Viewpoint: Remake of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation

Dr Zosia Archibald is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Liverpool’s Department of Archaeology, Classics, and Egyptology

“Early this year the BBC announced that the new Director General, Tony Hall, wants to renew arts broadcasting and plans to remake the 1960s 13-part TV series, Civilisation

“The announcement focused on the search for a new presenter and many of the media reactions to it have explored potential names, female as well as male.

Experience and expertise

“A charismatic name might attract a bigger audience of viewers. Nevertheless, the thing that made (and continues to make) Kenneth Clark’s series interesting is the fact that, despite his quirky gestures and clipped phrases, Clark offered experience and expertise in spades.

“He was not a professional art historian, although he wrote about art with considerable insight. He was, first and foremost, a collector, as well as a patron of the arts.

”His series was about ‘dead art’, not contemporary artists; but he certainly valued and promoted living artists and played a key role in protecting art works during WWII.

“Clark’s patronage of art is one of the reasons for the Tate Gallery’s new exhibition about him – Kenneth Clark, Looking for Civilisation. The exhibition provides the springboard for the Tate Britain Debate, broadcast on Radio 3 this month. This is just the start of public discussion on what the new series should focus on.

“Kenneth Clark presented his personal selection of art works in Civilisation as a set of icons around which to spin his reflections. Other presenters, including John Berger, Joan Bakewell, Jacob Bronowski, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Robert Hughes, Andrew Marr, and Marina Warner, have sought to confront, deflect, expand, elaborate, or move beyond Clark’s conversation about art, history, and culture.

Human creativity

“The British Museum’s recent, hugely popular exhibition on Ice Age art has shown that the public understands well the scope and capacity of human creativity.

“The BBC’s remake needs to tap into this broader, more wide-ranging appreciation of how humans make culture and how culture makes us human.  Art is about making things and making things is what we do. It is about much more than collecting; much more than prices and markets. It is about how we communicate meaning to each other.”