Civilizations

The Cult of Progress

Examine the rise and fall of “progress” as an ideology, and see how the “civilizing” project that arose from Enlightenment ideas was fraught with contradictions that troubled European artists in different ways.

The Cult of Progress

53m 18s

Examine the rise and fall of “progress” as an ideology, and see how the “civilizing” project that arose from Enlightenment ideas was fraught with contradictions that troubled European artists in different ways.

Previews + Extras

  • The Cult of Progress: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Episode 8 Preview | The Cult of Progress

    S1 E8 - 30s

    Examine the rise and fall of “progress” as an ideology, and see how the “civilizing” project that arose from Enlightenment ideas was fraught with contradictions that troubled European artists in different ways.

  • Manet Twists the Conventions of Art: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Manet Twists the Conventions of Art

    S1 E8 - 2m 30s

    In what's considered his last great work, Edouard Manet created a masterpiece famed as a masterclass in visual subversion.

  • George Catlin's Indian Portraits: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    George Catlin's Indian Portraits

    S1 E8 - 2m 18s

    Catlin was by no means indifferent to the suffering of the people whose faces appear in these paintings. But he didn't produce them in order to take part in some campaign to save the native Americans, instead he said they must perish.

  • Otto Dix's Definitive Artistic Statement: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Otto Dix's Definitive Artistic Statement

    S1 E8 - 3m 44s

    Otto Dix and his generation had borne witness to the horrors of World War I. They'd also been witness to the death of the nineteenth century faith in an inevitable, unstoppable progress.

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