Civilisation: A Personal View

by Kenneth M. Clark

The history and culture of Western civilization are explored in a study of Western man's creative endeavors

Genres: History, Art, Nonfiction, Art History, Philosophy, Cultural, World History

359 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Sir Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (1903 -1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television, presenting a succession of programmes on the arts during the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the Civilisation series in 1969.

The son of rich parents, Clark was introduced to the arts at an early age. Among his early influences were the writings of John Ruskin, which instilled in him the belief that everyone should have access to great art. After coming under the influence of the connoisseur and dealer Bernard Berenson, Clark was appointed director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford aged twenty-seven, and three years later he was put in charge of Britain's National Gallery. His twelve years there saw the gallery transformed to make it accessible and inviting to a wider public.

During the Second World War, when the collection was moved from London for safe keeping, Clark made the building available for a series of daily concerts which proved a celebrated morale booster during the Blitz.

After the war, and three years as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, Clark surprised many by accepting the chairmanship of the UK's first commercial television network. Once the service had been successfully launched he agreed to write and present programmes about the arts. These established him as a household name in Britain, and he was asked to create the first colour series about the arts, Civilisation, first broadcast in 1969 in Britain and in many other countries soon afterwards.

Among many honours, Clark was knighted at the unusually young age of thirty-five, and three decades later was made a life peer shortly before the first transmission of Civilisation. Three decades after his death, Clark was celebrated in an exhibition at Tate Britain in London, prompting a reappraisal of his career by a new generation of critics and historians. Opinions varied about his aesthetic judgment, particularly in attributing paintings to old masters, but his skill as a writer and his enthusiasm for popularising the arts were widely recognised. Both the BBC and the Tate described him in retrospect as one of the most influential figures in British art of the twentieth century.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Civilisation is now - outwardly at any rate - finished. As Jean-Paul Sartre describes it in Nausea, Civilisation, in one fell stroke, has vanished.

So we inherit a duality: the nausea of our facticity; and the now "phony" glitz and glitter of the past.

We have now "Seen Through" the glories of Bernini, Michelangelo and Beethoven.

To paraphrase Helen Reddy, "we are Woke - hear us Roar!"

Like a caged beast.

Dumb Dualities are our jailors. We constantly, as Kierkegaard pointed out, bounce between the "Either" and the "Or" sides of our Padded Cell. We are now psychiatrically committed - to crazy futility.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
No safety or surprise
The End.

Oh, well. And to think Kenneth Clark still hoped for better!

***

I hate to say this, but civilisation is the flower of the settled life which has strong roots in the past. We Now have no roots, so must wither.

We started out that way in the twentieth century, when things had to be New and Improved. Now things are valueless unless they have sex appeal.

Value once was created out of our faith in fear and trembling. From that arose our art and monuments, an integral legacy of traditional civilisation.

Civilisation is work. Now our play is our work. And the grand sum of our play is its result:

The Boredom of the Void!

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

***

But there is a way back to the value that made the civilisation we have lost:

Through the Spirit.

The Spirit will once again clothe your world with deep value if you believe or meditate.

That's the Spirit's Way.

And He gives a New Life to those who would recreate a new Civilisation from the ashes of the Padded Cell of Woke Despair.

So He’s still here, and we CAN be happy, after all.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started watching this and then bought the book. This is sumptuous. It was made in 1969 by the BBC to encourage people to buy colour television sets, I believe. As an introduction to the arts it is quite conservative. But it gives an interesting overview of the history of art and some notion of the main periods. What he calls civilisation covers a remarkably slight and slender portion of human civilisation, you know, apart from the occasional bridge, it really seems to amount to art. Nothing wrong with this, but civilisation does seem to be somewhat more. Also, this is very much the civilisation of Western Europe after the dark ages. This probably could have done with a better name.

There is a lovely episode in the middle that focuses on music – mostly Bach – while panning across Baroque architecture. After a while it all gets to be too much and you can’t really take it in anymore, but you do get the impression that if there was a God he really would be pretty impressed with that period all-round.

After the churches and palaces and lavish paintings and public squares with marble god-knows-what, the final episode pans drearily across the New York skyline prior to the World Trade Centre being built, but still amongst endlessly the same skyscrapers. It is a strikingly sad scene. He mumbles something about opulence amongst squalor, but what really strikes you is how horribly dull the buildings are. We are richer than ever before, and yet after 12 episodes of architecture that would make you weep, paintings that cannot but leave you dazed and spinning, it is hard to look at ‘the best of the modern world’ and not think, “Is this really the best we can do?”

I guess painting church ceilings for twenty-years wasn’t really efficient – and we all know how terribly important it is to be efficient.

