27th September 2014

4 films, 4 countries…

It’s been a busy few days once again and luckily the trains, planes and automobile gods have been on my side.

It began with a decent BA flight to one of my favourite US cities: Chicago.   The excellent Gene Siskel has been a warm host to my films over the years and, ages ago, they booked a season of preview screenings of IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN.   Flying these days is so easy with all the hundreds of entertainment channels available though of course I watched the airline version of our Matisse film!  Seriously, I did but then I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel (dir: Wes Anderson) that I missed in the cinema. I loved it – and wished I had seen it on the big screen.  I can’t say it enough: films are best in the cinema… I picked up a paper on arrival at the airport and was delighted with a decent review for Chopin in the Chicago Tribune: 

Anyone who admired British director Phil Grabsky's previous documentary portraits of Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn is likely to find his latest film, "In Search of Chopin," equally absorbing, informative and, yes, entertaining.  Performance excerpts and interviews flesh out the saga of the brilliant if short-lived Polish-born composer and pianist (he was only 39 at his death) whose keyboard music represents the quintessence of the Romantic piano tradition. Links are drawn between Chopin's creative impulse and his emotional fragility, lifelong battle with tuberculosis and sometimes fraught romantic relationships, including a notorious liaison with novelist George Sand.  Included is illuminating commentary by pianist-performer Hershey Felder, who portrayed the composer in his one-man show, "Monsieur Chopin," at the Royal George Theatre here in 2005.

The audiences were good over the weekend – with some sell-outs 

What was extremely pleasing was the crowd reaction to the film.  I thought, while making this film, that Chopin was beginning to seem to me to be as popular as Mozart and Beethoven – and I now think it’s true.  There’s something about a somewhat flawed character – or one with human weaknesses that we all share – that draws us to them and their art.  Those creative giants that sit on their pedestals, stony as granite, don’t draw us in. It’s those who share the human weaknesses we all have and yet still produce extraordinary art, those are for many the most appealing.  Van Gogh – who we are also making a film about – is another perfect example.

Anyway, I always love my visits to the great city of Chicago and I wish I could have escaped the iron claw of the endless emails I have to deal with more often so that I could have explored the wealth it contains.  I did get to visit its Art Institute and also managed to run along its lake shore (so intelligently kept for public use when the city was being built).  But this really is a monumentally busy moment for us and I was only just about able to deal with the dozens of emails I get every day.  It wasn’t long before I was en route to Philadelphia to film at its Museum of Art (yes, the ‘Rocky’ steps!) for our forthcoming Impressionists film).   It and the wonderful Barnes nearby are yet another two examples of great art American galleries.  Our film on the Impressionists will be exploring why so much art ended up there, in Pittsburgh, Boston, New York, DC, LA, Cleveland, Atlanta, Dallas and so on.  I interviewed a very articulate curator there called Jennifer Thompson – I really admire these curators who dedicate their lives to really understanding and caring for the art in their charge.  Jenny’s interview will certainly help us get a deeper understanding of who the impressionists really were.   We talked in front of a gorgeous painting of Poplars by Monet – it will be in the Philadelphia version of the show but is too fragile to travel to Paris or London.

 

Poplars on the Bank of the Epte River –Claude Monet 1891

There’s a nice story about the painting: Monet had to pay to stop them being cut down to be used as timber.  He was desperate to paint them and the money offered did the trick (for a while at least).

After the interview and a quick dash to the Barnes I flew home to London and, after a crazy detour with my son to Manchester to see Man City crush Sheffield Wednesday 7-0, I caught an early morning train to Paris.  The Musee du Luxembourg has started the hanging of its forthcoming exhibition (which is the backbone of our film) – they’ve never really said yes to a film like this before so it was with some sense of relief and accomplishment to be actually inside filming.  One has to tread carefully around the unpacking and hanging of priceless artworks – but we’re used to it.  The thrill of seeing paintings, that you’ve seen many times in books, suddenly before your eyes is magnificent. We were there the day the National Gallery was unpacking and hanging its works. I particularly love this one:

 

Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando – Edgar Degas 1879

It was a strenuous day with all the equipment (for myself and good friend & colleague David Bickerstaff).  (Note: don’t expect to find Parisian taxis in a hurry).  We do, however, have some important footage now – as well as another curatorial interview with Sylvie Patry, a charming and articulate expert from the Musee d’Orsay.   My colleague refused to let me spend all night doing emails and took me on a long walk – with a decent intake of red wine en route – through Paris.  I’ll need to catch up on my sleep another time…(on trains no doubt).

