How does contemporary art address the idea of spirituality? How do artists working today reveal and question commonly held assumptions about faith, belief, meditation, and religious symbols? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Spirituality” explores these questions through the work of the artists Beryl Korot, Ann Hamilton, John Feodorov, Shahzia Sikander, and James Turrell.
How does contemporary art address the idea of place? How do artists working today reveal and question commonly held assumptions about land, home, and national identity? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Place” explores these questions through the work of Laurie Anderson, Richard Serra, Sally Mann, Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, and Pepón Osorio.
How does contemporary art address the idea of identity? How do artists working today reveal and question commonly held assumptions about stereotypes, self-awareness, portaiture, and what it means to be an artist? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Identity” explores these questions through the work of the artists William Wegman, Bruce Nauman, Kerry James Marshall, Maya Lin, and Louise Bourgeois.
How does contemporary art address the idea of consumption? How do artists question commonly held assumptions about commerce, mass media, and consumer society? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Consumption” explores these questions through the work of the artists Barabra Kruger, Michael Ray Charles, Matthew Barney, Andrea Zittel, and Mel Chin.
How do artists tell stories in their work? How does contemporary art reflect and reveal narrative traditions? How does the art of today record and describe the world around us? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Stories” explores these questions through the work of Charles Atlas, Kara Walker, Kiki Smith, Do-Ho Suh, and Trenton Doyle Hancock.
How do artists evoke and transform time in their work? Can a work of contemporary art be timeless? How does contemporary art relate to art of the ancient past, to nature, and to the rhythms of the life? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Time” explores these questions through the work of Charles Atlas, Martin Puryear, Paul Pfeiffer, Vija Celmins, and Tim Hawkinson.
How do contemporary artworks embody emotion? How do artists express longing, love, and human experience in their work? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Loss & Desire” explores these questions through the work of Charles Atlas, Collier Schorr, Gabriel Orozco, and Janine Antoni.
How do artists use irony, goofiness, satire, and sarcasm in their work? Can an artwork be funny and critical at the same time? Do contemporary artists always take themselves seriously? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Humor” explores these questions through the work of Charles Atlas, Eleanor Antin, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Murray, and Walton Ford.
From politics to mass media, the theme of power pervades daily life and is reflected in the ideas and concerns of contemporary artists. The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Power” explores the work of the artists Cai Guo-Qiang, Laylah Ali, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Ida Applebroog, and concludes with an original video artwork by Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
How does memory function? What is history? How do contemporary artists frame the past in their work? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Memory” explores these questions through the work of the artists Susan Rothenberg, Mike Kelley, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Josiah McElheny, and concludes with an original video artwork by Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
How do we organize life? What are the ways in which we capture knowledge and attempt greater understanding? The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Structures” explores these questions in the work of the artists Roni Horn, Matthew Ritchie, Fred Wilson, and Richard Tuttle, and concludes with an original video artwork by Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
Spontaneous and joyful, subversive or amusing, play can take many forms in daily life as well as in contemporary art. The "Art in the Twenty-First Century" documentary “Play” explores the work of the artists Oliver Herring, Arturo Herrera, Jessica Stockholder, and Ellen Gallagher, and concludes with an original video artwork by Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
What role do intuition, emotion, fantasy, and escapism play in contemporary art? The Art in the Twenty-First Century documentary “Romance” explores these questions in the work of the artists Pierre Huyghe, Judy Pfaff, Lari Pittman, and Laurie Simmons.
How do contemporary artists engage politics, inequality, and the many conflicts that besiege the world today? How do artists use their work to discuss or oppose misery, turmoil, and injustice? The Art in the Twenty-First Century documentary “Protest” explores these questions in the work of the artists Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, An-My Lê, and Nancy Spero.
How is our understanding of the natural world deeply cultural? The Art in the Twenty-First Century documentary “Ecology” explores these questions in the work of the artists Robert Adams, Mark Dion, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, and Ursula von Rydingsvard.
How do contemporary artists address contradiction, ambiguity, and truth? The Art in the Twenty-First Century documentary “Paradox” explores these questions in the work of the artists Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Robert Ryman, and Catherine Sullivan.
This episode features three artists — William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and Carrie Mae Weems — whose works explore conscience and the possibility of understanding and reconciling past and present, while exposing injustice and expressing tolerance for others.
This episode presents artists whose works defy convention and transport us to unreal worlds and altered states of consciousness. With works at times hallucinatory, irreverent, and sublime, each of these artists pursues a vision first held in the mind’s eye.
Whether observing and satirizing society or reinventing icons of literature, art history, and popular culture, these artists inhabit the characters they create and capture the sensibilities of our age.
Whether through acts of appropriation, repetition, or accumulation, the artists in this episode realize projects both vast in scope and beyond comprehension.