I think this could well have been better if it was purely a history of art and therefore sought to present that history by explaining more of what the artists where seeking to do and why. For example, what where the technological and scientific prerequisites that made point perspective painting possible? How did such painting change the way we saw space? What is the relationship between symbolic representation and naturalistic representation and to what extent are these contradictory? How did the invention of oil paints or access to various pigments affect what and how things were painted? How did the black-death impact on the history art and literature – beyond say Petrarch and Laura?

Let me give you a better example. I’m reading his The Nude at the moment – or rather, I was reading it and have been distracted with other things. In it he says that architecture – particularly Classical architecture – is premised on the same proportions as the human body. The columns are the legs, the ceiling is the shoulders. But, as much as I like this idea, he never explains it in a way I can really understand. And he says the same is true of Gothic architecture, but this left me even more confused. I think I would need a diagram – I think I would need numbers. Anyway, I certainly need more – he tantalizes, where he should explain. I would love to see a program that really did relate the arts – music, painting, sculpture, crafts and so on – from each period showing the common features of each art form and the striking differences. You know, in something like the way Foucault does with economics, biology and linguistics in The Order of Things. That is, a history of art that expresses what the artists were seeking to say, and seeking to show in their art. A history of art as if it was done by that other BBC presenter of personal views – James Burke – with his Connections or The Day the Universe Changed - perhaps my two all-time favourite documentaries.

But this was meant as a very expensive chocolate box, or jewellery box and it is certainly that – like I said, it is sumptuous. I wonder why we don’t make more documentaries like this anymore? Are people really not interested?

[Sense of History]

This book is 50 years old, and only the paper version of a BBC-TV-series. As a young man I saw this series and was very impressed by the erudition of Clark and his strong views. So many years later, these views obviously are very outdated; the narrow Western focus today would be completely out of the question; moreover, Clark did not venture into the twentieth century art, though we do have the impression that he has a not so flattering opinion about it. Some of his remarks, we would be ashamed of today (about the urge of Germans for hysteria, for example).

But still, it remains quite impressive to get all the different art genres in one comprehensive overview. Moreover, it was nice to see how Clark approached the concept of "civilization" very cautiously and did not give a simple definition. Finally, I want to repeat his closing lines, a creed that still stands and that I endorse completely: "I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history" Amen!

[Roy Lotz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room

I must admit immediately that I have never read nor even laid eyes on this book. I’m sure it’s lovely. This review is, rather, about the television series, which I’d wager is twice as lovely.

Civilisation is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. Kenneth Clark takes his viewer from the Dark Ages, through romanesque, gothic, the Renaissance, the Reformation, baroque, rococo, neoclassicism, impressionism, through the industrial revolution and the two World Wars, all the way up to when the program was made in the late 1960s. This is a remarkable amount of ground to cover for a show with 13 episodes, each 50 minutes long.

Not only chronologically, but in subject matter, this documentary casts a wide net. Although the show’s primary emphasis is on architecture and art, Clark also dips into literature, poetry, music, engineering, politics, and wider social problems like inequality, poverty, oppression, and war. Of course, for lack of time Clark cannot delve too deeply into any one of these subjects; but because the presentation is so skillful and economical, and the selection of material so tasteful, the viewer is nevertheless satisfied at the end of every episode.

The documentary generally shifts between shots of Clark facing the camera, talking to the viewer, and extended, panoramic shots of churches, monuments, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mountains, while beautiful music plays in the background. Clark himself chose the musical accompaniments to these visuals, and they are uniformly splendid (and this is one reason why I recommend the documentary over the book). More than perhaps anything I’ve seen on a screen, this series is rich, lavish, sumptuous. As the camera pans over the altarpiece of a church, while Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion plays in the background, it’s so lush and gorgeous that it almost gives you a stomach ache.

Aside from these visuals and music, the main attraction of the series is Clark himself. He comes across as refined, cosmopolitan—almost a freak of erudition. But for all that, he is charming and witty, if ultimately a bit cold. One of the strongest impressions I got was that Clark was a man from another time. He looks out of place as he walks through the modern streets, crowded with cars and buzzing with urban life. He has many misgivings about the modern world: he is anti-Marxist, anti-modern art, and certainly didn’t understand the student protests and hippie culture flourishing at the time. In his own words, he was a “stick in the mud,” and I think felt alienated from his time because of his intense appreciation, even worship, of Western art.