Next day (Friday) was special: we began with a fascinating interview with the descendants of Paul Durand-Ruel. The story of the dealer behind the commercialisation of impressionism (at the end of the 19th century) is gripping.  Equally gripping therefore was the opportunity to see his very stock books, account books, note books with the names of Manet, Monet, Pisarro, Cezanne and others all liberally dotted about.  I love the history that emanates from contemporary objects and this was certainly one of those moments.   

David and I then departed from central Paris and drove the short distance (but 90’ in traffic) to Auvers-sur-Oise.  This town is rightly a pilgrimage centre for art lovers, especially those of Vincent van Gogh.   Here one can visit the Café Ravoux and see the room in which he slept, painted and died.  The café has been wonderfully cared for by an impressive Belgian entrepreneur and art-lover.  It has been lovingly restored and boasts a classy restaurant now (highly recommended!).  Everywhere there are traces of Van Gogh’s last two months.  Around the town, one can see the locations of paintings (with facsimiles attached to posts), the house of Dr Gachet, the church Notre Dame d’Auvers and sadly the cemetery where Vincent and indeed his brother Theo lay side by side. Vincent shot himself on July 29th 1890.

 
Breakfast the next day was fun – sitting in the very café where Vincent sipped his own morning caffeine 124 years ago – and have a look at this photo below – do you recognise the painting that that coffee pot is from? Clue: it’s not a Van Gogh.  Email us at info@seventh-art.com if you do.  First correct answer gets a DVD from Season 1.   Good luck. All I’ll say is that I was surprised to be able to hold it.   (and while the owner is 100% sure of its veracity, we must remain a teeny bit sceptical I guess). 

Rush, rush, rush: filming in Dr Gachet’s attic, the church grounds, by the river Oise, outside the town hall, inside the café… Quick salade et petite bierre then off back to Paris.  Horrible re-introduction to urban life as one meets the traffic again. Urgh.   But we make Gare du Nord with time to spare – at which point poor David heads off alone to London with 6 bags….and I head to Germany with 3. 

First of all I travel the Thalys from Paris to Brussels in 80 minutes. And then Brussels to Cologne in a couple of hours. It’s really so easy – and cheaper too than our criminally over-priced British rail system. (I was, the other day, quoted over £200 / $330 for a two hour train ride from London to Manchester on Virgin Trains! No wonder Virgin boss Richard Branson boasts of his £3bn fortune – disgusting & it’s why so many still drive).   Anyway on the efficient, friendly and cheaper Thalys I got to Koln (Cologne) bang on time and was in my hotel five minutes later.

The next day was all about filming some final scenes for CONCERTO – A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY.   Leif Ove Andsnes is now embarked on his final stage of residencies. This is where he plays all 5 piano concertos in one location over a period of a few days.  I can tell it’s hard – and Bonn was the first one – as he looked noticeably more tired and stressed than he did when I filmed him a month or so ago in Bergen.  But you only have to watch one concert (in this case playing the 1st & 5th) to understand the effort he is putting in.  Not just the performance but the travel, the CD signings, the dinners with executives and so on….   For my purposes I needed some footage of the 5th in particular and the concert as a whole.  The Beethovenhalle, the orchestra and Leif Ove could not have been more helpful and it all went extremely well.

That just left Monday morning – and a very appropriate location to more or less finish the filming of CONCERTO – A BEETHOVEN JOURNEY.  The Beethoven birthplace in Bonn.

I have been there before, of course for IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN but it’s an evocative and fascinating place to return to with a camera – especially as it was the first time Leif Ove had visited it – and he was given a detailed your with the director Michael Ladenburger.  It will only be a short moment in the film but something was revealed that they only discovered a few months ago which is directly relevant to the concertos – so that was a stroke of real luck as I captured it on camera. It is something neither I nor Leif Ove knew and is directly relevant to Beethoven and his concertos.  You, dear friends, will need to watch the film….

At that , I took my leave and headed for the final set of 4 train journeys that got me home by midnight.  My feet ache, my back aches, my head aches but what a fascinating few days. 

