Sunday 17th of February

A beautiful day in Brighton - clear blue skies, crisp cool air and barely a breeze.  Today was the Brighton half-marathon and thus the first of my three runs to try and raise the funds for a female teacher for Mir's school in remote Northern Afghanistan.  Luckily, despite all the craziness of our Manet film (and other projects) I had found early mornings and late evenings to get some runs & training in so I wasn't too frightened at the prospect of 13.1 miles (unlike my terror of 26.2 miles!) and I filled up on pasta last night and porridge this morning.  Whatever happened, that was going to be burnt off.  Good running shoes help, good running gear helps but most important of all is your music selection...and I'd been working on the perfect running choice.  Sometimes bands like U2 and Oasis are just what you need. Loud.  Anyway, all went well and I finished in a PB (personal best).  I still can't imagine having to do that circuit twice though...but I've got 8 weeks to convince myself and my calfs that I can.   If anyone fancies throwing in a few quid and making the aches and pains worthwhile please visit my justgiving page here.
Image from runbritain.com

Monday 28th January

Sorry it has been a few weeks since the last blog post but it has been extremely busy chez Seventh Art Productions/PhilGrabskyFilms.com

Last night at midnight we finished filming the Manet Exhibition at the super Royal Academy of Arts in London. Editing is proceeding frantically and as you can see from the attached press release, we’ll be in UK (indeed worldwide) cinemas on the 11th April. It has been a Herculean task but last night I stood all alone staring at Manet’s The Railway and felt doubly sure that this is the right thing to do: to bring these works and these exhibitions to people around the world – we know we’ll be seen in France, Chile, New Zealand, USA, Canada and many, many more. There is no way that 99% of those people – you – could get to the exhibition so this is the next best thing. And to have Munch from Norway and then Vermeer from the National Gallery London on the way too – plus others lining up. Wonderful. And very scary financially but hey, no pain, no gain.

The filming has been pretty intense; an awful lot to get through in terms of filming the paintings and filming tracking shots. Also of course there were many pieces-to-camera with Tim (our presenter) and various expert guests. What is not in doubt is that the film is full of interest for anyone interested in Manet, art, exhibitions and Paris in the 19th century. The exhibition had its official opening on Tuesday and we launched the brand EXHIBITION at the same time. Remarkably the RA attracted 500+ journalists and at least half of them took our press release from the press desk. From the response we’ve had subsequently, the press are interested and covering us. Lots of long days keeping on top of it all but it’s been terrible snowy weather so might as well work! When the golf courses re-open, well that will be a different story!

PRESS RELEASE BELOW:

 

 

Coming Soon:

The world’s greatest art exhibitions at a cinema near you

 

Unless it is a blockbuster on the scale of last year’s Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan exhibition at the National Gallery, London art exhibitions are, predominantly, seen by those who live locally. That was, until now.

Award-winning arts documentary maker, Phil Grabsky, has launched a ground-breaking project to connect major exhibitions from across the world with over 200,000 people in cinemas spread across some 30 countries. This global first aims to allow art lovers, old and new, to enjoy, marvel and delight at the works of some of history’s greatest ever painters.

Grabsky’s eponymous PhilGrabskyfilms.com, in association with Seventh Art Productions and BY Experience, has created a series of ground-breaking art events for cinema: EXHIBITION.

Featuring forthcoming major exhibitions of works from artists such as Manet, Munch and Vermeer, each film will capture and explore these important shows and bring a wealth of masterpieces to audiences via high-tech digital cinema technology. The films won’t just cover the exhibitions’ paintings: important questions will also be addressed. What lies behind the exhibition creatively and technically? What does this particular collection of paintings and objects reveal about the artist, or the particular historical period? What do we learn about the presenting institution? Answering them, and many more besides, will be world-renowned art historian and broadcaster, Tim Mar low. Acting as the presenter and guide through each exhibition, Tim is the ideal expert to explain these extraordinary exhibitions and deliver first-rate biographies of the artists. The films combine his in-depth knowledge of each subject with sensitively shot material about the artist and period and are filmed both at the exhibitions and on location.

