PBS has an astounding series titled Simon Schama's Power of Art. Schama recounts the lives of eight artists and specific works that defined their careers. This series is truly amazing, and should be watched, nay studied, by all and sundry. In order (with the latest—Caravaggio—tonight, Monday, June 25):
* Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and Wheatfield With Crows,
* Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Guernica,
* Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) and David With the Head of Goliath,
* Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and The Ecstasy of St. Theresa,
* Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and The Conspiracy of the Batavians Under Claudius Civilis,
* Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) and The Death of Marat,
* J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On),
* Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and the Seagram murals.
A blurb from the PBS site that stuck:
In 1941, during the Nazi occupation of Paris, the Gestapo visited Pablo Picasso's Left Bank flat, where a member of the secret police spied a postcard of the artist's most famous work, Guernica. The giant mural memorialized Germany's 1937 aerial obliteration of a small Basque village. "Was it you who did this?" the Nazi demanded of Picasso, to which he replied, "No. It was you."
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