24th September 2014

Phil talks to WFMT while he's in Chicago with In Search of Chopin for a special series of preview screenings prior to its release next year. See below or follow the link for the original article: http://ow.ly/BRCeD

Documentary Filmmaker Phil Grabsky at WFMT

Friday, September 19, 2014 by Noel Morris

Filmmaker Phil Grabsky at WFMT, photo by Noel Morris

When Phil Grabsky looks out into the world, he sees stories that need to be told. As an independent filmmaker, he’s followed his passion from Brazil to Angola, from Chernobyl to Afghanistan. He also has a fascination for great composers.

In Search of Chopin
“His grave in Paris remains a place of pilgrimage and his music continues to sell out concert halls worldwide – but who exactly was this man who was terrified of public performance, who fled his Polish homeland for Paris never to return, took up with the most notorious transvestite in France, rarely gave public performances and, despite a life of ill-health, wrote some of the deepest and most powerful music ever written? How exactly did a young Polish boy rise to such heady heights?
For four years, Phil Grabsky has traveled the globe in his quest to lay bare the life and music of Chopin.”
—Seventh Art Productions

Phil Grabsky is in Chicago to introduce his new film In Search of Chopin. He stopped by WFMT to play Guest Host with Kerry Frumkin, and offered a mixture, including Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and (of course) Chopin. “I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to explore Chopin.” According to Mr. Grabsky, with all the negativity in the world, it’s essential to immerse oneself in the works of people who are so inspired.

Phil Grabsky speaks with Kerry Frumkin, photo by Noel Morris

He talks about a moment in the film, In Search of Chopin, when pianist and performance artist Hershey Felder wonders how so much talent could be poured into one person [Chopin]. “Is it a gift from God?”
According to Mr. Grabsky, one can’t help musing about such things, but the challenge is to train the lens upon “what can be explained.” That is, stitching together a narrative through the art, the people, and the events of a subject’s life.
In Search of Chopin is the latest in Phil Grabsky’s composer series which includes In Search of Haydn, In Search of Beethoven, and In Search of Mozart.
Click to learn more about Phil Grabsky and his company Seventh Art Productions.
In Search of Chopin runs at the Gene Siskel Film Center through October 2nd. Director Phil Grabsky will be present for audience discussion at all screenings, Friday-Monday, September 19-22. The 2:00 pm shows on Saturday and Sunday will be moderated by WFMT’s Andrew Patner.

August 28th 2014

Very sad news: the wonderful Frans Brüggen – the conductor of the Orchestra of the 18th Century without whom I doubt I could have made my films on Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Chopin – has died.  I would recommend anyone visit the orchestra of the 18th century website. Follows is a fine obituary from the UK’s Telegraph. See the original here.

Frans Brüggen,who has died aged 79, was a Dutch recorder player, conductor and musicologist who brought the recorder out of the classroom and into the concert hall as a serious musical instrument.

 

Later Brüggen explored more carefully how the instrument was used in the baroque era, while pushing for its acceptance as a modern instrument — including commissioning works from composers such as Louis Andriessen and Luciano Berio (notably Gesti, which tests the performer’s powers of control and interpretation). Indeed, Berio once described Brüggen as “a musician who is not an archaeologist but a great artist”.  Along the way Brüggen founded the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, spearheading the move away from the luscious accounts of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven that had become popular in the first half of the 20th century and towards a realisation of how the music would have sounded during the composers’ lifetimes.  He and his colleagues went further still, reimagining works by Mahler, Bruckner and even Debussy on instruments of the 18th century, offering a fascinating — if not widely accepted — interpretation of their possibilities. Such innovation helped him to avoid being labelled purely as an early music specialist; indeed, he was once dubbed a romantic of the historical performance movement.  Yet Brüggen was by no means a lone voice in the early music wilderness, and his extensive recording legacy includes accounts of Bach, Telemann and Vivaldi with other pioneers of authentic interpretation, such as Gustav Leonhardt, the harpsichordist, and Anner Bylsma, the cellist.

 

Tall, elegant and with big hands, Brüggen cut a striking figure. Whether surrounded by an orchestra or alone with only his recorder, he could hold an audience spellbound as he transported them towards the 18th century. His English was carefully spoken, and on stage he radiated charisma. Unusually for a wind player, he would sit, rather than stand, his long legs crossed and his recorder held, noted the author Joel Cohen, “at an odd and slightly defiant angle to his mouth”.  Thanks to the marketing machine of Telefunken, with which he made more than 50 discs, the Dutch media dubbed him the John Lennon of classical music.  That he went along with such promotion is indisputable; yet he never compromised the intellectual rigour of his approach. Asked in 1987 whether he preferred playing the recorder or conducting an orchestra, he replied: “The recorder for me gives body to a physical, corporeal love, and the orchestra makes corporeal a spiritual love. And love is composed of these two aspects. I am in love with both.”