Grabsky says “I have been driven by the desire to share the thrill of great exhibitions with everyone from Kansas City to Adelaide, Osaka to Naples, and Glasgow to Cape Town. To be launching with three stunning shows from three top-notch venues is an absolute thrill. If you can't get to the RA you have to see the film. And if you are lucky enough to get a ticket to the RA, then you'll want to see the film even more!”

Echoing Grabsky’s comments, Tim Marlow adds “I think that standing face to face with some of the greatest works of art ever made is one of the most powerful experiences in life. ‘Exhibition' gives us the opportunity to convey something of this power in a cinematic format which brings the viewer as close to the real thing as possible. Sometimes, the camera reveals even more than the naked eye ...”

Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, said, “We are very excited to be working with Phil Grabsky and Tim Marlow to produce the film Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy of Arts. The RA’s exhibition will be the first major show of Manet’s portraits, bringing together works from international collections and private lenders to UK audiences for the first time. With thanks to Seventh Art Productions and BY Experience, the film will be screened in cinemas in over 30 countries and in over 5 languages, giving audiences worldwide the chance to see this remarkable exhibition.”

EXHIBITION launches with a trio of films for spring, summer and autumn 2013:

MANET - from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, MUNCH - from the National Museum & Munch museum, Oslo and VERMEER - from the National Gallery, London.

And this is just the beginning. EXHIBITION is already in pre production for major exhibitions in 2014.

All information will be available on participating cinemas worldwide at the official website, www.ExhibitionOnScreen.com

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873
National Gallery of Art Washington 

EXHIBITION: Manet: Portraying Life

Manet: Portraying Life will be presented on cinema screens around the world on Thursday 11 April 2013.

This eagerly awaited exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts will be the first ever retrospective devoted to the portraiture of Edouard Manet. Spanning this enigmatic and, at times, controversial artist’s entire career Manet: Portraying Life will bring together works from across Europe, Asia and the USA.

Manet’s portraiture has never been explored in exhibition form, despite it forming around half of his artistic output. He painted his family, friends and the literary, political and artistic figures of the day, giving life not only to his subjects but also to Parisian society. The exhibition consists of more than 50 works; including portraits of his most frequent sitter, his wife Suzanne Leenhoff, luminaries of the period; Antonin Proust, Émile Zola and Stéphane Mallarmé, along with scenes from everyday life revealing Manet’s forward-thinking, modern approach to portraiture. More at www.royalacademy.org.uk  

The film also reveals exclusive behind-the-scenes moments of the exhibition’s preparation, which normally go unseen by the public, and interweaves a detailed, superbly crafted biography of Manet and 19th century Paris. Host Tim Marlow and special guests will look at the craft of one of the all-time great artists.

Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy of Arts is sponsored by BNY Mellon, Partner of the Royal Academy

EXHIBITION: Munch 150



Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893
(c) National Museum, Oslo, Norway 2013

 Thursday 27 June 2013. In 2013, Norway will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch (1863–1944), a towering figure in modern art. Already hailed as a “once-in-a-lifetime show” global interest is understandably huge, especially after one of his four The Scream paintings recently sold for a record $120 million.

Munch 150 will be co-hosted by Norway’s National Museum and Munch Museum, both in Oslo. This exhibition marks the most ambitious presentation of his art ever. With 220 paintings on show, it brings together the greatest number of Munch’s key works in one place. More at www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en and www.munch.museum.no

The corresponding film will go behind-the-scenes to show some of the process of putting the exhibition together – as well as touring Norway to provide an in-depth biography of a man who lived from the mid 19th century right through to the German occupation during the Second World War. Norwegian and international experts will offer their insights and knowledge to host Tim Marlow.

