TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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Text File | 1994-02-27 | 6.2 KB | 141 lines

<text> <title> (1980) Show Business & Television </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1980 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> January 5, 1981 SHOW BUSINESS & TELEVISION MOST OF '80 </hdr> <body> Journey Through an Unknown Land The Shock of the New PBS, beginning Jan. 11, 8 p.m., E.S.T. Even today, many decades after they were unveiled before an uncomprehending world, the early works of the modernists regain the power to startle. Picasso's cubist women stare out from the canvas with the faces of monsters in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye belongs more to tomorrow than today, as it has for the past half-century. Jackson Pollock is still a puzzle to many people, who appreciate only the fancy prices his paintings now fetch. That lack of understanding is what makes this eight-part BBC series on 20th century art so valuable: it does not tell us where we are going, but it does tell us where we have been. The series begins and ends in Paris: The Eiffel Tower (1889), that "static totem of the cult of dynamism," as Host Robert Hughes calls it, is a symbol of the ebullient optimism that ushered in the new age of machine worship. The Beaubourg Center (1977), which looks like a trite and showy illustration from a science fiction magazine, becomes a symbol of the decline of that exhausted era. In between is a terra incognita that we may think we know--the art of the 20th century. Hughes, who also was the writer of the series, is as good a guide through that rough country as Kenneth Clark was through earlier centuries in Civilization, after which The Shock of the New is patterned. But whereas Clark reflected an older, more urbane sensibility, Hughes, 42, is a brash and electric as his subject. He is sometimes seen in shirtsleeves; his blond hair is always unruly. Instead of Clark's patrician, High Church accent, Hughes speaks in a matey, sometimes too hearty Australian that lapses easily--and quite appropriately--into slang. Talking about Chicago's pioneering building developers, for instance, he says that their policy was to "grab the block, screw the neighbors." What makes the program interesting, however, is not Hughes' manner but his arresting ideas. He brings a fresh eye to familiar scenes. Placing two cubist paintings by Picasso and Braque side by side, for example, he shows that they are almost indistinguishable. At that point in their careers, the two men were so alike that "they could have been Siamese twins." The medium of television allows him to juxtapose paintings and the real-life images from which they were so clearly derived--automobiles, planes, locomotives, almost anything that meant speed and modernity. Old films and current interviews also add fascinating insights, giving Hughes' series one advantage over Clark's. Botticelli could not be filmed in his studio; indeed, no one even knows what he looked like. Hughes, who is TIME's art critic, makes a confident, opinionated guide. Some of his greatest scorn is directed at modern architecture. Though he praises L.E. Corbusier as an inventor of shapes, he showers contempt upon his most famous projects: Chandigarh, the Indian city built at the foot of the Himalayas, and the Unite d'Habitation, the huge apartment house outside Marseille. Hughes visits the Marseille building and stops in the shopping mall that Corbu put inside. It is empty. The French like the bustle of a real marketplace. Corbusier, says Hughes, thought of everything but the people who had to live in his creations. There is also a visit to a Berlin museum so that Hughes can sit--or attempt to sit--in Gerrit Rietveld's beautiful, Mondrian-inspired chair. Like Corbusier, Rietveld designed for himself alone, however. The bottom that was supposed to settle in that lovely wooden chair, complains Hughes, "is one of those platonic solids existing somewhere out in the ether in a world of ideal form never made flesh." Throughout his sweeping survey of the century, Hughes is affectionate but ironic, intolerant of the hokum he sees behind so many famous names. In collaboration with Producer Lorna Pegram, he has created a small work of art himself, giving PBS, which is presenting the series, a fine start to the new year. -- By Gerald Clarke THE MOST OF 1980 Loudest Shot: The shooting of Dallas' J.R. Ewing, which prompted three-quarters of the globe to ask "Who dunit?" Fastest Comeback: CBS, which defied all predictions and took the No. 1 spot in the ratings back from ABC, which had grabbed the title in 1976. Biggest Sushi: NBC's Shogun, which ranked just behind Roots (1977) as the highest-rating mini-series of all time. Biggest Bomb: Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, which cost $36 million but was pulled back from distribution after some very unheavenly reviews. Second Biggest Bomb: Sir Lew Grade's Raise the Titanic!, which could scarcely raise the curtain, let alone a paying audience. Worlds Least Likely to Be Remembered: NBC President Fred Silverman's statement July a year ago, that if he could not raise ratings significantly by Christmas 1980, someone else should be given "a shot at this job." As of last week, NBC was a distant third in the ratings, further behind, in fact, than it was last Christmas and the Christmas before. Most Sadistic Show: ABC's That's Incredible, which, in the search for thrills and ratings, has caused one man nearly to lose a foot, another to burn his fingers to stumps, and a third to suffer several fractures and a ruptured aorta. Biggest Omission: NBC's coverage of the Moscow Summer Olympics, all 152 hours of which were canceled after the U.S. withdrew from the Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Oddest Couple: Tom Snyder and Rona Barrett, who got along so famously as co-hosts of NBC's Tomorrow that Miss Rona finally walked out in a huff. Saddest Moment: The senseless murder of John Lennon by a fan, which silenced one of the most brilliant music makers of the century. </body> </article> </text>