Civilisation (1969) and Civilisations (2015), British views of the past
January 18, 2019 10:00 PM   Subscribe

In 1966, David Attenborough, the controller of the recently launched BBC2, asked historian Kenneth Clark to host a show, which would become Civilisation (Wikipedia), which inspired audiences in the UK and US to go to head to art museums after each of the 13 episodes originally aired, in 1969 and 1970, respectively, as noted in The Seductive Enthusiasm of Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation” by Morgan Meis for the New Yorker. Almost 50 years later, BBC returned to the theme, now titled Civilisations (Wikipedia), with three presenters, Mary Beard, David Olusoga and Simon Schama, who looked beyond the Great Men of Europe (BBC). And it's all online ...

Civilisation on the BBC iPlayer (sign-in required), and via YouTube:
  1. The Skin of our Teeth
  2. The Great Thaw
  3. Romance and Reality
  4. Man - the Measure of all Things
  5. The Hero as Artist
  6. Protest and Communication
  7. Grandeur and Obedience
  8. The Light of Experience
  9. The Pursuit of Happiness
  10. The Smile of Reason
  11. The Worship of Nature
  12. The Fallacies of Hope
  13. Heroic Materialism

Clark, in the forward to the book (Goodreads; Amazon) that accompanied his 1969 series, recognized and addressed some of his omissions: “Obviously I could not include the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Syria, Greece an Rome, because to have done so would have meant another ten programmes at least; and the same was true of China, Persia, India and the world of Islam. … Moreover I have the feeling that one should not try to assess a culture without knowing its language… and unfortunately I do not know any Oriental languages. Should I then have dropped the title ‘Civilisation’? I didn’t want to, because the word had triggered me off, and remained a kind of stimulus; and I didn’t suppose that anyone would be so obtuse as to think that I had forgotten about the great civilisations of the pre-Christian era and the East.”

In reviewing Clark's documentaries, Mary Beard noted his influence from Johann Joachim Winckelmann (Wikipedia), a German art historian and archaeologist whose series The History of Ancient Art (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3-4; all via Archive.org) is also very male and Euro-centric, omitting the role of women and diminishing the importance and influences of other cultures.

BBC 2, decades later, addressed these gaps in the original series in Civilisations, which ran for 9 episodes, thought 10 were originally planned. You can see those 9 on the BBC iPlayer (sign-in required), PBS (Passport members) or on Daily Motion:
  1. Second Moment of Creation (Simon Schama)
  2. How Do We Look? (Mary Beard)
  3. Picturing Paradise (Simon Schama)
  4. The Eye of Faith (Mary Beard)
  5. The Triumph of Art (Simon Schama)
  6. First Contact (David Olusoga)
  7. Radiance (Simon Schama)
  8. The Cult of Progress (David Olusoga)
  9. The Vital Spark (Simon Schama)
posted by filthy light thief (21 comments total) 58 users marked this as a favorite
 
Civilisation with an s, previously, but the YouTube links are dead, and it was 3 years before the follow-up series would air.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:01 PM on January 18, 2019


How timely! I just finished watching Civilizations a little while ago and had looked to see if there was a Fanfare discussion of it. I was quite pleased by the expanded view of the history of art, but I do think Clark was right about that additional history needing more time to cover.

The latter series felt a bit glancing at times in how it looked at the objects and cultures it covered, made even slightly more noticeable for some repetition between episodes. That was almost assuredly unavoidable given the choice to spread the focus along a much wider canvas, which was unquestionably the right decision, but it did cost the series some sense of vigor that came with the narrower focus.

Part of that could, however, also be coming from my own growth of knowledge since I saw the first series many years ago. Clark's Civilization was actually the basis of the first course I took in college and helped fan the spark of excitement about art history I'd developed. No later series could hope to match that effect for me as I've maintained that fascination ever since.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:31 PM on January 18, 2019


Oh, and that isn't to suggest the new series isn't worth your time. It really is quite good and does add much needed context the first series lacked. Schama, Beard, and Olusoga are fine hosts and in many things have a better perspective than Clark could provide.

I also apologize for spelling Civilisations with a z in the above post and letting my US-ism get the better of me.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:38 PM on January 18, 2019


FWIW, that's the way it's spelled on PBS.

Also, I agree that it's a shame that the new series is so short. If the first one was 13 episodes, why not double it? You have three hosts now, so you could triple it!

Except it's the Beeb, so 9 episodes is a long running show ;)
posted by filthy light thief at 10:49 PM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


I would have been thrilled if they'd just focused on non-Western art in this shorter series, since those elements were the more exciting for me, but I get why that wasn't likely to happen.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:56 PM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


There are amazing things in the newer series, but I agree with some critics that it lacked coherence, something that’s inevitably highlighted when it’s set against Clark’s magisterial view. It may be that for good reasons we don’t have the required Eurocentric, synthesising confidence any more, and of course having three people involved makes a consistent central thesis harder to deliver. Even so, I missed something; I learned a lot of things from the new series but I don’t feel it enhanced my understanding the way Clark did.
posted by Segundus at 12:45 AM on January 19, 2019


I watched the first episode of the original series a while back and calling it Eurocentric is putting it mildly. Whatever he said in his book later, Clark's view in that episode is clearly there's only one true civilisation and it's a white, Christian (English) one.

