Sister Wendy's Story of Painting

Don't let the nun's habit fool you, Sister Wendy Beckett is an art critic, and a fairly opinionated one at that. She's also genuinely gifted, erudite in a very down-to-earth way, and a natural actress who entertains as she enlightens the Philistines amongst us who wouldn't know a Pollock from the paint droppings on an art studio floor. Based on her wonderful book The Story of Painting (a beautiful volume from Dorling Kindersley), this BBC-produced series is comprised of 10 half-hour episodes collected on 5 videos, and covers art history from the earliest cave paintings to the latest inductees into the pantheon. We watched the final episode, Modernism, which covered--albeit in a much abbreviated fashion--20th-century art. In appraising the aesthetic value of a Picasso nude (for Sister Wendy, the greatest artists of the 20th-century were Picasso and Matisse), she praises the voluptuous beauty of Nude in a Garden, explaining how then-main-squeeze Marie-Thérèse inspired the lusty Spaniard, before moving on with the delightfully vernacular segue "when he dumped Marie-Thérèse..." Later, while admitting the importance of Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" to the Surrealist movement, Sister Wendy cannot help but grudgingly add "horrible painting." But even though she occasionally damns, she more often praises--sometimes colorfully so ("I am besotted with Klee.") While not as comprehensive as the 9-hour Art of the Western World (VL-12/89), Sister Wendy's Story of Painting is still a real jewel in the art history video crown and is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)