Volume 44, Number 11 · June 26, 1997
Made in the USA
By Louis Menand
American Visions Time, Inc., in association with Thirteen/WNET, PBS
by Robert Hughes. an eight-part television documentary produced by BBC Television and
American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America
by Robert Hughes
Knopf, 635 pp., $65.00
Robert Hughes's American Visions is the descendant of one of the most successful noncommercial television series ever made, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, which was produced by the BBC and broadcast here in 1970. In a medium that favors trim, ageless, flawlessly coifed word-machines, Clark was an unlikely star. He had, as it happened, considerable television experience. He had been hosting programs on art for the BBC, some of which were imported to the United States and shown on public television here, since the 1950s. But there was nothing obviously telegenic about him. He seemed a man who was game enough to perch on a rock outside the Parthenon if that was what the script required, but who would feel a good deal more comfortable in front of a lectern, or in an armchair in his study. His appearance was tweedy and donnish; his voice was high-pitched for television; he sometimes gave the impression, before he spoke, of adjusting his dentures. Viewers adored him. At a time when the glory and grandeur of the Western tradition might have seemed the last thing American viewers could be expected to respond to without cynicism, a time when tweeds had been superseded, even among professors, by bell-bottoms, Civilisation was an enormous hit.
Review, 5186 words
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