The Shock of the New - Season 1

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The Mechanical Paradise

1 - The Mechanical Paradise

Air Date: September 21, 1980

The irruption of the machine as a catalyst for the change in the forms and visions of artists in the early twentieth century. Cubism and Futurism as the movement of modern world and embodied in a canvas.

The Powers That Be

2 - The Powers That Be

Air Date: September 28, 1980

After the WW1 art is not indifferent to the change that the catastrophe had been. A provocative and ironic art, Dadaism was continued by militant leftist artists in Germany. In Russia, the communist revolution attracted modern artists to the fight, believing that they would change society to a fairer world, but they soon saw their utopia failed.

The Landscape of Pleasure

3 - The Landscape of Pleasure

Air Date: October 5, 1980

Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.

Trouble in Utopia

4 - Trouble in Utopia

Air Date: October 12, 1980

The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.

The Threshold of Liberty

5 - The Threshold of Liberty

Air Date: October 19, 1980

Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.

The View from the Edge

6 - The View from the Edge

Air Date: October 26, 1980

The interior of the mind, the obsessions and the forces that dominate life, form the work of modern artists from van Gogh and Munch, to the American abstract expressionists.

Culture as Nature

7 - Culture as Nature

Air Date: November 2, 1980

In the mid-twentieth century the symbols of modern culture reflect the power of the media. Advertising, radio and television became the subject of artists. Pop art broke into the scene.

The Future That Was

8 - The Future That Was

Air Date: November 9, 1980

The end of modernity makes Robert Hughes raise the trajectory of art and its surroundings during the twentieth century and doubts about its future and achievements.