Art history can be deadly.

If it's happened to you, you know what I'm talking about--

a dark room, an endless succession

of flat images on a screen, names, and dates,

and movements, and napping.

If you've had a great art history class, I'm so glad.

And if you've had a single art history class,

well, it's maybe better than none.

I'm thinking about this because I've

been watching the new series "Civilizations," which

takes a wide view in talking about the beginnings

of human creativity and its development

in many different parts of the world.

It's a follow-up to a series the BBC aired in 1969

called "Civilization," singular, where art historian Kenneth

Clark outlined a personal and very Eurocentric account of,

quote, "the great works of Western man."

He wasn't telling the history of art per se, but what he called,

quote, "all the life giving human activities we

lump under the term civilization."

Barbarism was, in his view, the opposite

of civilization and nearly wiped out civilization entirely.

But he does clarify that great works of art

can be produced in barbarous society.

Now, this is problematic from a number of angles

and was even old-fashioned at the time.

But people loved it, in Europe and in the US.

They felt empowered to understand cultural history,

had watching parties, and bought the book.

Afterward, there was even an uptick in cultural tourism.

50 years later come "Civilizations,"

in which three art historians attempt

a much more global history of human artistic production,

starting with the first human marks

we've discovered in caves, and skipping around the world,

through history and up to today.

It's a lot to cover.

But rather than promoting an understanding

of "civilization" fighting to hold barbarians at bay,

the new series emphasizes how cultures around the world

have influenced each other, constantly

evolving, and borrowing, and exchanging ideas.

They added extra "s" to the Renaissance

as well, telling us of the flourishing of art

in areas other than Italy.

We're told of Rembrandt's interest in Mughal art

and its impact on his work stemming

from the Dutch East India Company's

trade between the Netherlands and India.

There is a tendency in art history

to tell the story of influence moving in one direction.

But here, we see the tides flowing both ways,

weaving a much more complicated tale.

This shift from civilization to civilizations

reflects a wider transformation in the way art history

and history in general is taught.

Now you can take classes not only about art history,

but classes about how we teach art history,

or methodology, a word I hoped I'd never say publicly.

These days, there's a wider acceptance

that any one topic can be approached

from a variety of directions.

Like you can look at a work of art

formally, analyzing only what you can see--

color, line, composition, et cetera.

You can read a work iconographically,

recognizing the symbols it might contain

and what those symbols meant when the work was created.

You can take a biographical approach,

researching the story and intentions of the person

or people who made it.

Or you can use a whole swath of what

are called critical theories to better understand your subject,

like psychoanalytic theories seeking out the subconscious

drives that might be at play in a work

or Marxist theory looking at the economic and social conditions

that inform the work.

Postcolonial theory, you'll be surprised to learn,

seeks to understand a work through the colonial

or imperial forces that might have shaped it.

The new "Civilizations" doesn't shy away from these readings,

pointing out European artists' interest in Islamic culture

as a source of the exotic, often concocting scenes and history

as whole cloth, fantasies, propagating stereotypes

rather than reflecting anything based in reality.

We can also look at the ways race, gender, and sexualities

have and have not been represented in art

and how whole categories of people

have been excluded from our history books

or were prevented from making work and showing it

in the first place.

These are just a few of the many lenses

you can use to look at art deploying one or many of them

to inform your understanding of a thing.

Not to complicate the matter further,

but what even is art to begin with?

You'll note "Civilizations" sidesteps the question

by using their amorphous but now more inclusive term.

There is art, anthropology, architecture, design,

visual culture, material culture, thing theory.

We use these terms to talk about all

of the stuff, and environments, and experiences

that humans have made, understanding that none of them

is sufficient on its own.

But for all of the nuance we've added to the study of art

at the upper levels, very little has changed

in our introductions to art.

What's most often communicated is a linear narrative

of cultures and movements, at least

in America, focusing on the, yes,

significant contributions of ancient Greece and Rome,

the Italian Renaissance, perhaps touching

on a few non-Western parts of the world.

In general, we're told a story of advancement and progress

from one school of art to the next.

Impressionism, to Neo-Impressionism,

to Post-Impressionism-- ism begetting ism,

as if the creation of art is a single timeline rather than

a vast confusing web.

The art of the last 50 years and of today

is either left out or smushed into the final 15

minutes of the last class.

Complication and nuance are reserved

for higher-level courses where, if you get there,

you'll steadily pick apart the narrative you were originally

presented within your introduction.

The more linear version of history you first learn

may have been easier to memorize and promptly forget.

But it recklessly sacrifices so much

in its efforts to simplify and smooth over.

It also tends to gloss over the important factor of you

in the story of art and use of the past.

By this I mean how artworks have been interpreted historically

and in the present, and the biases inevitable in whomever

is telling the story.

Kenneth Clark's "Civilization" was flawed, for sure.

But he was very effective in sharing

with others what it is he loved about art, and architecture,

and philosophy.

Just a few years later, one of my personal heroes,

John Berger, came out with a BBC series of his own

called "Ways of Seeing," which he also adapted into a book.

Rather than attempt any sort of overview of art,

he sought instead to teach us how

to look at things in the world in a critical

but altogether regulatory way.

Seek it out and watch it.

I have chosen to teach art history

through this show in my own particular and flawed way.

It's inefficient and scattershot,

jumping around in time and space,

bringing up stories of art from the past

as they relate to the present.

I privilege the things I happened

to learn about in my American schools and career.

I use the term art in a broad way,

trying not to give it boundaries, but instead let

it be a shapeless, nebulous catch-all.

Every way we talk about art, or whatever you want to call it,

is flawed, and incomplete, and biased.

But it's a matter of which flawed, and incomplete,

and biased way or ways we pay attention to.

I would argue that you don't like art history

because the stories you learn usually

don't bear any resemblance to the world

as you experience it, which is messy, and complicated,

and hard to make sense of.

With hindsight, we're able to craft totalizing narratives

which are helpful when the AP College Board tries to test

your mastery of a subject.

But those narratives are ultimately

unhelpful in getting you to like art, in teaching you how to see

and how to be a critical thinker.

Maybe the goal is to absorb as many

of the flawed, incomplete, and biased histories as we can,

appreciating what is there, what's missing,

and who's telling it, and to let ourselves live

with a chaotic, asynchronous story of art,

allowing for diversity, and difference, and change, which

is ultimately a more accurate and more compelling

representation of the fullness of the world.

If you're interested in absorbing

a tremendous amount of art, and architecture, and history,

you should check out "Civilizations," the new series

produced by PBS and the BBC that tells the story of art

from the dawn of human history to the present day.

It's a rigorous, and thoughtful, and mind-expanding look

at how art and creativity helped forge our societies

and cultures.

Click the links in the description below

to find out more.

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