This brings me to some of this program’s shortcomings. Most of these are due to the time in which it was made. This is most apparent in the first episode, “The Skin of Our Teeth,” wherein he argues that civilization almost disappeared during the Dark Ages, and comes close to crediting Charlemagne as the savior of all subsequent culture. This requires that he completely discredit both Byzantine and Muslim culture (not to mention Chinese), both of which were doing just fine. He repeats the tired stereotype about Byzantium being a fossilized culture and treats the Muslims as simple destroyers. Later on in the series, he has some uncharitable things to say about the Germans, which I think was a product of growing up during the World War.

A more serious flaw might be that the series bites off more than it can chew. The questions Clark poses to answer are vast. What is civilization? What makes it thrive? What makes it fall apart? Deep questions, but his answers are by comparison shallow. Civilization requires confidence in the future; they cannot be built on fear. Civilization requires rebirth, the constant search for new styles and ideas; but it also requires continuity and tradition, a respect for the past. Civilization is pushed forward by men of genius (and in this series, they’re all men), who enlarge our faculties with their godlike creative powers; men like Michelangelo, Dante, Beethoven, men who are timeless and yet who forever alter the face of culture.

These are interesting answers, but they seem rather superficial to me. They describe, rather than explain, civilization. But of course, this is a documentary, not a monograph. And although Clark asks and tries to answer many questions, I think his primary goal was simply to inspire a sense of the worth, the preciousness, the grandeur of the accomplishments of European civilization. He wants to remind his viewers that our culture is fragile, and that we owe to it not only beautiful paintings and poetry, but also our very ability to see and appreciate the beauty in certain ways, to think about ideas in a certain light, to live not only a happy but a full and rich life.

Maybe this seems pinched and old-fashioned nowadays. Still, I can’t help thinking of all the times that a friend, a fellow student, or even a teacher has made a blanket statement about “Western culture,” “Enlightenment ideas,” “scientific materialism,” or some such thing, while seeming to understand none of it. (I've probably done this myself, too.) I’ve been in classes—serious, graduate-level classes—where, amid condemnations of “Western” ideas and gratuitous namedropping of Western philosophers, I realized that I was the only person there, professor included, who actually read some of these authors. I’m not making this up.

I suppose this is just a callow intellectual fashion, and it will eventually pass away. And I also suppose that this might be slightly preferable to the idiotic self-glorification of “European man” that prevailed in earlier times. At present, however, this program is a wonderful corrective to our bad habits of thought. It’s an education, a social critique, and a joy. I hope you get a chance to watch it.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

The Bulgarian review is first, the English translation follows it below

Преди четвърт век, когато за последно се поздравихме с Кенет Кларк, самата книга ми изглеждаше като истинско достижение на цивилизацията. Прекрасни илюстрации и гланцирана хартия. Неугледните социалистически издания в библиотеката ни можеха само да въздишат завистливо.

И ето че тазгодишният панаир на книгата ме подмами да си заменя стария екземпляр.

От текста нямах никакъв спомен. И май по-добре. О, сър Кенет, та Вие сте бил истински викторианец! Текстът би могъл да е писан през 70-те години на 19-ти век, а не на 20-ти. Единствено възможността за телевизионни предавания е липсвала, но е имало подлистници. Изпитах усещането, че Удхаус се е прицелвал в този щастливо-самодоволен и отлично образован снобски балон, излъчващ се от Кларк, който явно си е бил непокътнат доста след Джийвс.

Цивилизацията на Кенет Кларк е с размерите на грахово зърно. И по-конкретно то е с очертанията на британските острови. Да, драги читателю, те са били цивилизовани дори в епохата на варварството! Едничък фар на цивилизацията, с директни корени в елино-римския свят. Тъй като сър Кенет все пак не е стиснат човек, от него да мине, разширява леко границите до Европа. Да не решите обаче, че това е цяла Европа? Съвсем не. Например една Византия е просто исторически куриоз без значение, по-малко и от бележка под линия в историята на цивилизацията, по простата причина, че…е по-далечна духовно на Западна Европа спрямо Исляма! За Азия и другите континенти може просто да забравите - там цивилизация не е имало. Мисля, че това действително може да го каже само рицар на старата Британска империя, над която слънцето не е залязвало.

Съжалявам, сър Кенет. Припомняйки си текста, не мога да оценя книгата само по корицата и картинките. Този път ще оценя концепцията и съдържанието.

——
П. П. Всъщност ако заглавието не беше така мегаломанско и експлозивно, и в текста “цивилизацията” не се повтаряше упорито в единствено число, а беше уточнено, че става въпрос единствено за това, което днес се нарича “Западна Европа” в периода от ранното средновековие нататък, това би бил съвсем симпатичен и просветляващ прочит с отсянка на по британски навирен нос. Просветлението за доста западни обекти на изкуството всъщност е налице. Паралели не са и нужни - но сър Кенет упорства, че това е то, единственото постижение на целокупното човечество - само в указаните в книгата (великолепни) обекти. И отрича Африка, Китай, Индия и Персия, като за последната дори кротко си признава, че няма никакво понятие. Тогава как да повярвам на всичките му представи що е то “цивилизацията”?

