Sadly Over-hyped

just watch it!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I walked into the Rothko Chapel, on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas, one day in 1974, expecting to find less than nothing, just another High Art hoax. My reaction was both overwhelming and totally unexpected. I literally wept, much as I also did years later when I saw the Van Goghs in Munich, and Michaelangelo's "Pieta" in the Vatican.It's a total cliché whenever one meets another painter who's mad about Rothko. Sooner or later, the question of, "Did you cry in the Chapel?" comes up. It's very corny but most of us did shed a tear. You have to see it for yourself, It's quite a rush, the paintings are about 15 feet tall, mostly in blues, browns, and blacks. The emotional impact is quite something, hard to describe, you just have to go there some day and see for yourself. No photograph could ever do it justice.Rothko was a genius and a tragic hero. He sought, and achieved, the expression of an authentic personal spirituality within the then-dominant idiom of Ab-Ex.A painter of tremendous power and sincerity, to whom I am deeply indebted both formally and spiritually.Anyone who's seriously interested in Mark Rothko, and what he was all about, should view Simon Schama's POWER OF ART, disc 3 this was first produced by the BBC in 2006; here's the review from the IMDb.No lie, If you're a fan of Rothko, this video is a must-see. Informative, evocative, and almost unbearable in its emotional intensity. Be forewarned: this is not for the faint-of heart. It's Mark vs the uber-rich, narcissistic NYC art establishment – can you guess who wins? Nevertheless, it's the most accurate and loving tribute to the deeply troubled, painfully sincere, disturbingly self-destructive, humanist that was Mark Rothko.Watch it – you won't be disappointed Old Simon Schama actually "got" Rothko. Not many people do, nor ever did; his brief, meteoric 'success' notwithstanding.The video also includes a lot of Markus Rothkovitch (his original name) – cigarettes, vodka, warts and all – explaining himself.Excruciating and unforgettable; don't take my word for it; just watch the thing – If you have the stomach for it.

If there is such a thing as popular science probably the best name one can give to the genre this series belongs to is popular art. Simon Schama's series of commentary on eight masters and their masterpieces in the history of art have a uniting theme - how art can influenced by power and how power influences art - but yet seems to address mostly the non-initiated audience. The language of the series is sometimes the one of an specialist but no deep aesthetic lessons are given, and the central thread of the commentaries in most of the episodes is around the anectdotic explanation of the works, combined with actors rendering the central figures, in many cases with a very thick palette to use a plastic arts term.The best moments of the series are in my opinion when the commentary raises atop the banal to create a real and veridical connection between works and times as in the episode about Picasso, or when the camera work of the director fits well the painters style as in the Van Gogh's episode. Yet some contemporary hints could have been avoided in the first, and the acted scene of Van Gogh's folly from the second. Schama is eloquent and catches the attention. Each episode in itself seems to have its better and its worse moments. As such series build in time, eight episodes may not be enough for a definitive conclusion, and the overall impression can improve if further artists and masterpieces will be explored in follow-up seasons.

Simon Schama's delectably paradoxical look at some of the great names in art uses a humanistic approach in viewing The Great Masters that at once humbles their genius as flawed humans and exalts their glorious talent. At once witty, sardonic, and sexy, Schama's approach to art couples socio-historical scholarship with the pure joy in viewing something that invigorates the eye, the brain and the heart.The Power of Art utilizes Schama's wonderfully written narration he brings to so many of his BBC documentaries, as well as beautifully staged and acted mini-dramas to capture the artist's historical context.By appealing to the everyman's enjoyment of beautiful art, the scholar's love of history, and the artist's appreciation for the myriad influences and subtleties of the craft, Schama's Power of Art is simply lovely.

Schama's series is highly watchable, and I enjoyed his History of Britain as well, but I must vehemently protest to his Bernini episode, which is, admittedly, visually rich, masterly filmed - but Schama makes the unforgivable mistake of basing his biographical material (which takes up half of the episode) on 17th century muckraker Filippo Baldinucci. Baldinucci, who aspired to be another Vasari, generously lent his ear to all the most envious gossip about the artist, and he went out of his way to be spectacular. Thus, we are treated to the disgraceful story of a megalomaniac Bernini whose genius went to his head, who nearly killed his own brother in a jealous rage, and arranged for a bravo to slash the face of Costanza Bonarelli, Bernini's unfaithful mistress, to ribbons, as Schama so vividly puts it. A Bernini whom even his own mother detested. All of this, however, is based on Baldinucci's low-minded attempt to vilify Bernini, and is written, not as Schama seems to suggest, by a biographer who closely followed his subject around in Rome, but by a biographer who was two years old at the time of the Bonarelli scandal related in so vivid details, and Baldinucci's scandalous book was not published until two years after Bernini's death - for very good reasons. It is totally inadmissible. Even the unsympathetic Pope Innocent X was forced to exclaim: "They say bad things about Bernini, but he is a great and rare man". Man - not only artist. For a truthful biography on Bernini, we must go to Howard Hibbard (who carefully gleans from Baldinucci all that is trustworthy). Among the despicable features of Bernini, Schama & Baldinucci report that he never credited his co-workers - the people doing the hard work for the artist - but which artist did? Michelangelo? Rembrandt? Da Vinci? Certainly not. An art historian like Schama should know that the artist was always turned into a brand name, and never laid claim to wield the chisel or the brush himself. It's a shame about Schama's episode, for his treatment of Bernini as an artist is admirable, and I do agree that Bernini - as Schama says - transcended dualism and deliberately put erotic aspects into his portraits of saints, simply to show a transport that people can relate to. But the biographical yellow press diatribe of the program, collected with immoderate glee from fishwife Baldinucci - really, historian Simon Schama ought to know better!