2022 Plot
I'm James Payne, a curator, gallerist and a passionate art lover. I am on a mission to demystify the art world and discover the stories behind the world’s greatest paintings and sculptures. Each episode will focus on one piece of art and break it down, using clear and concise language free of 'art-speak'.
Great Art Explained 2022 aired on February 18th, 2022.
2022 Episodes
1. The Birth of Venus by Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli’s poetic sense of beauty captivated the Florentine court. But it was his subject matter which distinguished him from other artists. He was one of the first western artist since classical times to depict non-religious scenes, and Botticelli’s inclusion of a near life size female nude was revolutionary.
2. Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama lives in a psychiatric institution, which she entered voluntarily in 1977. She is now in her nineties and still works every single day. Known for her repeated dot patterns, her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from trauma. In this video, I show that despite her quirky personality and her status as the most popular artist in the world, she is one of the most radical artists of all time. This is not a film about a specific artwork. This is a film about the simple polka dot. A dot that has obsessed Kusama for nine decades, from her struggle for recognition, to her later years as an art world sensation.
3. The Scream
Between 1863 when Munch was born and the years before the first world war, European cities were going through unprecedented change. Industrialization and economic change brought anxieties and obsessions, political unrest, and radicalism. Questions about society and the changing role of man within it, about our psyche, our social responsibilities, and most radical of all, questions about the existence of God. This is a period of Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzche. This is also the period that Munch painted The Scream.
4. The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer
By the mid 17th century, the art being produced in Catholic countries had become a powerful tool of propaganda, characterized by a heightened sense of drama, movement, and theatricality that had never been seen before. But in the Protestant Netherlands, a new wave of realism was sweeping across the country. Johannes Vermeer was producing simple domestic interiors of middle-class life. His paintings were quiet, private, and unassuming. Secular works that contained stories of real human relationships.