EXHIBITION: Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure

Johannes Vermeer,
A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, c.1670
National Gallery, London

Thursday 10 October 2013. The National Gallery, London, is offering a major retrospective on one of the most startling and fascinating artists of all – Johannes Vermeer, painter of the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. The National Gallery has chosen to focus on Vermeer’s relationship with music. It was one of the most popular themes of Dutch painting and revealed an enormous amount about the sitter and the society they lived in. New research, revealed for the first time at this exhibition, shows how his technique and materials affected his works. More at www.nationalgallery.org.uk  

Tim Marlow goes beyond the exhibition to tell the entire story of Vermeer’s life – and, in doing so, shows in fabulous HD detail, many other of the artist’s captivating works. For those inspired by the 2003 film, Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson, this new, cinematic exploration will take their enjoyment and fascination of Vermeer’s life and work to a new level.



Mir Update

Hello everyone. I hope you are all well. I know there are people interested in Mir from all over the world – Greece, Germany, the USA, Canada, Venezuela, Australia – and let’s not forget Afghanistan too. So I always feel both humbled and a bit nervous trying to articulate what’s the latest news from Mir and his family.

Most of you will have seen the film in a cinema over the past year or so and, other than my occasional updates, will have left Mir whistling optimistically as he strode up a hill in his village. Many of you, I know, have been wondering how he’s doing. Well, frankly the news is not all good. Nor is it all bad. On the negative side, we had hoped that some of those organisations and some of those individuals who had suggested they could help Mir in some way would come through. But, for whatever reason, none did. Maybe I don’t chase them hard enough? I have found it odd how often people have been deeply moved by the film but have not made a donation nor even bought a copy of the DVD. It really seems very hard to translate peoples’ compassion to actual action. That said, over the years we collected some donations and made our own monthly payment into a small fund and, not without some difficulty, we did manage to transfer those funds to Mir and his family. It was not, however, enough to radically transform their lives. Of course, one also has to ask what kind of future is it that they would really like? That’s not just about their personal ambition; that has much more to do with better security, less corruption, more stable crop production, better schools and improved health clinics. No-one should underestimate the difficulties in ensuring any of these in the thousands of tiny villages and towns throughout Afghanistan but maybe it’s fair of us to have hoped for a little more success over the past decade.

What that all means for Mir is that he remains in the village and is still loading coal. That’s not to say there hasn’t been one major change: Mir is now a married man! It is a genuine source of regret that Shoaib and I, though both invited, simply couldn’t afford to get there for the wedding. We do have plans to get a present to him though – and we have spoken to him and his parents and wished them all well. It’s hard for us to know too much about the background to the wedding – or just who his bride is. One hopes very much that they are happy together – though we have to acknowledge the reality of the situation which is that part of the incentive to get married so young was to bring a young woman into the household to help with the aging parents. Mir’s fine half-brother Khoshdel and family having moved out thus left Mir on his own to care for his parents Abdul and Mirwarid. I’m determined to get back to see them, maybe in 2013. Indeed, I’d love to raise the funds to continue filming them for another decade. But I am realistic enough to know that it will be virtually impossible to do so. One key UK channel has already told me that ‘Afghanistan is last year’s story’. Fools!!!

So we do what we can: last month, with the gracious help of an American friend, I managed to screen the film at the State Department in Washington. This was actually quite a big deal as it was watched by some important folk who have responsibilities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I came away from my day of screening and conversation there very impressed with their determination to make a positive difference. They are already planning for 2014-2024 and are committed to not turning their backs on the needs of Afghan people. I’m no defender of any particular nation’s foreign policy but I do get frustrated at the self-righteous trailing on and off TV, radio and newspapers criticising all British or all American policy in Afghanistan – and I wonder what exactly they think should be done for poor folk like Mir and his family? Life is, quite simply, more complicated and a myriad of shades of grey. It certainly is in Afghanistan. I, frankly, have no idea what will happen over the next few years – but some will have a better future than ever possible under the Taliban and others will die of easily curable disease or sheer brutal murder. There will be more of the latter if we just turn our backs on them. “We have our own problems, our own fight against austerity’, I hear folk say. Well, austerity is one thing, poverty is another. Dying of cholera, typhoid, malaria, dysentery, malnutrition is a wholly different world to what most Europeans or Americans suffer through austerity. I pity Mir. The winter is almost there –and the village will be snowbound soon. I hope they’ve enough wood and food to see them through. I’ll still be tucking in to a huge turkey dinner on Christmas Day but when I wish ‘Peace and Goodwill to all’ I’ll be thinking of Mir and the tens of millions like him.

