from THE NEW YORK TIMES
ARTS AND LEISURE DESK
TV View; A PROVOCATIVE NEW SERIES ON MODERN ART; by John O’Connor
Tonight at 8, public television begins an eight-part series entitled ”The Shock of the New.” Once again, television is tackling the difficult subject of art, in this case the Modern Movement of the past 100 years. And once again, the content can be faulted for sweeping generalizations, questionable speculations and blatant biases. But, overall, ”The Shock of the New” works remarkably well on its own carefully conceived terms. This is not a history of art. Paying homage to Kenneth Clark’s ”Civilisation,” it adopts the subtitle of that milestone series: ”A Personal View.” In this case, the view belongs to Robert Hughes, a native of Australia and, among other things, art critic for Time magazine. Mr. Hughes is nothing if not refreshingly direct: ”Unfortunately, epochs of art don’t start or end neatly on cue. Ours is finishing its run now, leaving behind it some of the most challenging, intelligent and beautiful works of art ever made by man, along with a mass of superfluity and rubbish. We’re at the end of the Modern era. Art no longer acts on us in the same way that it did on our grandparents. I want to see why.”
