The Shock of the New

The Australian art critic and television documentary maker Robert Hughes died in 2012 and his landmark series The Shock of the New was repeated by the BBC in tribute.

My interest was aroused as I caught Robert Hughes being interviewed for television shortly before his death while I was on holiday in Singapore.

Made in 1980 it dealt with the development of modern art since the era of the Impressionists to the Surrealists. The impact of both World Wars to architecture in the post World War 2 era.

Like other documentaries made by the BBC in that era such as Civilisation and The Ascent of Man. It is a polemic that takes the presenter around the world giving his insights of modern art in an accessible way.

Not all episodes work, some were frankly dull as if some portions of the documentary were misconceived.

What stood out more for me was the episode on architecture and when Hughes analysed the development of the new capital of Brazil, Brasilia. A man made city and it looks it, having little soul or salsa.

Of course 30 years on, you can see the documentary has aged. It missed out on the boom in modern art and architecture that took place later on in the 1980s which was an influential epoch in modern art.

Although the passage of time has this great body of work of '... the New' now becoming an historical artefact in its own right, it's nonetheless a fascinating and absorbing gallop through a century between around 1880 and 1980. The sheer literary brilliance is something to bask in while, considering the constraints of the time, the visual imagery and editing is so extremely rich. One is treated as an intellectual equal and never talked down to. I suppose nowadays you might have to give it that standard trigger warning of some "outdated cultural references", these instances for me make this even more interesting as an epic monument of television history.

I guess many had over exuberant heads of hair in the 70s and 80s, but Robert Hughes coiffure really needed taming. Perhaps as (he claimed) Cubism was an attempt to draw the viewer into the picture, his hair, Medusa-like, was an attempt to draw the viewer into this series of essays and keep them there?

I watched only the first episode in this series. There's far too much verbiage and it also feels terribly subjective. I appreciate there is no way to produce a definitive chronicle of the period in question, but there was little breathing space to question what Robert Hughes was asserting. Which made me think at least some of his analysis was suspect.

It may be that investing 8 hours to watch the entire series will add value to a 21st century viewer's life but, after watching the first episode, I didn't feel I'd learned anything that I was confident was objectively true.