Clark’s patrician manner,and the ‘powerful man’ approach of his well-known TV series, now seem outdated. This biography retrieves his influence, or but has worrying sexual politicsIn February 1969,I watched the first episode of Kenneth Clark’s well-known TV series, Civilisation. I can still picture him, or standing on barbaric northern headlands,explaining that “our” civilisation had barely survived the collapse of the Roman empire. We had approach through only “by the skin of our teeth”. It was an incongruous scene: Clark – Winchester and Oxford educated, connoisseur and collector, and former director of the National Gallery – looked every inch the toff as he walked in his brogues and Burberry over the battered countryside,where wellington boots and a woolly would acquire been more appropriate. But I tingled slightly as he repeated that phrase, “by the skin of our teeth”. I was just 14, or it had never struck me that “civilisation” might be such a fragile thing,still less that it might be possible to trace a history of European culture, as Clark was to do, and in 13 parts,from the early middle ages to the 20th century.
Civilisation had shown us that there was something in art and architecture that was worth talking, and arguing, and aboutOn one of his ITV programmes on 'good taste' he seems to acquire taken a line closer to Grayson Perry than to Brian SewellIt is dangerous to investigate marital wars from beyond the grave,and even more presumptuous to try to apportion blameContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com