The title, "The Skin of our Teeth", gives the game away already, with Clark trotting out the old idea of Europe (by which he means western Europe and only a limited subset at that) having fallen to barbarism with the fall of the Roman Empire and that it was only the fortitious survival of literacy in monastries that kept the spark of civilisation alive.

No real mention of Byzantium, the civilisations of Islam dealt with in one sentence as just another group of invading barbarians, no clue that while in England and France civilisation may have regressed, it was flourishing in the Balkans, or Spain, or the traditional mediterrean haunts of the Roman Empire.

It put me right off watching the rest of the series.

If the later series lacked cohesion it's only for the best, because the only way Clark could form a coherent vision of civilisation is by severily limiting the scope of what a civilisation is.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:28 AM on January 19, 2019 [3 favorites]


My parents bought me the original series on VHS when I was… early teens, maybe? And it really was a terrific grounding in the history of Western European art from the Middle Ages. Even at the time, at least 15 years after it was released, it seemed old fashioned, and I expect I would notice more problems if I watched it now; but as someone who liked art but had very spotty knowledge, I learned a huge amount and above all it was a really helpful overview of how it all fit together.

More generally, if my schooling was anything to go by, we didn’t do enough birds-eye view, large scale teaching of history. I learned about the Industrial Revolution, and the history of voting reform, the Atlantic slave trade, and I can’t remember what else now; but I don’t think I ever had a class which taught how all the big events in British history fit together. Try to make sure that students can put the following in chronological order: The Battle of Trafalgar, the founding of the Church of England, the Gunpowder Plot, the American war of Independence, the English Civil War, the Partition of India, the Glorious Revolution, the Wars of the Roses.

And by the nature of it, it’s going to be oversimplified and lacking nuance, but I find it really helpful to have a framework to fit new information into.

Of course I’ve only taught my hypothetical schoolchildren British history, so they still don’t know anything about how that history fits into broader events in Europe, let alone the entire rest of the world… and frankly my curriculum is Anglocentric, even within the British Isles. There’s just too much history, that’s the trouble. Too much art, too many books.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 2:31 AM on January 19, 2019 [4 favorites]


This is also on US Netflix, if you don't have Passport or already have Netflix. We watched the first episode but haven't had time to watch the rest yet.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:37 AM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


Came for the smug Eurocentricism, stayed for the lip smacking/constant swallowing.
posted by fnerg at 8:35 AM on January 19, 2019


It should never be forgotten that the full title of the original series is Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark. He was an art historian of considerable stature, but his worldview was definitely formed by his own time and background. Goodness knows that it takes a blinkered view of its subject, but what it does it does well enough that we are still talking about it fifty years later – there are very few factual television series that can claim anything close to that logevity of influence.

Civilisation was the first and most influential, but the Beeb had several series produced in the next few years that were also in the same mould, notably Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man and Alistair Cooke’s America: A Personal History of the United States. David Attenborough ws truly a visionary controller of BBC2 even if his intention may have been related to the practical consideration of using art to act as an advertisement for a new colour television channel.

I think there should be more new series in the same tradition, equally idiosyncratic, not really to make up for the deficiencies of their predecessors as they will doubtless have their own deficiencies, but because we gain from the multiplicity of viewpoints and focuses. The urge to do it over but get it “right” this time may correct some of the obvious biases, but also gives the result the slightly unfocussed result noted in several posts above. It also wastes resources that could go to making Feminism: A Personal View, or whatever.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2019 [7 favorites]


A few years ago I got the companion book and tried watching the original series. Didn't make it through more than the foreword and the first couple of episodes. It is extremely steeped in an Anglocentric Western Civ perspective, as Martin Wisse notes above. You can even see him basically apologizing that he couldn't dwell on the Vikings more because they didn't actually count as a civilization by the definition he was using, all but saying he loved them so because they were so white.

The Story of Maths [...] almost a bit like restorative justice

And my ability to watch this ground to a halt in the second episode when the narrator chortled with glee about how "Maths has never had such a fun purpose!" while relating an anecdote about an emperor consulting mathematicians regarding a schedule for having sex with his wives, concubines, and slaves. Serial rape! Tee-hee!
posted by Zed at 10:27 AM on January 19, 2019


It may be that for good reasons we don’t have the required Eurocentric, synthesising confidence any more

Correct and correct, I think.