Tuesday 4th December

On a Czech train, ambling through the countryside between Dresden and Berlin. A beautiful sunny winter’s day. Nice German cheese roll for lunch. All is well. Well, almost. I had just travelled all the way to Dresden to interview a wonderful musician for my Chopin film and was just outside the hall, with all my gear, when the person rang me to cancel due to illness. Ah well, not to worry – I’ll get the interview another time and at least I got to see Dresden (with its impressively re-built old town) for the first time. In the snow too…can it really be almost December? A year since we did Leonardo Live? Over a year since we launched The Boy Mir – Ten years in Afghanistan? 9 months since I toured some cinemas in Australia and New Zealand… My daughter and I looked at each other in amazement at the weekend when we got the Christmas decorations out of the loft – ‘but we only just put them up there, Dad!’….Time does indeed fly…

Nadar, Edouard Manet, 1874

Most of my year has been extremely busy and extremely unpaid. A huge amount of investment and risk-taking at our expense. But, as always, as we try to choose only projects which interest us, it has been fascinating too. It’s no terrible hardship to be engaged in a highly detailed film on Chopin. Nor is it the end of the world to be looking deep into the life of Manet. Certainly it’s Manet that has been taking up our time over the past three months – and what a fascinating period it was in mid -19th century Paris. We’ve made films before about the impressionists but it’s great to be back in the library and in Paris revisiting the subject. As always, I am fascinated by the economic context of a period. Manet, for example, lived at a time of expanding demand in art, the growth of the gallery, the dealer, the critic. There was even a considerable demand for paintings that could be rented for social events (a party at home for example) and then you had the growth of regional museums (who thus wanted paintings to show). All of this (and more) created a world where the artist moved from even further from the nameless artisan to the world superstar.



Edouard Manet,
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1862-63
Musee d'Orsay



Yesterday the Turner prize was won by Elizabeth Price for her video work. It’s not my cup of tea but at least the guy who works with faeces didn’t win nor the woman called Spartacus who entered a puppet show of the Jesus and Barabbas stories. I’ve never subscribed that art is anything that is called ‘art’ not anything that is in an ‘art gallery’. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by making so many films by what I would say are truly great artists – and that most certainly includes Manet. Of course the reaction to his submissions to the Paris salon elicited the same kind of response as mine to the Turner submissions. One critic said of Manet’s ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ ‘It’s best seen from a kilometre away’. And that was one of the polite comments. Maybe my kids, or their kids, will in a few decades time revere the Prices and Spartacus’ but I doubt it.

I feel the same about films – the endless desire for novelty and shock can often leave art, accuracy, morality trailing in its wake. When asked for lists of the greatest documentaries or indeed feature films generally of all time, I’d say most talk about films from decades ago. And most people’s favourite artists still include Manet, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and so on. In researching the works of Manet I’d been delighted to become acquainted, often for the first time, with works of great artistry. The film will be in the cinemas in March and I’m sure you’ll enjoy looking at the paintings we’ve included. The same goes for the ongoing film about Chopin – to be completed and first released in Australia next Christmas. What a treat to get to listen – carefully and not just as background music – to his wonderful creations. I’ll be spending time in Warsaw in April and can’t wait. Anyway, this lovely train is arriving at Berlin’s new(ish) main train station. It’s functional but there’s little artistry. I’ve a couple of hours free so maybe I’ll go for a quick walk around the western lakes…with Manet in my eyes and Chopin in my ears – and try to come up with some cunning schemes to pay for it all….