A quarter of a century ago, when I last acquainted myself with Kenneth Clark, the book itself seemed like a true achievement of civilization. Splendid illustrations and glossy paper. The drab socialist editions in our library could only sigh with envy.

And so, this year's book fair enticed me to replace my old copy.

I had absolutely no memory of the text. And perhaps it was for the better. Oh, Sir Kenneth, you were a true Victorian! The text might as well have been written in the 1870s rather than the 1970s. The only thing missing back then was the medium of television broadcasts, though serialization in periodicals certainly existed. I couldn't shake the feeling that Wodehouse was aiming right at that blissfully self-satisfied, highly educated, snobbish bubble emanating from Clark, which evidently remained intact long after Jeeves.

Kenneth Clark's civilization is the size of a pea. More specifically, it takes the precise shape of the British Isles. Yes, dear reader, they were civilized even during the era of barbarism! A solitary beacon of civilization, with direct roots in the Greco-Roman world. Since Sir Kenneth isn't entirely stingy, though—out of the goodness of his heart—he slightly expands the boundaries to include Europe. But don't go assuming that means all of Europe! Far from it. Byzantium, for instance, is merely an insignificant historical curiosity, less than a footnote in the history of civilization, for the simple reason that… it is spiritually further from Western Europe than Islam is! As for Asia and the other continents, you can simply forget about them—no civilization ever existed there. I believe only a knight of the old British Empire, over which the sun never set, could say something like that with a straight face.

I'm sorry, Sir Kenneth. Re-reading the text, I cannot rate the book merely by its cover and illustrations. This time, I will judge the concept and the content.

P.S. In truth, if the title hadn't been so megalomaniacal and bombastic, and if the word "civilization" weren't persistently repeated in the singular throughout the text—had it instead clarified that it dealt strictly with what is today referred to as "Western Europe" from the Early Middle Ages onward—it would have been a rather delightful and enlightening read, with just a hint of a turned-up British nose. The enlightenment regarding many Western art objects is genuinely there. Parallels weren't even necessary—yet Sir Kenneth insists that this, and this alone, represents the sole achievement of all mankind, confined strictly to the (magnificent) works specified in the book. He dismisses Africa, China, India, and Persia, while casually admitting regarding the latter that he has no clue about it whatsoever. How, then, am I supposed to trust his grand notions of what "civilization" actually is?

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great for what it covered. In retrospect, all the aspects of world civilization it omits look increasingly glaring.

[Boris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Монументална книга.
Задължителна за всеки европеец, който държи на себеопознаването - в исторически, в културен, в духовен смисъл.

[John Hatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent, beautifully illustrated book based on the fascinating BBC television series that was broadcast in the first half of 1969. If it is still in print or available as an antiquarian book, I can recommend it highly to anyone who likes post-Roman empire European history, art, or any well-written non-fiction literature.

[Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This weekend I have indulged myself with a visit to Hatchard's Piccadilly, London's oldest bookstore. For those who haven't been there yet - I strongly recommend you do next time you are in the city! It is a fabulous place. A bookstore as the bookstores were meant to be. Full of charm, treasures to be found and quirky intelligent staff. Perhaps it is not where one goes bargain-hunting, but their selection is superb. Most of the new releases available 'signed by the author' and they are also offering a marvellous selection of the first editions...

It turned out that Hatchard's just released a limited hardback edition of 'Civilization' by Sir Kenneth Clark. It is hailed as best non-fiction book in the store's 220-year history. Well, this was an easy decision on an early Xmas gift to self.

I think this is a wonderful way for physical stores to differentiate and stay relevant under stress of online competition. Win customers through the unique experience and their intrinsic character.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 5 out of 5]

Цивилизацията в картини, скулптури и сгради: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/c...

Определено не бих седнал да пиша пространно и задълбочено за толкова позната книга – в едно или друго издание (или под лесната тв форма) “Цивилизацията” на Кенет Кларк присъства наоколо от достатъчно дълго време, има иконичен статус и преди епохата на инернет е била сред най-добрите начини човек да се плъзне по повърхността на западноевропейското и малко от американското изкуство. Поредното ѝ издание на български е факт с качествена хартия, стотици илюстрации и твърда корица, точно както си е редно. Разбира се, стилът и някои от заключенията на Кларк звучат поостарели, но сърцевината на тази книга е непокътната, защото тя и спира преди век – самият автор не смее да погледне своето време с очите, с които гледа миналото. Както повечето интелектуалци, така и той лелее по отминали епохи и съзира само недостатъците на времето си.