 

 

 

 

Frans Brüggen was born in Amsterdam on October 30 1934, the youngest of nine children. He claimed that boredom during the war, when many Dutch schools were closed, led him and his brother Hans to start playing the recorder. As noted on Thwaites's blog, Brüggen said: “I immediately fell in love with that instrument and tootled my way through the rest of the war years.” He came to the attention of Kees Otten, the first Dutch professor of recorder, studying with him from the age of 14 and through his student years at the Amsterdam Conservatory. “Kees gave very good lessons,” he recalled, “but straight away I wanted to be better than him.”   By the age of 21 Brüggen, who also read Musicology at the University of Amsterdam, was a professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, by which time he was giving serious consideration to the role of historical instruments in the interpretation of older music.   He was first heard at the Wigmore Hall in 1957, when he appeared with the Telemann Trio, deftly switching between flute and treble recorder throughout the concert. Over the next few years he often appeared with Janny van Wering, a Dutch harpsichordist. But sometimes — such as in 1966 — Brüggen struck out alone. “This might have made for monotony,” noted one critic, “but for the two facts that he was a fine artist, able to transcend all the instrument’s legendary limitations, and that he enlivened his programme with two avant-garde works specially written for him.”  One of the characteristics of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, which he created with the musicologist Sieuwert Verster in 1981, was that it used word of mouth (no auditions) to recruit the finest period instrument players to work together for a few weeks at a time. Another was that the proceeds of their concerts were shared equally among all the performers, including the conductor. “I earn the same as the second clarinet,” Brüggen told The New York Times in 2008.   He brought the orchestra to the Proms in 1996, having made his first appearance at the Albert Hall in 1993 conducting Beethoven’s Choral Symphony with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with which he was joint principal guest conductor with Simon Rattle. A decade later he conducted the OAE in the South Bank’s “Haydn; The Creative Genius” series. He also maintained a long relationship with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and was visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley.

 

 

 

16th April 2014

It’s been a while since I posted a blog – apologies.  I haven’t been holiday – there just haven’t been enough hours in the day!  I must say I admire those who manage to blog practically every day – where do they find the time?  So what news the good ship Seventh Art?  EXHIBITION ON SCREEN has been the biggest consumer of time, as you might imagine.  After our June screening (live in the UK only) of MATISSE LIVE FROM TATE MODERN we’ve been busy re-editing it and adding in footage from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This (wonderful) exhibition is heading to New York next month and we have been fortunate enough to gain access to the preparations (and a real insight into MoMA’s relationship with Matisse over the years).  This is the first time MoMA (surely one of the world’s top museums) has co-operated on a film like this so for the cinema so we feel very privileged.  For those who saw the film in June, you’ll want to see it again as we’ve added about 15 minutes of fascinating material – and for those who haven’t seen it yet then MATISSE FROM TATE MODERN AND MOMA will be coming out on November 4^th in over 40 countries.    Meanwhile we’ve been busy working on 4 other films – yes, 4!   GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING AND OTHER TREASURES FROM THE MAURITSHUIS is almost done and looks spectacular.  If you’re interested in what is now perhaps the second most famous painting in the world, then this is the film for you.  Or if you’re just interested in a stunning ‘jewel box’ of an art gallery replete with masterpieces, then this is also the film for you.  Or if you just like art…..    REMBRANDT FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND RIJKSMUSEUM has also starting shooting and is looking great. He really is one of the greats.    As for the other two, well we’re deep into the research for VAN GOGH and also THE IMPRESSIONISTS.  What a season!  Keep an eye on exhibitiononscreen.com  (sign up to the newsletter here so we’ll let you know when the films are coming to a screen near you – and also like our Facebook page).  

 Why not let us know what you think?  And we’re always open to ideas for Seasons 3 & 4….we have some of the exhibitions sorted but not all….Is your local gallery doing a major show? Let me know.  

