Simon Schama's Power of Art

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DVD details

Actor: Simon Schama
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 400 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Warner

DVD Reviews of Simon Schama's Power of Art

DVD Review: Best Insight to understanding these artists!
Summary: 5 Stars

Currently, I am an adult student in The Glassell Art School, a part of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX. I am taking an abstract painting class and these CD's have helped me understand the who, why and how much better than reading a book. I love them and have recommended them to the rest of my class.

DVD Review: Introspective Gold
Summary: 5 Stars

A beautifully produced series on the lives and times of 8 artists, capturing the mastery of each. The individual genius which separates their art from their contemporaries, discussion on technique, uniqueness, balanced with the intrigues, personal and political of their times, makes this into a must-have for artist information. I have not tired of looking at this collection, each replay giving me more information and appreciation that I had missed in a previous viewing. The narration takes place in numerous venues throughout the individual programs, so it never feels like a monotonous reading from a script -- and Schama's sense of proportion; historical, individual, relation to the times coupled with a nice sense of humor makes this an informative, yet totally enjoyable series to watch.

DVD Review: Great video, lousy audio
Summary: 4 Stars

This set of videos is great. He brings the artists to life and gives us a better understanding of their character and the context in which they created their work. However, the audio quality is poor. The volume level will go from good to bad often enough to be distracting.

DVD Review: More, more...
Summary: 5 Stars

I am a serious photographer, who is trying to find his way through the hassle of the modern world. What makes you to shoot a really "good" photograph? That's the search for every individual, who is in the need of expressing himself/herself in an artistic form. Is it equipment? Well! May be. But surely not exactly. So, I decided to dig deeper and try to understand how visual art was created in the good old ages when people were not technologically strongly supported to create an image as they are now. And during my research, I came across with this set of DVDs. Each episode is concentared on one masterpiece that the artist created. In the creation phase of the masterpiece, additional background information about the social happenings, the personality of the artist, the important steps in the artist's life on the way to the creation of the masterpiece are mentioned. It's very very useful for art enthusiasts to create awareness abour certain concepts, trends and styles. But surely an entry tool to warm you up to go further. In the endless sea of art, 8 artists are really not too much. But these 8 artists are selected to cover a significant poriton of the understanding of art history. When you watch the DVDs, I believe you would wish to know at least this much information about the other masters of art and their famous work. You will surely feel yourself richer and your approach to look at a visual art subjects or sculpture will surely change.

DVD Review: Great for beginners
Summary: 4 Stars

I recently wrote my first review on Amazon which of course compelled me to add some more. Not long ago I bought these series and I have to say they are great. I am an artist myself and it is always nice to be reminded of the great ones, in "plain English". Simon makes things interesting, if not perhaps a little overly dramatic, but this does add the entertainment factor. I think that the information is good, and well presented, and that if you have had none or almost no exposure to any of these artists, this is certainly a good way to start.

All in all, I enjoyed it, but would have liked something a little more thorough (but that's because I have years of art school behind me). If you want to get started or just add a some more to what you already know, buy this product, you won't be disappointed.

Description of Simon Schama's Power of Art

Beautiful. Fascinating. Emotional. Art is all of the above. But only a few are powerful. These are the works that not only lift you off your feet in their sheer artistry they forever alter the human psyche. Focusing on eight iconic works of art Power of Art reveals the history of visual imagination through the ages from the murderous world of baroque Rome to paranoid revolutionary Paris; from the carnage of civil-war Spain to the paradox of 1950s New York caught between Cold War jitters and Manhattan glitter. A combination of dramatic reconstruction spectacular photography and Simon Schama's unique personal style of storytelling transport the viewer back to the intense moments that great works were conceived and born. The eight works of art profiled in this series are: Caravaggio's David and Goliath; Bernini's The Ecstasy of St. Theresa Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis; David's Death of Marat; Turner's The Slave Ship; Van Gogh's Self-Portrait; Picasso's Guernica and Rothko's Seagram Building Murals.Running Time: 400 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating:?NR UPC:?794051299628 Manufacturer No:?E2996

Watching Simon Schama's Power of Art is like taking an Ivy League course in art appreciation, with the folksy but knowledgeable Schama as guide and interpreter. A collection of hour-long films on eight seminal artists and their groundbreaking works, which originally aired on British television, this boxed set is as entertaining as it is enlightening, with Schama doing for Western art what, say, Steve Irwin did for Australian natural history. Eight artists are featured--Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko--and each portrait of the artist weaves biography and historical context to help explain the true power of his works.

The segment on Van Gogh is, as expected, emotional, yet Schama convincingly portrays Van Gogh as not consumed by madness, but fighting off the episodes with painting. Van Gogh painted one of his most evocative works, Wheat Field With Crows, which even his brother, Theo, recognized was about to put his brother on the artistic map. Yet, as Schama points out, within weeks, Van Gogh had killed himself. "Now why would he want to do that?" Schama muses--and then proceeds to narrate the tormented tale of the answer. Along the way, the viewer gains new appreciation for Van Gogh's signature works, including his famous sunflowers. "Technically, these are still lives," Schama says, "but there's nothing still about them... the sunflowers [seem to be] organisms landing violently from a burning sun." If the reenactments of the artists' lives are a bit overdone, it's forgivable, since the cumulative effect, in an hour, is a new appreciation of the work and the man.

Extras include frank and very funny commentaries by Schama and his co-producer, and lots of behind-the-scenes dish on how certain scenes were achieved. The teeming French opera scene in the "David" episode, for instance, was cast using just 20 French extras and then the rest created by CGI--"the scene works better, really, than [the film] King Kong," Schama says with delight. --A.T. Hurley

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