The problem is that intelligent, curious, and good-hearted young people approaching things like original recipe Civilisation will use it as a starting point and something to rebel against until they reach the natural adult stage of understanding the limits--and uses--of all syntheses and resigning themselves to the inevitable partialness of their knowledge of a world history teeming with wondrous things. Less intelligent, curious, or good-hearted young people will adopt it as a stifling orthodoxy at best or a basis for hatefulness at worst.
posted by praemunire at 10:29 AM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


And that of course leaves out the young people from groups excluded by such works, who can be left wondering if their peoples have made historical contributions at all, when of course they have. It's a burden even for a white woman like me to overcome the psychological implications of diminishing women's roles, obviously much worse for people of color.
posted by praemunire at 10:31 AM on January 19, 2019


thank you FLT!! I look forward to sinking my teeth into these!
posted by supermedusa at 10:42 AM on January 19, 2019


While the narration in "Civilisation" is cringeworthy by modern standards (not that it was particularly well-received when it first aired), the production is stunning for 1969, helped here by a sympathetic film transfer - it's hard to imagine changing channels from Patrick Troughton in Doctor Who or Linda Thorson in The Avengers to a documentary that would stand up visually pretty well today. I'm seriously considering muting the audio and putting some period-appropriate psychedelic rock on instead...
posted by offog at 1:47 PM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


I also recently watched Clark's original series. Didn't get all smug about Europe at all, just talking about what he knew about. Lots of paintings in his definition of 'Civilization' (*very* little music, which I *think* is an art). (Is art is a true sign of civilization, or a costume ball with mandatory masks?)

Perhaps he didn't want to talk about Europe's definition of 'Ethics' - a more scrutable sign of 'civilization' - for example. Which would have proved difficult even then, let alone for a modern audience, which can easily check up on, say, 'Black Hole of Calcutta' or 'Belgian Congo'. But I digress.

Maybe that's why the Beeb started talking about the others. "Oh, look, over there ! No, no, there ! "

All of the other civilizations have had TV and tape recorders since those halcyon days. I wonder if they have bothered to represent themselves since then. If so, it'd be great to see how. Anyone? Anyone?
posted by Twang at 1:56 PM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


All of the other civilizations have had TV and tape recorders since those halcyon days. I wonder if they have bothered to represent themselves since then. If so, it'd be great to see how. Anyone? Anyone?


...annnnnd here we have a case-study for my possibility #2.
posted by praemunire at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


If the later series lacked cohesion it's only for the best, because the only way Clark could form a coherent vision of civilisation is by severily limiting the scope of what a civilisation is.

The recent series doesn't at all lack for cohesion, it has a guiding theme, that of our shared history and approaches to art, and traces that directly within the shows by how works in one culture act as influences on another and by the way it structures the episodes around shared concerns in art that help generate the creation of art in varying forms.

That part of the series is excellent and makes it worth the watching alone. The relative complaint is more in how the breadth of that theme makes the examinations of art sometimes feel more like a greatest hits view, where they offer best selections without being able to dig in depth as to the the forces within the individual cultures that led to their creation or provide the same level of enthusiasm or sometimes awe for those works that made Clark's program so successful. It's a broad sweeping view that seeks to capture art history from a less judgemental point of view, and it's good at that, but that approach has limits of its own.

In terms of how they vieweed civilisations, for example, they emphasize more the open elements in them than the restrictive ones, which also obviously shape influence and what can be created. The show Civilisations was most successful, I felt, when they were dealing with architecture, where the cross cultural comparisons could more easily be made along roughly equivalent lines and where the camera could do more to suggest the majesty of the works without requiring as much explanation. Individually many of the different segments worked well, the repeated views of Indian art was the most interesting for me, but other segments felt more pro forma, needed to fill out the theme, but somewhat lacking in weight when balanced against the more compelling choices.

As Quinbus Flestrin said above, what is needed is more voices giving their own deep takes on selected areas of art history, where the passion can be communicated more clearly. Diversity by that method is the best way to engage audiences in the works themselves and in the deeper processes that helped create them. The broad historical approaches like that of the recent series are still needed as well to provide a sense of overall shape and balance to the story, that suits the "history" side which we can look at with some more distanced perspective, but that doesn't work as well for the "art" side of art history as art communicates its values as much through emotional involvement as discursive logic.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:40 PM on January 19, 2019


Related (BBC, historical, all-encompassing in vision): A History of the World in 100 Objects
posted by Leon at 4:49 PM on January 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


In terms of how they vieweed civilisations, for example, they emphasize more the open elements in them than the restrictive ones, which also obviously shape influence and what can be created. The show Civilisations was most successful, I felt, when they were dealing with architecture, where the cross cultural comparisons could more easily be made along roughly equivalent lines and where the camera could do more to suggest the majesty of the works without requiring as much explanation. Individually many of the different segments worked well, the repeated views of Indian art was the most interesting for me, but other segments felt more pro forma, needed to fill out the theme, but somewhat lacking in weight when balanced against the more compelling choices.

I actually also thought that the episode on landscapes was pretty good. At least I learned things I hadn't considered (Chinese landscape painting as an escape from civil war, 1500's German landscape painting as subtle religious allegory, Brugel introducing social commentary, the Hudson River School bringing in a new nations' first taste of "Eurocentrism isn't all that", Ansel Adams introducing environmentalism, and ending with the Hubbell telescope and the Pale Blue Dot and making you realize that "oh right, this does fit".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:07 AM on January 20, 2019 [1 favorite]


« Older Tea by sea. Cha by land.   |   Just me and my dog and an impossible view Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments