The Shock of the New

Synopsis

The renowned definitive eight part series on the rise and fall of the modern art movement presented by Australian art critic Robert Hughes.

First Air Date: 1980-09-21

Last Air Date: 1980-11-09

Number of Seasons: 1

Number of Episodes: 8

Created By: Robert Hughes

View Technical Specifications on IMDb

Top Cast

Robert Hughes as Host

Seasons

Season 1 (1980)

No overview available for this season.

Episodes:

Ep. 1: The Mechanical Paradise (1980-09-21)

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.
Ep. 2: The Powers That Be (1980-09-28)

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.
Ep. 3: The Landscape of Pleasure (1980-10-05)

Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.
Ep. 4: Trouble in Utopia (1980-10-12)

The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.
Ep. 5: The Threshold of Liberty (1980-10-19)

Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.
Ep. 6: The View from the Edge (1980-10-26)

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.
Ep. 7: Culture as Nature (1980-11-02)

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.
Ep. 8: The Future That Was (1980-11-09)

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.