Tuesday 9th October

The day started at sunrise. Stanley Park is a truly gorgeous spot in Vancouver and running around the sea wall is fabulous 10 mile run. It would be too easy on these trips to eat, work and sleep so you have to squeeze in exercise whenever possible.  Golf's my thing but the courses were too far and too expensive so running was the alternative.  This really is a great city and the backdrop of mountains is special.  That said, it wasn't long before I was back on the computer doing the endless stream of emails and then into the cinema for the second of the Vancouver International Film Festival screenings of Haydn... 

Another busy show. Only about 3900 years to go if I want to reach the entire North American population at this rate.  At least I know there will always be a huge pool of folk who haven't seen the film and, with encouragement and access, would like to.  Compare that to the US Presidential Debate last night between Romney & Obama.

Guess how many folk in the US are said to have watched that?  Go on, guess.....67 million!  A good figure for a show in the UK (and a rare figure too) is 10 million - it just shows what a vast continent this is. 

I left Vancouver today and had a stunning left-side window seat all the way down the Pacific Coast to LA...Snow-peaked mountains, endless hills and valleys.  Then if there is a city that illustrates size, it's LA! Flying over its endless suburbs, you marvel at how they bring water to every household, how those millions eat every day, commute, entertain themselves and so on. Simply boggling. My trip to LA allowed me to escape this craziness within the LA Philharmonic and the ceaseless wonders of Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto (played by Leif Ove Andsnes and the LA Phil, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel). Even though I was filming it and thus busy, I wasn't so distracted that I failed to appreciate the genius of the composer and the expertise of these performers.  Outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall, late on a Saturday night, the streets were full of revellers, flashing police cars and the homeless bedding down where-ever warmth could be found.  What a city.  I didn't have much time to explore though as an early flight next day took me to NY and then a speedy train to Washington DC the day after that.  It was an endless movie out of the windows. There is so much to admire in this country, not least the landscapes which tend to get ignored a little in favour of cityscapes. I'm looking forward to my tour in March when I'll get to drive to 10 or 20 cities.  And then there will only be another 3899 years left before as many people have watched In Search of Beethoven / Mozart / Haydn as watched Mitt Romney threaten to kill Big Bird.

Monday 1st October

He only had to hit a little white ball into a hole not more than a few feet away.  Six feet to be precise.  He looked at it. Studied the angles. Did his preparation. Studied the angles again. Stood over the ball again. It’s not too much to say it was a putt to win, in my view, the Ryder Cup. He paused. The American Jim Furyk felt the gaze of millions of telespectators from the around the world. He already saw himself punching the air in celebration as the putt dropped into the hole. He looked up one last time. He hit the ball. It missed. Not long after, Europe won the most remarkable come-back I’ve seen since last May when the even more remarkable last minute goal by Sergio Aguero won (and deservingly so) Man City the English Premier League.  These are such fine lines between success and failure. A fraction of an inch on a putting green. A fraction of an inch on a football pitch. The penalty missed, the smash over-hit, the hurdle not quite cleared.  And there’s no going back. 

