Saturday, May 17, 2014
The Story of Women and Art, BBC Two, review: 'an enticing argument'
According to Professor Amanda Vickery, The Story of Women in Art is that women have never been allowed to be part of the story. Her mission is to redress this imbalance. While only a small percentage of the art in the world's most illustrious collections is by women, that isn't – obviously – because women in times past were just duffers with a paintbrush. Starting with the Renaissance and, in this first episode, moving through the court of Philip II of Spain and on to Holland, a little sleuth work threw up a host of brilliant, and largely unknown female artists.
Where Vickery really came in to her own was in asking why they are unknown. I have to say that I find her on-screen presence a little overbearing - her delivery is akin to how I talk to my dog when he's been a jolly good boy and she has borrowed Andrew Marr's jazz hands and sent them windmilling in to overdrive.
READ: The woman that art history forgot
But her argument is enticing, not least because unlike so many modern arts documentaries she actually has an argument. So in the case of each of these unsung heroines, she would take a picture and pick it apart (not literally, leave that to Fake or Fortune?), offering suggestions as to why these women have been forgotten. In many cases it was a distinctly modern problem – the women faced a choice between careers and family life and plumped for the latter. They stopped working.
Any BBC programme that casts new light on obscure works of art, and cocks a snook at the canon in the process, is one worth watching in my book, and on those grounds alone The Story of Women in Art earned its slot.
One thing I would say, however, is that given this is television, and we all have acres of flat screen real estate in every room these days, could the BBC not have done a bit better than showing some of the actual pictures by filming them displayed on Vickery's iPad? A series that asks us – quite rightly – to pay attention to what we're looking at, should give us the best possible chance to look at it.
READ: POP GO THE WOMEN, CULTURE SHOW, REVIEW
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/3a8359c0/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0Ctv0Eand0Eradio0Ereviews0C10A8252760CThe0EStory0Eof0EWomen0Eand0EArt0EBBC0ETwo0Ereview0Ean0Eenticing0Eargument0Bhtml/story01.htm
