Our SDG consists of thirteen television programs, written and presented by Kenneth Clark in 1969. It is titled Civilisation, a Personal View. After the TV series was broadcast, Clark turned the scripts into a book with the same title. Our course focusses on Western European civilization from the end of the Dark Ages to the early twentieth century. This specific window of interest for Clark was based on the visual arts and architecture; with substantial sections about drama, literature, music, philosophy and socio-political movements.
Quoting from a 2016 biography of Clark by James Stourton, “When David Attenborough, the controller of BBC2, invited Kenneth Clark for lunch in September 1966 ‘to discuss a project’, nobody could have imagined the success of the series of thirteen programmes that would result. Attenborough’s motivation was strategic – to launch colour TV in Britain . . . The BBC was the only television organisation in the world that could have attempted something as culturally and economically ambitious as this – the scale of the production was unprecedented. The research, filming and editing took three years (1966–69); the film crew of twelve travelled eighty thousand miles, visited eleven countries, used 117 locations and filmed objects in 118 museums and eighteen libraries.” The cost was extreme at the time.
We will follow the TV series and book to revisit the powerful birth of Western European culture with both visual cultural representations and written explorations of this history. If you are intrigued by the filming of the series or who this man Kenneth Clark was, you are free to bring that focus to our discussion. Join us for this fascinating journey about what makes Western European culture unique, interesting and powerful, and how Kenneth Clark strove to make Western European cultural objects accessible to many, many people, including ourselves.
