Saturday, January 12, 2008

Power of Art

I am so impressed by Simon Schama's 'Power of Art' series on PBS. We got to see the whole series on DVD at the local art museum. I was so taken with it that I finally bought the 3-DVD series of lectures. Amazon had it for a fairly
decent price. Each of the eight artists in the series has a major painting or style that rocked the art world: Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David (da-VEED), Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko. Schama's manerisms finally got to
me in the last couple of lectures. However, over all, his discussion of the artists, the paintings that were shown, and even the background music (especially) just blew me away.

I have recently read several fictional books on Caravaggio that I really enjoyed:
'Caravaggio: A Life' by Helen Langdon
'The Lost Pianting' by Jonathan Harr

I can't wait for you to see Schama's discussion of Bernini's sculpture of St. Teresa. I ran across that particular lecture on PBS one sleepless night around 3:00 am.

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