Civilisations

I've never "gotten" art, but this series changed my life. I feel like I understand it now, and it's so beautiful. The series explains how humans have expressed themselves through art, across different cultures and times.

Thank you for the amazing work.

I've often imagined I'd like the chance of offering up my personal version of history on television; what a history of art? Art is not so simply to reduce to a straightforward narrative, so this is a bold project for co-presenters Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga. And it's very heartening to see that the BBC hasn't tried to dumb down their commentary. In other BBC programmes I've seen Beard idiotically reciting Caesar's speaches in modern day Rome, and Schama presenting a fairly convetional wisdom; but here we get their true intellectual insights, and if in places the series is pretentious it's also hard to watch without genuinely learning something. 'Civilisations' has been contrasted to Kenneth Clark's famous series with almost the same title from 60 years previously, but without the latter's Euro-centric bias: to it's credit, though, it never feels to be taking cheap pot-shots at Europe, but rather puts Europe's acheivements (and failures) quite properly in their global context. This is the sort of programme that almost no-one but the BBC could make, and that even the BBC barely makes any more. In the age of YouTube, watch it while you can.

I had huge hope for this series. I did not even read IMDB reviews before giving it a try on Netflix. As episode by episode i gave chances my hope were increasingly lost until I felt forced to write a review here. Civilization is not just visual art. Civilization is mostly human development over time based on different factors. Technology forms a backbone here. Agriculture was the first steps towards creating modern civilization because it forced us hunter gatherers to settle down. Harnessing sun, Wind, water became other factors. Art too is an important parameter but where are other sources of art like music or folks stories or mythical creatures? Given the sheer presence of science and technology here I would give only one chapter to art when it comes to civilization. There are simply so many things that could have taken especially the water and the importance it plays in civilization. This series did came pretty close when it talked about Yangtze river in one episode but did not go down further. This series was mostly obsessed with European visual arts. There was a whole episode on dome. My question during that time was where is pagoda? Pagoda was to east as dome was to west. But it was not even mentioned. Utter disappointment.

Other reviews trounce this series because of what it isn't. That isnt fair. It never was an archaeology based program, BC Its a REMAKE of an Art hisytory series!!! Always educational and interesting, art history can be a bit much for the less academically astute. This is top notch work all around. Remember folks! You cant hate on a work of art bc it wasn,t what you thought it was.

First: the title. This is a ludicrous title for the series, because it is actually about art alone, and completely ignores all other aspects of civilisations - the science, mathematics and technology that makes civilisation possible; how they rise and fall; and even why they exist at all. Remains of Homo sapiens have been found which have been dated to around 300,000 years ago, but there were no civilisations until the last 10,000 years ago. This needs to be explained!

Also, it describes cave paintings which were created tens of thousands of years before civilisation, so they should be irrelevant if the title of the series actually has any meaning.

This criticism applies to Clark's series "Civilisation", but this new series, while similar, is far more incoherent, with several presenters instead of one, no structure, and claims made without any evidence: "These hand stencils do what nearly all art that would follow would aspire to. Firstly, they want to be seen by others. And then they want to endure beyond the life of the maker."

I would recommend the viewer to watch it with muted sound because visually it is great, but the commentary is distracting and adds little.