8 February 2018Times Higher Education 23NEWS
Given the deluge of sexist abuse
she has had to put up with, Profes-
sor Beard felt that she could
“handle” a few raised eyebrows
about not being a specialist in
Egyptian or pre-Columbian art. But
she also believed in the value of
“starting from a particular research
base in classical art and religion
which becomes new when you
expand outwards. I had some eye-
opening moments, but it starts
from some rock-solid classical
expertise...The way we’ve put
things together makes a bigger
story than lining up a row of
experts on their own little fields”.
Although “very happy to be cor-
rected if I’ve made a blunder – and
it’s inconceivable that I haven’t”,
Professor Schama was unconcerned
about specialists criticising him for
spreading himself too thin: “I’m
73 years old and one of the privil-
eges of moving into what Gore
Vidal called ‘the springtime of senil-
ity’ is that that kind of thing really
doesn’t matter.”BBCLike Lord Clark, Professor
Schama was “not at all shy about
the irreducible magic of great art”
and is happy to appear excited and
moved by the works he describes.
In this, he acknowledged, he was at
odds with much “overcontextual-
ised” academic writing about the
arts: “There’s been an overcorrec-
tion – the death of the author, the
death of originality, [the notion that]
genius is a Romantic invention. Of
course it’s not! All you have to do is
read [what Giorgio Vasari wroteabout Michelangelo]. It is absolutely
not a late 18th-century invention.”
While he was doubtful whether
Civilisations“will move into the cul-
tural bloodstream, particularly in the
US, in the way Clark did”, Professor
Schama hoped that it could “have a
quieter long-term impact. I’ll be very
happy if this sense of connectedness,
the wiring between cultures, is seen
to unfold, and isn’t just used as the
basis for some op-ed piece about the
joys of multiculturalism.”
[email protected]Kenneth Clark’s 13-part
BBC television series
Civilisation(1969)
focused on European
art and thought from
the Dark Ages to
roughly the end of
the 19th century.
Helen Wheatley,
reader in film and
television studies at
the University of
Warwick, stillregularly shows it to
students on her television
history and criticism
module. Its significance,
in her view, is twofold.
As “the first big,
expensive, long-
ranging documen-
tary series to be
shown in colour”,
she explained,
it offered “a
rather daz-zling spectacle...and
close-up access to some
of the world’s finest, most
historically significant
paintings, sculptures,
buildings and so on”. It
also “cemented Clark’s
[pictured left] position as
an educator of the
masses...his belief that
his audience would be
able to come with him on
this journey and to followthe sometimes complex
ideas he discusses, and
his refusal to speak down
to the audience, is strik-
ing”. It also marked a not-
able departure from the
style of “his televisual pre-
decessor, [the historian]
A.J.P.Taylor, who would
deliver a lecture straight
to camera in a TV studio”.
Three years on from
Civilisation, Lord Clark’sview of the world was
directly challenged in
another BBC series, John
Berger’s four-partWays of
Seeing, which explored
the hidden ideologies,
particularly around sex
and social status, to be
found in much art.
In an age when “we’re
more used to dazzling HD
montage sequences of
objects and places asstandard” in history
programmes, Dr Wheatley
was sceptical whether
Civilisationswould “have
the aesthetic impact” of
its predecessor.Yet she
welcomed the attempt to
“address the failings of
Clark’s narrative” and had
no doubt that it too would
be “extremely useful for
[her] teaching”.
Matthew ReiszCULTURAL LEGACY:SHOW’S IMPACT STILL FELT AFTER FIVE DECADES