 

Now, that’s not all folks….to all my Australian friends: IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN opens on Thursday.  The Sydney Morning Herald has called it a ‘masterpiece’….  Now famously we’re told to treat positive and negative reviews with the same disdain. Rubbish: the good reviews are written by the intelligent, articulate and erudite journalists out there. We all know that!!    The Australian newspaper gives it a big thumbs up too (read here)  – so surely that’s enough to get you down to your local cinema.  One thing is for sure: there’s nothing on TV worth watching…..  Or just go for the wine & cake.  Right, must dash: currently working on a re-release of our Leonardo film and have to work on the script.  Best wishes to you all, Phil. 

PS: I leave you with very sad news from the world’s number one arts blogger  

 

 See the original from Real Clear Arts here

Judith H. Dobrzynski:

This is just plain bad: Last week, a painting titled Madonna with the Saints John the Evangelist and Gregory Thaumaturgus (1639) was stolen from a church in Modena, Italy. Not only was the church alarm system in active, but also the Baroque masterpiece wasn't insured.

It's a big painting -- 10 ft. by 6 ft. -- and reports say it was stolen in its frame, with speculation that the theft was "ordered" by a private collector because a work of this size and renown would be hard ever to resell openly. Unless, speculated the Telegraph in London, it was "cut up into pieces in an attempt to sell it on."

The Telegraph's article, pegged the value of the work at "up to £5 million," or nearly $8.4 million.

It was stolen in the middle of the night from the church of San Vincenzo in the northern town of Modena earlier this week. Curators admitted that lack of funds meant the alarms protecting the painting were not working.

"There was an alarm in the church, but it was inactive," said Monsignor Giacomo Morandi, of the archdiocese of Modena.

It had been paid for by a donation from a local bank but once those funds dried up it had been switched off, he told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"It's very difficult to protect every single work of art," he added.

The work has hung in the Church of San Vincenzo ever since it was painted. According to The History Blog,

An allied bomb struck San Vincenzo on May 13th, 1944, destroying the presbytery and the choir and its late 17th century frescoes, but the Guercino survived. Let’s hope it can survive human greed.

The History Blog also provided these details:

San Vincenzo is not a parish church so it doesn’t stay open all week. The doors are opened every Sunday for mass and locked after the service is over. The thieves made their way inside, stole the painting and got out without leaving a trace. There is no sign of forced entry on the church door. The priest only realized something was wrong because the door was open.

Police believe at least three men were involved in the theft because the piece is so big and heavy, especially still inside the frame, that it one or two people wouldn’t be able to move it. They probably got in during mass on Sunday, August 10th, and hid until they could do their dirty deed under cover of night. They must have had transportation, most likely a van.

...The Carabinieri’s Tutela Patrimonio Culturale unit (a national police squad dedicated to investigating stolen art and antiquities) are in charge of the investigation. They’re looking through phone records and security camera footage from along the street. There are no cameras pointed at the church, but a van large enough to contain the painting should have been captured by other cameras. Looks as if we have seen the last of this work for some time. But maybe the police will get lucky.

Tim Marlow

Hello everybody, here's information on the new position of our friend and colleague (and presenter of over 100 films) Tim Marlow, along with an interview with the man himself.

Follow the link the this Guardian article here

12th May 2014

One of those days that seems a long way in the future – and then it arrives…   

Today I had the pleasure of hearing the letters of Matisse read by one of the acting world’s greats, Simon Russell Beale.  What a honour to meet him and hear him bring the words of Henri to life.  Simon even had a Matisse-style beard – obviously he had fully immersed himself into today’s role….  (Or was it for the King Lear that he’s filling in his spare time with??).   We had a good ol’ chat about classical music too. Hopefully all you folks saw his Sacred Music series about 5 or 6 years ago.  I’ll need to cook something up for Simon and I to do in the future…  After Simon had finished, I moved on to the narrative of the Matisse film. For this important role, we’d chosen Rupert Young.  My younger viewers will know him from Merlin. He is, as my daughter explains, the knight that never dies.  Very nice guy and I liked his approach to the reading – nothing pompopus or arty – just good strong storytelling. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do….  I love the so-called business-end of production – it feels like every decision is a creative one.   All a bit scary now…only 3 weeks till air-date.   At least tickets are selling well. Click here to find a screening near you.

5th May 2014

A blog of numbers…

Just flying over Singapore, 34000 feet up. 

