1000 Masterworks: Renaissance to Postmodernism

Between 1980-1994, the German production company WDR created a series of 10-minute shorts under the rubric 1000 (originally 100) Meisterwerke aus den grossen Museen der Welt, featuring analyses of individual artworks and profiles of artists by scholars. Many have previously been released in collections arranged according to historical periods or particular styles. This 10-disc box compiles 50 of the shorts, categorized by the museums in which the pieces are currently located: Berlin's National Gallery, the Louvre in Paris, the Guggenheim collection in Venice, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, the Prado in Madrid, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, Chicago's Art Institute, and New York's Whitney Museum. Although the works hail from a broad time span, the majority—some 30—date from the 20th century, including Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol, while only one is from the 15th. The camerawork is excellent, zeroing in on details within each painting, while the analyses (in German, English, and French) offer intelligent interpretations, sound thumbnail biographies of the artists, and insightful comparisons with the artist's other works and those of their predecessors and contemporaries. Of course, this is only a sampling of the series, and some epochs (e.g., the Renaissance) and regions (e.g., Italy and England) are underrepresented, but the 50 paintings chosen here are all expertly treated. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)