Manufactured Consent By Hugh Lilly Matthew Barney is an American sculptor, photographer and filmmaker whose most prominent work, The Cremaster Cycle, has been variously described as “one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema” and, at perhaps the opposite end of the appreciation spectrum, “[a] humongous riff on struggle, reproduction, conceptual drag, and several dozen strands of narrative gobbledygook … Continue reading Manufactured Consent

In this 2006 BBC series, out now on DVD, British Historian Simon Schama looks in detail at eight important works of art ranging from the 16th century—Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath”—to the late-’50s:—Rothko’s Seagram Murals. The two most interesting entries are where art arguably altered the course of history: “The Death of Marat” by Jacques-Louis David, and Picasso’s “Guernica”. The series also looks … Continue reading The Power of Art