The Shock of the New

The Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary television series written and presented by Robert Hughes produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films and produced by Lorna Pegram.[1] It was broadcast by the BBC in 1980 in the United Kingdom and by PBS in 1981 in the United States.[2][3] It addressed the development of modern art since the Impressionists and was accompanied by a book of the same name; its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised. In 2004 Hughes created a one-hour update to The Shock of the New titled The NEW Shock of the New.[4]

The Shock of the New
Directed by	David Lewis Richardson
Narrated by	Robert Hughes
Release date	1980

Series outline

The series consisted of eight episodes each one hour long (58 min approx).[5] It was re-broadcast on PBS in the United States. In the three cases, where PBS changed the titles, they are given in square brackets below. Quotations are spoken by Martin Jarvis.

1. Mechanical Paradise – How the development of technology influenced art between 1880 and end of World War I. Cubism and Futurism
   • Cézanne, Picasso, Braque, Gris, Leger, Delaunay, Marinetti, Boccioni, Balla, Severini, Picabia, Duchamp
2. The Powers That Be [Shapes of Dissent] – Examining the relationship between modern art and authority. Dada, Constructivism, Futurism, architecture of power
   • World War I and industrialised death, Exile and intellectuals as a class, Lenin, Tzara, Janco, Arp, Ball, Duchamp, Kirchner, Ernst, Höch, Dix, de Chirico, Hausmann, Grosz, Gabo, Tatlin, Moholy-Nagy, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Marinetti, Prampolini, Speer, Piacentini, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Albany Mall, Picasso's Guernica, Tinguely
3. The Landscape of Pleasure – Examining art's relationship with the pleasures of nature, and visions of paradise 1870s to 1950s. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism
   • Fête champêtre, Titian, Giorgione, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Gainsborough, Bourgeoisie, Seurat, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, the vivid colours of the South, Paul Gauguin, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Braque, Picasso, late Matisse
4. Trouble in Utopia – Examining the aspirations and reality of modern architecture. International Style, Art Nouveau, Futurist architecture, urban planning
   • Johnson, Boullée, Garnier, Chiattone, Sant'Elia, Melnikov, Rodchenko, Leonidov, Sullivan, Labrouste, Berg, Mies, Le Corbusier, Chandigarh, Werkbund exhibition 1927, Bauhaus, Gropius, Behrends, De Stijl, Rietveld, van Duesberg, Mondrian, La Defense, Pruitt–Igoe, Costa, Niemeyer, Brasilia
5. The Threshold of Liberty – Examining the surrealists' attempts to make art without restrictions.
   • May 1968, Breton, Ernst, de Chirico, Böcklin, Ducasse, child art, madness, Rousseau, Cheval, Miro, Gaudi, Dali, flea market, Jean, Brauner, Paalen, Oppenheim, Man Ray, Margritte, de Sade, Catholicism and sexual taboo, Bellmer, Cornell, Pollock, Rothko, Gorky, Hofmann, 1945 liberation, Christo, Burden, hippies and self-expression, Vietnam War, cult of youth
6. The View from the Edge [Sublime and Anxious Eye] – A look at those who made visual art from the crags and vistas of their internal world. Expressionism
   • van Gogh, Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Kirchner, Kokoschka, Soutine, Bacon, de Kooning, photographical evidence of the Holocaust, Marc, Klee, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Rothko, Pollock, Motherwell
7. Culture as Nature – Examining the art that referred to the man-made world which fed off culture itself. Pop art and celebrity
   • O'Keeffe, Davis, Rauschenberg, Schwitters, Johns, Hamilton, the influence of television, Warhol, Liechtenstein, Rosenquist, Katz, Las Vegas as a single "lousy" artwork, Oldenburg, McLuhan and quantity over quality
8. The Future That Was [End of Modernity] – The commercialisation of modern art, the decline of modernism, and art without substance. Land art, performance art, and body art
   • Heizer, MoMA and rich patrons, SoHo and urban renewal, Pompidou Centre and the changing uses of art, da Panicale, art as public discourse, the Salon system, the avantgarde and the bourgeoisie, Courbet, Andre, Judd, public and private, Segal, Kienholz, Frankenthaler, Louis, Noland, Stella, Riley, fashion, the art market, Brisley, Samaras, Rainer, Hockney, Beuys, de Maria

2004 update

• The NEW Shock of the New (2004) - How the art world has changed, 25 years later.
  • Eiffel tower, World Trade Center, 9/11, Turner, Goya, David, Picasso's Guernica as the last truly political painting, Whitney Biennial, Warhol, fashion as the primary model of art, Koons, Duchamp, Michelangelo, Masaccio, exploding prices of the art market, Rego, Kiefer, information overload, Hockney, the skill of drawing, art as the opposite of mass media, Freud, Gilbert and George, post-modernism, slowness of painting, Mondrian, Rothko, Kelly, Scully, beauty, Eliasson

Book

The book of the series was published in 1980 by the BBC under the title The Shock of the New: Art and the century of change.[6] It was republished in 1991 by Thames and Hudson.[7]

Video releases

The televised edition of The Shock of the New is posted on the internet[8][9] and is published as a set of DVDs.[10]

See also

• Civilisation
• The Ascent of Man

References

1. credits
2. Episode guide
3. The Shock of the New on PBS
4. Robert Hughes on updating The Shock Of The New
5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dtkxv/episodes/guide
6. . ISBN 0-563-17780-2. Missing or empty |title= (help)
7. Hughes, Robert (1981). The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change. ISBN 0-500-27582-3.
8. The Shock of the New on Youtube.
9. The Shock of the New on Vimeo
10. The Shock of the New on DVD. BBC and Time Life Films. Ambrose Video

External links

• The Shock of the New on IMDb