OT: Big Long METAR: Kenneth Clark's 1969 CIVILISATION

Weekend delights!

“Civilization: A Personal View” (yes, an insanely wildly ambitious topic) was the very first color TV series made and, in contrast to all the cultural dreck shows that have come after, stuns as a coherent, fiercely stated POV of exactly one tyrannical brilliant scholar of art and history. Here and there he punches in on the evolution of economics as well, in ways I found insightful and mind boggling, tying the depths of evolving myth and art to the evolution of capital formation and management,

You might have seen it as a child. Now you are old enough to actually take it in. Give it a try. Ravishing and gorgeous and surprising.

I promise that after a couple of episodes his absurdly aristocratic British accent will amuse instead of put you off… After all, he was so absurdly brilliant and educated that he was appointed director of the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford at aged twenty-seven, and three years later was put in charge of Britain’s National Gallery, transforming it from a quaint dusty antiquities collection into the power house it has been ever since.

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Yes, and at age 30. During WW2 he moved the collection out of London and then used the building to host the weekly Dame Myra Hess concerts.

Since the series became available on DVD I’ve made a point of watching it every five years or so.

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