BBC4: The Art of America - parts 2 & 3

Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992 (at Bilbao) - isn't he cute?!

More great telly from Andrew Graham-Dixon, who must have had a blast barreling along the Nevada and California highways in his convertible. Having managed to keep a straight face for most of the first two parts, he finally broke down in the third, when he was shown standing on the hilltop above the Hollywood sign, chuckling at the hilarity of it all. Here he was, an art critic known for his subtle, serious, passionate analysis of paintings, in Tinseltown!

There was an irony here, one of several that added a fascinating undercurrent to the show. If there is an Art of America it probably isn't the painted canvas but the motion picture, yet Hollywood was presented as one of the more amusing components of the incomprehensible, unserious sprawl of Los Angeles - a city in which (as AGD rightly pointed out) the buildings themselves are works of art. They are also, he might have added, covered in art, as LA's vast expanses of cement have attracted mural painters for decades.

Edward Hopper, Night Hawks, 1942

But what was the man supposed to do? Given three hours and whatever budget the cash-strapped BBC has for this sort of programming, he set himself the task of weaving the story of American art into the broader history of a huge, diverse country.

In general he proved adept at combining the broad sweep - The Depression, The Sixties - with detailed examination of particular artworks. I was absolutely gripped by his discussion of 'White Flag', Jasper Johns' painting of 1955, which was nicely set in the context of the McCarthy Era. Similarly, his detailed examination of Edward Hopper's legendary 'Night Hawks' allowed us to contemplate the picture as we might in a gallery, with an intelligent guide. We were introduced to Norman Rockwell, one of the most genuinely popular American painters of the last century, and given new insight into the political pressures that influenced the way he painted African-Americans.

Jasper Johns, White Flag, 1955

Most of the greats had their moment in the spotlight: Rothko & Pollock, Johns & Warhol. Factory acolyte Billy Name had an entertaining walk-on part, sporting a marvellous ZZ Top beard. Curious that in AGD's anxiety-ridden, urban America, most of his interviewees lived in leafy suburbia!

Inevitably, given the scale of the operation, there were artists who perhaps should have been included but weren't. Having spent a lot of time in New Mexico, I was hoping for a glimpse of Georgia O'Keeffe, who was both brilliantly original AND popular. The lack of any detailed examination of her work was part of a wider problem: although the series talked a lot about the diversity of American culture, the artists featured were not especially diverse. With the odd exception (eg Nan Goldin), most were white men. Was the Harlem Renaissance discussed (I would double-check but Part 2 no longer available)? Were we introduced to Jackson Pollock's wife, the talented Lee Krasner? Did we see work by Dorothea Lange or Diane Arbus?

Andy Warhol - anyone for soup?

I was reminded of the brilliantly eccentric BBC4 series 'British Masters', which featured (if I remember correctly) no women artists at all. I'm not waving the flag of political correctness, just noting an anomaly.

Anyway, we at least had the treat of Mr Graham-Dixon interviewing one of my favourite artistic mavericks, Jeff Koons. I was a big fan of the King of Kitsch back when his giant floral Westie seemed a wonderful riposte to the solemnity of the Josef Beuys school. Like Ed Burra, Koons is a very dangerous artist to take seriously and AGD was wonderfully circumspect, allowing Koons to chirp cheerfully about the knick-knacks and mass-produced pictures of his childhood while a gang of workers put the finishing touches to a series of massive paintings.

Georgia on my mind...

Ever articulate, Koons talked winningly about 'acceptance': it's OK, he said, to love the ornaments of your childhood; it's OK to adore Michael & Bubbles; making love with Ilona Staller is OK too - though he must look at those pictures of his younger self enjoying intercourse with the legendary Italian porn star & MP (who was his wife at the time), and wonder what on earth he'd been thinking...

A curious journey then, from the first drawings of Native Americans to billboard-sized paintings of inflatable dolphins. Great fun to watch, and extremely informative, although I would add a proviso: this was (for the most part) liberal, secular, urban America - intellectual, doubting & ironic. Much of the country is, by contrast, conservative and devout; while the sculptor at the end was busy making a clever piece depicting man's evolution, untold numbers of schoolchildren are being taught Creationism - not as religious doctrine but as science.

BBC4: The Art of America

Flying fish illustrated by John White, 1580s (British Museum)

Having successfully missed the whole of the recent BBC4 series 'Art of America', I've been catching up on the iplayer (without which I'd probably never see anything). As I write this you have about nine hours in which to watch the first episode, and I would strongly recommend dropping everything and putting it on right now...

Critics have already made the point, but Andrew Graham Dixon is that great rarity: an art historian who makes wonderful TV programmes in which he displays both passion and balance. He is articulate and neither glib nor condescending. Yes, he can be a bit serious (as he was when talking about the delightfully flippant and unserious Edward Burra) but he demonstrates clearly and with a minimum of posturing that Art Matters.

So far I've managed to watch the first two parts of 'Art of America', and the opening programme is a gem. In fact the opening of the opening programme is fantastic in its own right, as AGD introduces artist and map-maker John White, who travelled with a pioneering expedition to (what is now) North Carolina in 1585 and later became governor of the ill-fated colony of Roanoke Island; on the first expedition he painted watercolours of the Native American people they met, and these survive today as a unique record of a long-vanished society.

John White, A Cheife Herowan's Wyfe, 1580s (BM)

If there are two broad views of American history - the March of Progress vs the Devastation of a Continent - then it is clear which side this presenter takes. Believers in Manifest Destiny may prefer to watch with the sound off, but you can't really argue with the fact that North America changed dramatically in the centuries after Columbus, and not to the benefit of all. Those who know American history will not be surprised by much, although the archive film and photography is as excellent as it always seems to be in these BBC4 shows.

