
another 50 years’ time)? And
weren’t there dangers for academics
in straying well beyond their areas
of core expertise?
“An awful lot is going to get left
out,” admitted Professor Beard,
“but you have to find a way not to
be full of guilt and dread about
what you haven’t included. The way
we worked it out is that [my two
programmes] have an argument,
what drives them is their argu-
ment...You think about what you
want to say about the problems of
representing God and then choose
themes, examples, texts and images,
and you choose very good examples
to make your point and within that
you have a reasonable variety.”