How do artists respond to a world in flux? In what ways do artists act as agents of change, and what kinds of aesthetic choices do they make to express it? This episode features artists who bear witness, through their work, to transformation—cultural, material, and aesthetic—and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects. Artists: Ai Weiwei, Catherine Opie, El Anatsui
Who and what limits our freedom of expression? In what ways do cultural differences affect our understanding of art and other forms of communication? How do an artist’s process and choice of medium affect our perception of his or her work? This episode features artists who synthesize disparate aesthetic traditions, present taboo subject matter, discover innovative uses of media, and explore the shape-shifting potential of the human figure. Artists: assume vivid astro focus, David Altmejd, Lynda Benglis, Tabaimo
How do artists mine the past to explore the present? Why do some historical events shape the way we think today, and why have some been forgotten? In what ways do artists use their own histories to examine the human condition? In this episode, artists play with historical events, explore and expose commonly held assumptions about historic ‘truth’, and create narratives based on personal experiences. Featured in this video: Glenn Ligon, Marina Abramović, Mary Reid Kelley.
In what ways can art convey equilibrium or disequilibrium? What is reality? How do artists perceive and express it? This episode features artists whose works explore the distinctions between balance and imbalance, and demonstrate that the smallest change in a line, a formal element, or a structure can be a radical proposition. Featured in this video: Rackstraw Downes, Robert Mangold, Sarah Sze.
How do artists push beyond what they already know and readily see? Can acts of engagement and exploration be works of art in themselves? In this episode, artists use their practices as tools for personal and intellectual discovery, simultaneously documenting and producing new realities in the process.
How do artists make the invisible visible? What hidden elements persist in their work? Is it the artist’s role to reveal them, or not? In this episode, artists share some of the secrets that are intrinsic to their work.
Why do we break with some traditions and perpetuate others? Artists in this episode use life experiences and family heritage to explore new aesthetic terrain.
What makes a compelling story? How do artists disrupt everyday reality in the service of revealing subtler truths? This episode features artists who explore the virtues of ambiguity, mix genres, and merge aesthetic disciplines to discern not simply what stories mean, but how and why they come to have meaning.
The Season 8 premiere spotlights artists in Chicago, including Nick Cave, who creates "Soundsuits"; installation artist Theaster Gates; photography-based, multi-medium artist Barbara Kasten; and Chris Ware, who's known for his New Yorker magazine covers.
Mexico City artists exit their homes and studios to use the growing megalopolis as their canvas. The artists present everyday materials as artworks, mine recognizable images for their poetic potential, and take their art to the streets.
While sprawling Los Angeles has world-class museums and art schools, artists working in the shadow of the entertainment industry are more "under the radar," affording them the space and time to imagine.
By recreating historical moments, staging photos of vernacular scenes, and crafting intricate sculptures that trick the eye, artists in Vancouver reveal how everyday images and moments from the past are not always what they seem.
Since the dramatic fall of apartheid in 1994, Johannesburg has emerged as the artistic capital of sub-Saharan Africa. This episode tells the story of four artists from a diversity of South African ethnic backgrounds, identities and generations working across photography, painting, sculpture, and performance. Collectively, the artists in this hour use their work to empower marginalized communities, reexamine history, and pursue their visions for South Africa's future.
A city still in the midst of a post-Cold War cultural and economic rebirth, since the 1990s Berlin has become a haven for artists from all over the world-a free zone where experimentation, individual expression, and international influences converge. From creating large-scale public projects to intimately personal ones, the artists in this episode demonstrate the diversity of practice and sensibilities in the German capital, expose its complicated history of war and migration, and convey hopes for finding systems that foster a better tomorrow.
A longtime home for political progressives and technological pioneers, the San Francisco Bay Area is a magnet for artists who are drawn to its experimental atmosphere, countercultural spirit, and history of innovation. In addition to three artists working across photography, installation, and new media, this episode features a non-profit art center, spotlighting multiple artists with physical and cognitive disabilities who work across a range of mediums. The artists in this hour are united by their steadfastness and persistence in creating; their art serves as an essential expression of their experience of the world.
See how British history and modern upheaval collide in the works of today's London artists. Their art rethinks the past, subverts tradition, and is as layered, diverse and dynamic as the centuries-old city in which these artists live.
Witness the maturing of this unique contemporary-art hub and meet the artists who call it home. Beijing's recent economic boom makes it fertile ground for art, and artists have responded to its relentless evolution with urgency and ambition.
Learn how contemporary art can challenge preconceived notions of the U.S.-Mexico border. Today's artists see the border as an open wound, theatrical stage, political podium, studio and contradictory landscape that features both ugliness and beauty.
The artists in “Friends & Strangers” are connectors, building upon and supporting the existing groups they participate in and searching for ways to create ever more inclusive forms of community. Featuring Linda Goode Bryant, Miranda July, Christine Sun Kim, and Cannupa Hanska Luger, this hour follows the four artists as they identify collaborators, advocate for themselves and others, and work to create a world where we are made stronger together. In their practices, these artists build institutions that become networks for new and unorthodox ideas, generate participatory artworks that connect us across differences, and make the underserved and underrepresented visible to our wider society. Their works call out to like-minded individuals and provide gathering sites, enunciate grievances and confront structural inequalities, and demonstrate new and expansive models of coming together. Seeking connection within their immediate circles and across vast differences, these artists have sought