Audubon's Wild Turkey from 'Birds of America', 1827-38

At some points the art seems slightly unworthy of the colossal historical drama unfolding across the continent. The Americans had no Delacroix. But there are one or two moments of breathtaking beauty and of these surely the most memorable was when AGD helped a wonderful grey-haired archivist to lift the cover of John James Audubon's 'Birds of America'. I'm not sure how well people know this extraordinary book of bird paintings here in Britain, but in the USA you can find it all over the place, in numerous editions and on legions of prints and posters.

Audubon's Carolina Parakeet, now extinct

None of them, though, comes anywhere near this mighty 19th century edition - the double elephant folio. As a book it is almost preposterous, a volume so enormous that two people struggle to lift the cover... but those pictures: from the wild turkey on the first page (the original bird of America remembered every year at Thanksgiving) Audubon's birds live in a way that no stuffed bird in a box ever can. We learned that the third bird we saw - a parakeet - was driven to extinction by the farmer and the gun, prompting a discussion of 'the murderous white man' and his malign impact on natural America.

Fascinating stuff. I wonder what American viewers will make of this show if it appears on the other side of the Atlantic...

The Art of Germany... and Ravilious the Letter-Writer

George Grosz - Grey Day (1921)

There were moments during the just finished series 'The Art of Germany' when a viewer might, having flicked to BBC4 unexpectedly, have imagined that this was a new Steve Coogan vehicle - a parody of an art programme. Is it just the physical resemblance, or is there something in Andrew Graham-Dixon's deadpan delivery that suggests a comic mind at work behind the scenes? Or is it the subject perhaps? The art of Germany, at least in this survey, has rarely been light-hearted. Romantic idealists, tortured souls, a generation scarred by war, the Austrian watercolourist and his strutting thugs, post-war doom and gloom... No room for pre-Raphaelite beauty in this picture, nor Frenchmen with waterlilies, nor soup cans. I had never thought before last night that Joseph Beuys was fun but, compared to what went before, he was.

Last night's final instalment seemed all the more weighty, given that I'd spent the day reading through Eric Ravilious's letters. As a painter Ravilious had a touch so light that his watercolours can sometimes appear almost translucent, and he was as good a letter-writer as he was an artist. Writing to his lover Helen Binyon every day and occasionally twice a day, he noted with a poet's laconic phraseology the minor excitements of life in rural Essex.

Eric Ravilious - Village Street (1936)

One morning he woke up to see the aged Castle Hedingham postman coming down the street: 

'He took his time of course – he has a zigzag course and a shuffle that has all time before it – and until each letter has been looked at carefully with a lamp you don’t get it.'

And after visiting his wife Tirzah in hospital after the birth of their first child, he noted: 

'They produce tea at every visit and any hour and actually offer cigarettes. I didn’t know hospitals were ever like this.’

On another occasion he reported with some amusement how an earnest Paul Nash tried to persuade him and others to take Surrealism and the other art movements of the time more seriously. Ravilious took his work seriously, but he looked on the world with a humorous eye.

Not that the German artists discussed so brilliantly by Andrew Graham-Dixon were lacking in wit. A brutal satirical humour pervades the work of George Grosz and a more subtle variant the paintings of Max Beckmann. We were treated to the sight of Georg Baselitz's scandalous 1963 work 'Die Gross Nacht im Eimer', although AGD stood in front of it to obscure the giant phallus.

Anselm Kiefer - Milky Way (1985-7)

I have spent some time in Germany, particularly in Cologne and Berlin, and as I watched I tried to square the BBC4 version of the country's art history with what I knew. Was it all really that heavy? That grim? Who did AGD leave out?

Anselm Kiefer? Surely an artist who should have been included, given his fascination for German history and culture - but by no means a light-hearted painter. Then there are Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, whose work in the 1960s shared some qualities with Pop Art, but not its lightness.

These last two lived and worked in Cologne, which is home to one of Europe's best modern art galleries, Museum Ludwig. When it opened in 1986, the Ludwig was one of the first museums devoted exclusively to 20th century art, and in particular to the art Hitler termed degenerate. In fact the initial donation of work that was to become the Museum Ludwig collection was made in 1946 by a local lawyer, who had amassed and preserved work by Kirchner, Eric Hechel, Otto Mueller and other Expressionist painters.

Among these are paintings of great beauty and sensitivity - intense, perhaps, but full of colour. The dynamic use of colour was what first attracted me to Expressionist painting, and my (slightly hazy) memory of first visiting Museum Ludwig is of a fantastic room full of bold, energetic paintings. I loved Kirchner and the rest not because their work was grim but because it was spirited and exciting.

Otto Mueller - Lovers (1919)

This is a minor quibble. German art has been woefully - if not surprisingly - neglected in this country, and Andrew Graham-Dixon has provided us with a scholarly, entertaining introduction.

Ravilious, incidentally, was well aware of growing international tensions and the threat of war from 1936 onwards, but prefered not to dwell on the subject. Here, he reports to Helen Binyon an encounter in 'the Gentlemen' at the Geological Museum in London (July 36):
I was there in the morning and three or four window cleaners were having a quiet smoke. One said 'What's this place then' - 'Oh it's geology' - and then slowly and thoughtfully 'it's appertaining to the minerals what's in the earth, what's in the bowels of the earth'. After a bit somebody said 'I wonder how long it would take a poor bugger to clean all the windows by himself.'