Half way through an 11,500 mile trip from New Zealand to UK.

I’ve just done 7 screenings in 3 days of the all-new IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN.

Good audiences but total folk in the 100s – smaller screens in NZ.

I did seven intros and seven Q and As. Total time talking: 7 hours.

Press: 3 hours.

Hours worked per day – 20.  Length of trip 6 days.  120 hours worked.  And I’m not joking.

At airport, had some time to tidy up emails. Deleted my Sent box from last two years….20,000 of them – thus 10,000 a year, hence average of 30 a day…

Ran 9km along Auckland waterfront.  Perk of the job. Over the last year, I have run in hills of Santa Fe, the waterfront of Chicago, Stanley Park in Vancouver and Central Park in NY. Total KM run…er, lots.

Films completed last year – 4: Manet, Vermeer, Munch and Chopin.

Films on the way…7

Concerts filmed for IN SEARCH OF BACH… 2.  Years to completion….er….5? 10?

Current job satisfaction on a scale of one to ten:  9.  

4320 miles flown from Auckland, 7180 to go to London…

27 April 2014

A very interesting article from the always erudite Mark Lawson: 

For the original article click here

British TV is learning to love the arts – but it can love them too much

TV's new passion for the arts should be good news for culture enthusiasts. But are critical voices being drowned out by applause?

• • Mark Lawson
  • The Guardian

Gemma Arterton in the Globe theatre's production of The Duchess Of Malfi, which is to be screened on BBC TV. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

In the history of television, the areas of British life that have most regularly complained about the lack – and, in recent times, reduction – of airtime are religion and the arts. But, while bishops may still be bitter, artists now seem to have cause to applaud. This week Channel 4 announced a large increase in its arts programming, just over a month after BBC director general Tony Hall revealed the ambition to put arts "at the heart" of the schedules.

The broadcasters will hope for an unreserved cheer from producers and consumers of culture, but there is reason for concern that the type and tone of coverage being promoted may prove rather more beneficial to the creators of the arts than to those who have to pay to see them.

Channel 4's new commissions include, for example, Random Acts, a showcase for short films by visual artists and film-makers, which is a collaboration with Arts Council England (Ace), an organisation that also featured in the BBC plans, as co-funder and co-producer of The Space, a website on which, again, brief films will be screened.

These cases of Ace teaming up with TV are examples of the current fashion in cultural broadcasting for "creative partnerships". The BBC has announced co-productions with institutions including the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and the National Galleries of Scotland. The biannual Manchester international festival will become another "creative partner", with its director, Alex Poots, becoming one of a number of creative figures who will advise the BBC on its coverage. Sir Nicholas Hytner(National Theatre boss until March next year) has joined the BBC's board as a non-executive director, with Sir Nicholas Serota, head of Tate, chairing a separate "sounding board" of arts supremos.

The fact that almost all these new projects involve actual or virtual art galleries – with Channel 4 commissioning, as well as Random Acts, a series on modern portraiture – has revived complaints about the tendency of arts coverage on television to favour the visual arts over other disciplines. But while it understandably annoys literature and theatre, this bias is less ideological than technological: a picture, sculpture or photograph can be represented on screen more or less as it looks to a gallery-goer, so the viewer can see exactly what is being discussed. In contrast, any programme dealing with a book or play is able to give only a hint – through a brief reading or dramatisation – of the material being featured.

This structural difficulty explains the lack of any dedicated theatre or books programmes on British TV, a frequent cause of lament from fans of those arts. Although it should not be forgotten that the most enduring and successful arts programme of modern times – Melvyn Bragg's The South Bank Show, which ran on ITV between 1978 and 2010, and has now been revived by Sky Arts – managed to cover all of the artistic disciplines in rotation, through interviews or documentaries.

Interviewing and film-making, however, are acts of mediation, and potentially of criticism. The biggest concern about the new generation of arts shows proposed by Channel 4 and the BBC is not just the preference for pictorial forms, but that they seem to offer the TV screen as an annexe to the art gallery, with external curators having at least as much power as internal producers.

Some pundits have pointed to the apparent paradox that the BBC's commitment to more cultural coverage was bracketed by the reduction or removal of long-running arts programmes. Twenty years after it began as Late Review, The Review Show was cancelled last month without fanfare, just weeks after Radio 3's Nightwaves was cut from four nights to three and renamed Freethinking to reflect a more generally intellectual rather than specifically artistic brief.

