A journey through American art with Waldemar Januszczak. Episode 1 is set in the Wild West and begins with the sublime art of the Hudson River School, whose 19th-century evocations of the vastness of America did so much to fuel the myth of the promised land. Another huge influence was the mysterious rock art of […]
What is future of the modern city? In this pioneering piece of architectural investigation, award-winning architect, Will Alsop, examines the possibilities of the Supercity.
Waldemar Januszczak visits Japan and investigates the Japanese attitude to technology. With robot monks, talking toilets, and Super Mario.
The series will celebrate material that is new to television. Waldemar will include art that is not usually thought of as ‘Renaissance art’. This will involve ‘re-classifying’ what is sometimes called Late Gothic, and showing it off as a marvelous and native artistic tradition, particularly in the remarkable field of polychrome sculpture. On top of […]
All saints in art are inventions, but no saint in art has been invented quite as furiously as Mary Magdalene. For a thousand years, artists have been throwing themselves at the task of describing her and telling her story, from Caravaggio to Cézanne, Rubens to Rembrandt, Titian to van Gogh. Her identity has evolved from […]
As Henry VIII’s court painter, Hans Holbein witnessed and recorded the most notorious era in English history. He painted most of the major characters of the age, and created the famous image of the king himself that everyone today still recognises. But who really was Holbein? Where did he come from? And what were the […]
Painting at night is difficult and problematic. So why have so many great artists taken on the challenge? Waldemar Januszczak celebrates the nocturnal art of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Velazquez, Hopper and Magritte as he explores art’s edgy relationship with the night and tries to discover why the dark adds so much extra drama and mystery […]
These days, nobody takes Rubens seriously. His vast and grandiose canvases, stuffed with wobbly mounds of female flesh, have little appeal for the modern gym-subscriber. And it’s not just the bulging nudity we don’t like. The entire tone of Rubens’s art offends us. Everything in it is too big – the epic dramas full of […]
In the looming shadow of the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, writer and critic Jonathan Glancey, examines Britain’s fantastical appetite for Great Exhibitions, and digs up many surprising and sometimes disturbing facts about these eccentric and largely forgotten national events. Travelling back in time to the Victorian heyday of the national mega-show to discover and […]
Narrated by Masi Oka, this fascinating and evocative portrait of Japan is part of the Discovery Channel’s highly acclaimed ATLAS series. The film sets out to discover the real Japan by following the lives of a diverse selection of its inhabitants: a young girl who wants to be a Geisha; a daring fisherman who braves […]
Waldemar Januszczak hates dogs. They poo outside his door, spread diseases, sniff embarrassingly around his crotch, and bring out the worst in all their owners. Who needs dogs?, asks Januszczak, as he sets off on a disastrous journey through canine history that takes him to Korea to eat dog, and to Derby where the world’s […]
