Using only the words of some of the great photographers, this program seeks to trace "the life-line of the species" (in the words of John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art, New York) Selecting their own favorite photos from contemporary works back to 1839, the producers of this program trace the lineage of photography as art and present a glorious parade of great photographs drawn from the great museum collections of the world: the Musee d'Orsay,...

This chiaroscuro social painting is a remarkable human record of late nineteenth-century Paris, its inhabitants and its private geography at a time of huge social and moral change. Degas' constant flitting between genres and from back-stage to front of stage enabled him to capture the fleeting nature of existence while creating an everlasting image of Paris.

Canaletto's stated intention was to depict reality as faithfully as possible. In this postcard depiction of Warsaw, used to help reconstruct the city after World War II, the buildings are flattened by the fading light of sunset, anticipating the fire that would later destroy them, while its people, rich and poor, are bathed in the warm light of a new dawn that looks forward to the forging of the Polish nation.

Follow the leading light of French Romanticism, Eugène Delacroix, on his journey from Paris to Morocco. This seminal biography reveals for the first time the inspiration behind the artist’s most famous works, featuring sumptuous historical reconstructions based faithfully on Delacroix’s travel diaries and exquisite sketchbooks.

One of America's best-known, least-understood painters was Thomas Hart Benton. Ken Burns traces the pioneering artist's turbulent career in this bittersweet portrait, highlighting the fierce controversy over his work. The film combines rare archival material, commentary by those close to the artist, and a stunning selection of Benton's superb paintings and murals to create a moving profile of the 20th-century genius.

Art historian and critic Andrew Graham-Dixon opens this series with the dramatic story of French art, a story of the most powerful kings ever to rule in Europe, with their glittering palaces and astoundingart to go in them. He also reveals how art emerged from a struggle between tradition and revolution, between rulers and a people who didn't always want to be ruled. Starting with the first great revolution in art, the invention of Gothic architecture,...

In 1848, a political revolution in France foreshadowed a revolution in art. In 1851, Gustave Courbet's A Burial at Ornans scandalized the public with its unembellished portrayal of an ordinary funeral. The shift toward Realism had begun. This program tells the sensational story of Courbet's Burial while analyzing the subtleties and surprises that underlie its deceptively innocent facade.

The Rhine valley-a treasury of medieval art, and, as this program shows, the cradle of what we now think of as distinctly German imagery. Foremost among Cologne's late-Gothic painters was Stefan Lochner, who injected drama and excitement into familiar biblical scenes. At about the same time, Johannes Gutenberg pioneered a printing revolution in the Rhine town of Mainz, leading to one of the greatest innovations in the visual arts, the reproduction,...

This program takes a deep look into Hokusai's The Great Wave, interpreting the story it tells and scrutinizing formal aspects ranging from the perfect spiral that underpins the wave, to the spiritual balance between water and sky, to the fractal-like nature of the wavelets. Footage of artisans at work demonstrates how plates for The Great Wave were cut, inked, and successively impressed onto paper in vivid colors. Additional examples of Hokusai's...

It is a creative impulse as old as humanity itself: to depict life faithfully, accurately, in words or images. This program shows how that impulse led to Realism - a widespread artistic movement, born in the latter half of the 19th century, which rejected pretense, distortion, and sentimentality. Incorporating interviews with art historians and literary scholars, the program explores the sociopolitical origins of the phenomenon in the 1848 Revolution...