One of the BBC's senior managers recently told a meeting: "We don't want arts programmes that say: 'Should you see this?'; we want programmes that say: 'You should see this.'" This small reversal of words reveals a large and significant shift of intention.

Over its two decades, the Review studio was known for often witheringly direct dismissal of the work under discussion; there are still writers and artists whom I would fear meeting on a dark night after critiques they received on editions I chaired. Judgment was also a key element of Nightwaves, which would often make a noisy point about featuring first-night reviews of London theatre productions.

Now, though, there are strong suspicions that broadcasters are less interested in reviewing plays than in co-producing them: another of the recently announced BBC initiatives promises to screen "the best of British theatre". There is a sense of editorial energy moving, in footballing terms, from the press box to the terraces.

And sporting metaphors are apt. When announcing that the BBC arts brand would be given greater prominence in the credits of programmes, executives acknowledged that they were following the example of the sports department, which closes each transmission with a lingering picture of its logo. And the arts/sports comparison has frequently been made over the years by members of the cultural community. "Why can't television support arts in the way that it does sport?" curators and artistic directors would plead.

But this analogy is problematic. Although propagandists for more arts on television often talk of TV "promoting" or "getting behind" sport, the coverage of football in particular has become progressively more analytical. Pundits on Match of the Day were encouraged to be more critical of players and referees, while, on Radio 5 Live's after-match phone-in 606, it is almost unknown for managers or officials to be praised. If arts broadcasting were truly to become more like sport, there would be regular shows in which punters shouted that "Damien Hirst is a total waste of money," or "David Hare was just diabolical tonight".

Melvyn Bragg with David Hockney on The South Bank Show, which has moved from ITV to Sky. Photograph: ITV/Rex

There is also, though, another intriguing connection. BBC sport began its policy of aggressive branding at a time when the corporation was rapidly losing attractions (cricket, rugby, live football) to rival bidders, especially Sky. So the self-advertisement was that of a rapidly shrinking man frantically measuring his remaining height.

In the same way, the pumped-up budgets and publicity for culture at Channel 4 and the BBC reflect a fear that artists and the big national institutions have alternative outlets. Digital democracy means that creators and curators can easily make their work available on-screen without the intervention of TV networks. So provision of platforms for visual artists – in Random Acts and The Space – can be seen as a hedge against that trend, while collaborating with the National Portrait Gallery for series fronted by Grayson Perry (Channel 4) and Simon Schama (BBC) may delay a future in which the NPG itself produces and distributes such projects.

Live drama already demonstrates television's loss of a screening monopoly. Last year's Globe theatre production of The Duchess of Malfiwas not regarded by most reviewers as one of the highest achievements of British theatre; and, as its main design feature was being lit by candles, it does not seem obviously suited to TV transmission. However, the BBC has chosen to broadcast it. One reason for this is that the biggest hits of the National, Royal Shakespeare Company and the West End during that period – such Helen Mirren in The Audience and David Tennant's Richard II – were screened in cinemas as part of the NT Live project pioneered by the National. Those shows neither needed nor wanted TV. Meanwhile, galleries, including the British Museum and Tate, have started transmitting guided tours of new exhibitions into cinemas and online.

Perhaps the BBC's new tranche of "creative partners" could advise on this contest for content? Or can they? Under a strict reading of the BBC's conflict of interest rules, future work produced by either Hytner or Serota should not be reviewed or broadcast by the BBC. To invoke again the sporting comparison, it is hard to imagine Manchester United boss David Moyes being appointed as a non-executive director of the BBC to supervise football coverage, or West Ham's Sam Allardyce becoming a "sounding board" for the makers of Match of the Day.

Several newspaper journalists – including Richard Brooks in the Sunday Times and the Evening Standard's Anne McElvoy – have expressed concern that arts television will become an electronic stage for the UK's cultural producers rather than a journalistic scrutineer in the way that it operates towards, say, politics or business. And the Channel 4 plans seem, on paper, to continue a move from mediation to presentation.

Certainly, whether or not this was the intention, the cancellation of The Review Show spares the BBC the difficulty of having to explain to "creative partner" Alex Poots why Paul Morley or Julie Myerson has just said on television that a production at the Manchester international festival was a "waste of time". There is a danger that, in TV arts coverage, criticism is being downgraded in favour of uncritical jingoism.