The Shock of the New
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The essential difference between a sculpture like Andre's Equivalent VIII[1], 1978, and any that had existed before in the past is that Andre's array of bricks depends not just partly, but entirely, on the museum for its context. A Rodin in a parking lot is still a misplaced Rodin; Andre's bricks in the same place can only be a pile of bricks."--The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes. |
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The Shock of the New (1980) is a book and a television series by Robert Hughes.
In 1980 the BBC broadcast Hughes's television series on the development of modern art since the Impressionists. It was accompanied by a book of the same name. Its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised.
In July 2004, the BBC re-aired this series as follows:
- The Mechanical Paradise - Episode 1
- Traces how developments in technology inspired art between 1880 and the end of WWI, leading to movements like cubism and futurism.
- See also: Machine Age - Exposition Universelle (1889)
- The Powers that Be - Episode 2
- Hughes explores the interplay between art and politics, seeing how artists were affected by the development of mechanised warfare and ideologies like fascism and communism.
- See also: art and politics
- The Landscape of Pleasure - Episode 3
- The French artists who attempted to reconcile man with nature, from the determination of the impressionists to paint outside to Matisse's vibrant use of colour.
- See also: impressionism - landscape
- Trouble in Utopia - Episode 4
- How modern architects in the wake of the Bauhaus aspired to change societies with their designs, a move represented both by Le Corbusier and the plans for the city Brasilia.
- See also: utopia - architecture
- The Threshold of Liberty - Episode 5
- The art movement that gripped its exponents with the fervour of a religion: surrealism. Artists like Di Chirico, Ernst, Miró and Dalí; brought the subconscious to the fore and attempted to tap into innocent and irrationality.
- See also: Surrealism
- The View From the Edge - Episode 6
- Expressionism sprung out of the harsh, secular atmosphere of the 20th Century and evolved, through the strong colours and often sombre moods of artists like Munch, to the non-figurative work of Pollock and De Kooning.
- See also: Abstract Expressionism
- Culture as Nature - Episode 7
- Artists began to take man-made images as their inspiration, leading to the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein as well as Stuart Davis' collages inspired by jazz.
- See also: Pop Art
- The Future That Was - Episode 8
- The final episode in the series explores the decline of modernism and how various artists have reacted to the consequent commercialisation of their art.
- See also: postmodern art
Notes: Robert Hughes fails to mention the influence of photography and illustrated newspapers on Impressionism.