Right now, I am en route to Vancouver, one of my favourite cities in the world and home to a wonderful film festival (VIFF).  With three or four festivals on at any one time somewhere in the world, there are a tremendous amount of festivals out there. In the past few weeks, I have turned down trips to various places including Sardinia (SIEFF) which is a bit of a shame as not only have I always wanted to go there and THE BOY MIR won the top prize there.  Vancouver is one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to and I’ll be introducing IN SEARCH OF HAYDN. It will be fun to watch the film too as I have been tremendously busy on IN SEARCH OF CHOPIN for the past few months.   Both Haydn and Chopin share something with those golfers, footballers and tennis players.  They both experienced moments of fortune that carried their lives in one direction, when it could so easily have been another.  Too often I read suggestions that somehow they were pre-destined to be such successful artists.  It just ain’t so.  I’ve found that their lives – and the lives of all creative folk – have many moments of good fortune without which it’s plausible they quite simply would not have reached these heady heights.  Last week I spent a few long, tough but highly rewarding days in France filming for the Chopin film.  I finally feel I’m getting to know him and identify what parts of his story need to be told in a film.  Two days of walking Paris with my camera & tripod took me to all the spots he lived in and some he played at.

Then a three-hour drive south to the wonderful house he shared for seven summers with his partner, the female author George Sand.  The interiors there are fantastically well-preserved: it feels as if Chopin has just popped out for a walk. Finally therefore I start to get a sense of the man.  More importantly, I increasingly grasp his period of history, without which there can be no real understanding. How many other fine musicians and composers lie unrecognised because they remained in dour courts, or died early of smallpox, or ran out of money and changed careers?  Hadyn has moments of absolute fortune. Chopin absolutely did too. Sometimes, you have to be plain lucky.  The trick though is to practice twelve hours a day to make yourself lucky.  And then have the self-awareness to know when you’ve been lucky and to make the most of it. I’m lucky: I moan about lack of funding but I’ve just spent a week filming in France on a subject I love and now, tonight, I’ll screen a film I’m proud of to a sell-out audience in a city I find exhilarating.  Later this week I’ll be filming a Beethoven concert at the LA Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel and Leif Ove Andsnes. I’ve worked hard to be lucky but lucky I am.

Monday 10th September - Real Clear Arts

I get up early. Really early sometimes. I have bundles of energy for the day – and then, whoosh, it’s midnight. How does that happen? Along the way, I am bombarded with information. I once read that a study showed we receive 10,000 attempts a day to get our attention – from advertisements, emails, tweets, whatever it might be. 10,000. At least. In the mix are the endless cyberspace twitterings and mumblings. Of which this blog is of course one! How do you decide whom to read, whom to pay attention to? I stopped my twitter account as it was frankly an invitation to read drivel – and not only my own…. Do people actually talk to one another any more? Are we all so vain that we want our views to be heard and read by the entire world? Why, indeed, am I writing this blog? Well, meat for a discussion another day maybe but the point I wanted to get to is that I have found one (arts) blog which is tremendous and absolutely worthy of your time and sign-up. It comes from New York-based Judith Dobrzynski. Here are a couple of examples. Her tag is REAL CLEAR ARTS.

A Few Thoughts About Robert Hughes, American Art Critic

by Judith H. Dobrzynski

I met the critic Robert Hughes only once, and had no intention of writing about his death until I read a couple of his obituaries, which mostly ignored or belittled one of the things I admired about him. The New York Times didn't mention it, neither did Time magazine's main piece (there's apparently a separate story behind the paywall), and the Wall Street Journal, referring to a review of a book Hughes wrote, faulted him for it.

It was not his writing - everyone recognized his high style - or his eye, which agree with or not, signaled a distinct and definite taste, backed by erudition. No, I liked Hughes because he believed that American Art was/is underrated and did something about that - making an eight-part public television series called "American Visions" in 1998. That's when I interviewed him.

My piece, A Critic Distills American Art into Eight Hours, describes the grueling work that went into the series, which was produced with comparatively little money given its ambitions; the accompanying 648-page book; and a special issue of Time magazine, where he was then critic (here's an index to his work there). (Can you imagine Time putting out a special issue on art today?) Here's an excerpt from my article:

...they filmed at more than 100 locations from Maine to Malibu -- without the Hollywood conveniences.

"Whenever I'd see movie crews in SoHo, with their mobile toilets and makeup vans, I'd get jealous," Mr. Hughes recounted. "Our makeup van was carried by a production assistant in her handbag. And when I was dripping in sweat, someone would produce a ratty package of Kleenex."

