LibGuides: Impressionism to Post Impressionism Art: Media

Featured Streaming Media

Try these videos to get started. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding media? Try Articles & Media.

Art of America: Looking for Paradise (51:06) In this program, Andrew Graham-Dixon follows in the footsteps of the pioneers who built the foundations of America as he explores American painting from the 17th through the 19th centuries. He examines the earliest portraits in America and uncovers the dark truth behind Benjamin West’s famous Treaty of Penn with the Indians. In Philadelphia, he turns the pages of one of the world’s most expensive books—John James Audubon’s exquisite Birds of America—and explores the wilderness that inspired great landscape painter Thomas Cole. Graham-Dixon argues that despite idyllic themes in American art, progress and innovation have come at a high price. A BBC Production. Part of the series Art of America.
Claude Monet (32:00) In his garden at Giverny, Monet created a vast canvas to research his landscape paintings. He had a Japanese bridge built over the pond, which he covered with water lilies. Anxious to render every variation of light over the bridge, water, foliage, and flowers consistent with the season and time of day, Monet worked simultaneously on several canvases and returned to them again and again. This program explores the 54 versions of Water Lilies from various viewpoints and harmonies of light. We see that behind the apparent spontaneity lies a very sophisticated work of composition.
Great Artists: Rodin (23:39) Auguste Rodin redefined the idea of sculpture in European art liberating it from the constraints of classicism and created three dimensional forms which pulsated with life and energy. His masterpiece, the Gates of Hell, is the greatest public sculpture of the 19th century, a work that obsessed him for almost 40 years, and which acted as a laboratory for Rodin imagination and which produced some of greatest sculptures of his career, works such as The Kiss and The Thinker.
Great Artists: Van Gogh (23:34) Vincent van Gogh is perhaps the most mythologized artist in the history of art and his tragic life is ingrained in the popular imagination. Active as an artist for only ten years he completed 1,250 paintings before succumbing to mental illness and taking his own life in July of 1890. Although he sold only one painting during his lifetime, his enormous rise to fame after his death means that today his are among the most cherished paintings of all the great artists. Works featured in this program include The Potato-Eaters, Sunflowers, Vincent's House in Arles, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, The Starry Night, and Wheat Field with Crows.
Great Artists: Whistler (23:56) Whistler was the first great international American artist, hugely well traveled, a painter and print maker who bridged the gap between Impressionist Paris and symbolist London. He was an intelligent and original artist who radically proclaimed that art rather than documenting the visual world around us—should be experienced for its own sake. His Arrangement in Grey and Black, a portrait of Whistler’s mother, is one of the great portraits in the history of art, not least for its elusive title. Whilst his Nocturne Black and Gold, was thought so radical that Whistler had to go to court to defend it.
Paul Cezanne After several years of traveling, Cézanne moved back to Aix-en-Provence. From that point, he barely left the area, and spent his days painting in his studio and outdoors. The majestic Mont Sainte-Victoire became his primary subject and motif, capturing the magnificent mountain from every angle of light, different points of view, styles, and changing seasons. In this program, we examine many of these paintings in oil, drawings, and watercolor, and probe the intention of Cézanne’s apparent obsession with place.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bright Summer Sundays (31:59) This classic program studies Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s charming composition The Moulin de la Galette, a marvelous interweaving of sunlight and soft, hazy blue—and a genial proclamation of the Impressionist school. The nuanced color, the subtly overlapping brushstrokes, the artful blurring of the figures, and other technical elements are considered.
Series: Sex and Sensibility - The Allure of Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was an explosion of new ways of depicting the world that swept rapidly from country to country, influencing every branch of the arts, including architecture and design. Born of the social changes brought by industrialization, artists such as Beardsley, Horta, Guimard, and Lalique combined the sensibilities of the urban psyche with motifs drawn from nature and sex. This three-part series goes to London, Glasgow, Paris, Brussels, and Vienna in a stunning exploration of how this first international modern style was born. A BBC Production. 3-part series, 49–51 minutes each.
Series: The Impressionists - Painting and Revolution Today it’s often equated with the anodyne imagery of greeting cards and wrapping paper, but in its era Impressionism was a jarring, in-your-face artistic uprising. Filmed at many of the locations where the movement emerged and took shape, this four-part series explores the cultural factors and formal concerns that motivated the Impressionists to depart from tradition and forge their own stylistic path. It also looks at scientific advances that allowed the new visual idiom to develop. British critic Waldemar Januszczak, well known to BBC audiences for his astute commentary and boldly articulated insights, presents each episode. 4-part series, 60 minutes each.
Series: The Impressionists - with Tim Marlow The Impressionists have become the international superstars of Western painting. The works of Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne and the great successors of Impressionism like Gauguin and Van Gogh appear everywhere and are well loved by the public and academics alike. Despite their popularity and accessibility, Impressionist paintings were radical works of art which instigated a revolution in the art world. The Impressionists broke away from traditional, academic art in their technique—by using touches of color to capture movement and light and in their subject matter, depicting ordinary people at work and leisure in Paris and on the banks of the Seine. In this eight-part series, we are reacquainted with the artists—their motivations and loves, triumphs and disappointments, and with their work.

More Media

In addition to streaming media, we have DVDs, images, audio and more media.

The Impressionists : The Other French Revolution