The sheer volume of work was a bigger strain, threatening Mr. Hughes's marriage and sending him to a psychiatrist for the first time. "After finishing the series about a year ago, I had severe depression," he said. He blamed overwork, a crisis of confidence and postpartum blues.

Yet with deadlines for the book and then the bonus magazine looming, plus the reviews he writes for Time, there was no time to wallow. Sticking to a schedule he used on the road while writing the scripts, Mr. Hughes got up daily at 4 or 5 A.M. to churn out as many as 3,000 words a day.

"I nearly went bats having to write the book at such speed," he said, dressed in blue jeans and a button-down blue shirt in his loft, which is chockablock with books and papers but devoid of art...

I can attest -- 3,000 words a day is a lot; 3,000 good words is really a lot. But Hughes wanted the accolades his writing provoked:

Mr. Hughes has been noted for his idiosyncratic, nothing-is-sacred willingness to take on both the academically and politically correct, as well as for his vivid, irreverent language: when he says something clever, he will often stop to savor it and to make sure it has been recognized.

Over the years, it has been. Many deem him the most successful art critic today. In profiles and reviews of his books, writers have called him -- besides the apt "ever voluble" -- "erudite," "famously pugnacious," "brilliantly destructive," "consistently entertaining," "sardonic," "pontificating" and a string of other colorful adjectives.

He is certainly "Nothing if Not Critical," the title of his last book about art, a collection of his essays. In them, for example, he disparages the importance of Andy Warhol (on whom he has since mellowed) and taken many contemporary artists down a peg, including David Salle, Eric Fischl and Louise Bourgeois.

Hughes told me then that he wanted to make what became "American Visions" as soon as he finished his more renowned "The Shock of the New" television series -- which was broadcast in 1981. It took him until 1992 to enlist a backer -- the BBC, not PBS, which added to the BBC funding, did Time, later.

Hughes told me much more in the course of our interview, worth reading if you appreciate Hughes -- which artists he regrets leaving out, how he filmed at Monticello, why producers changed locations between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., why he tied his choices to the land, and so on.

It's worth reading, actually, even if you don't like Hughes, and many people don't. Even his detractors, however, agree that he made people go look at art, which is a good thing.

Chasing Audiences: Too Much Emphasis On Youth?
by Judith H. Dobrzynski

It's pretty obvious that museums -- and most other places as well -- chase the young. They see gray hair in their galleries and fear that no one will rpelace them if they don't do something about it NOW.

I've always had some doubt about that -- many people, I believe, don't have the time for art or the inclination for it until they reach a certain age, which -- anecdotally -- seems to be somewhere in the 40s, give or take, after most people's children have developed some independence.

Now comes a survey which agrees that society is too youth-obsessed. According to a firm called Euro RSCG Worldwide, which survey people in 19 countries, "63% of consumers around the world believe that society's obsession with youth has gotten out of hand." Results in the U.S. clocked in at exactly 63%, though the response ranged from 78% in Colombia to 45% in Belgium.

"Interestingly," an article on Marketing Charts said, "this view is shared by 6 in 10 Millennials (aged 18-34)."

7,213 adults took part in the survey, but ages were not stated in the report, nor was the margin of error.

This survey was more about aging itself -- e.g., "55% of the respondents said they look younger than most people their age" -- than it was about choices. But it still makes me wonder. Older people -- and here I mean 40s and above -- seem to resent the attention given to young people, even perhaps at some museums. Museums have to deal with that, making sure that they present a balance of activities and, with luck, a lot of programming that appeals to all ages.

I really love it when I go, say, to the Frick or the Morgan and see people of all ages. And I dislike it when I see costume exhibitions full of young people who never set foot in art exhibitions. Likewise, with diverse audiences for both, say, Jacob Lawrence and, say, Titian.