Издателска къща БАРД
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/c...

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Outdated of course now, but charming because of his erudition. I saw the BBC-series more than 40 years ago. More on my Sense-of-history-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Viktoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

На този човек главата му е красиво ковчеже на хладния брилянт на ума му...

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

About two-thirds of the way through, Clark makes a statement that to me sums up the whole point of the narrative: "[A]lthough one may use works of art to illustrate the history of civilization, one must not pretend that social conditions produce works of art or inevitably influence their form." This is exactly what Clark does: the progress of art is discussed in parallel with the progress in civilization, of which art is simultaneously herald, inspirator, and mirror. At times I feel that Clark does what he claims not to do- he shows how art arises out of social conditions. This is particularly evident in the chapter on the early ages of Western civilization, the 11th to 13th centuries. Perhaps he should not be faulted for doing so, as there is little else left to us as chronicle of the thought of those times.

Overall Clark is a well-read, opinionated, witty (and sometimes naughty) narrator. One cannot help but admire and yearn to espouse his personal belief that civilization cannot have moved forward as it has but for the essential contributions made by persons of genius ("heroes" as he calls them) who are not products of but miracles of society.

I close the last page with an overarching concept of Western civilization and notes for future reading and deeper studies. I recommend this book as an excellent nonfiction "gateway" read for those who mainly read fiction.

[Branimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ограмотих се доста относно различните стилове и течения в изкуството и архитектурата на Западна Европа за последните 1500 години, както и причините и обстоятелствата около възникването им, и вече мога да правя много по-фини разграничения от: скулптура, картина, гравюра :) Разказът е едно плавно пътуване във времето, а увлекателността на изказа ми напомни много за начина, по който разказва Карл Сейгън. Явно ще се гледа и едноименната телевизионна поредица на Кенет Кларк.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most sublime books I have ever had the fortune of reading. I must revisit and revisit in the years to come.

[Benedict Ness 📚 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative with some sassy opinions. Very dated, very dense, no mention of ladies, but can see why it’s a classic in art history.

[Brian Gatz · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, if this were newer...Here's an incredible survey of what happened in art, philosophy, and (most importantly) architecture from ~1000-1915. It's not entirely optimistic, but looks up enough. Paths, rights, and wrongs don't much play into it. We're creating piles of architecture, sweet paintings, effortless sculpture--or we're graceful in proportion, famed in ideas, moderate in wealth, and subtle in human appreciation. If there's a pattern, it's cyclical, short, and ecstatic. Some of the best pieces give the age of the spirit, others directly contradict (or, better, ignore the impulse to comment on the political, social hum). Small recommendations to the restless Germans (esp. Rococo), much to be said for the delicacies of the Italian Renaissance, and the natural wonders of Rousseau and the Romantics. I couldn't possibly summarize. There's so very much out there, have we the confidence to match it?

[booklady]

Watched the series produced from this book more times than I can remember. It is narrated by the author and mesmerizing. Need to get the book (which has been on my shelf for a number of years) down and read it!

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this many years ago and recall being mesmerized by the late Sir Kenneth Clark's erudition and lucid delivery. This time around I saw something else. And a lot of it irritated me. I must have missed the snarky tone of an art elitist. I definitely missed the cherrypicking. To be sure there are limitations in television and only so much material can be used. To that end, I am not sure Clark picked all of the right material. But he had his point to make (way back in 1969) and that was everything. At least Civilisation ages well. I didn't see any reason to think that a much different conclusion might have been reached with the insertion of forty-odd years. But who knows?

[Carol Tensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at a thrift shop because I didn't see the BBC series back in the late sixties. I was always attracted to the image of Charlemagne on the cover. This being a series of essays rather than a linear history of art and civilization, Clark leads us through the development of Western Europe through some interesting generalizations: that craft (text illumination, decoration, reliquaries) led to art and architecture during the middle ages; that the age of reason eventually led to a "Worship of Nature"; that the Industrial Age had the potential to be as destructive to civilization as the Huns. He trashed the Protestant Reformation so roundly (I believe he refers to innate Teutonic ferocity) that Francis Schaeffer felt the need to film "How Shall We Then Live?" as a counterargument.

Since this was not a comprehensive art history text, Clark featured specific artists. I appreciated the fact he featured Riemenschneider, Holbein, Bernini, and Watteau (who never seem to get their just recognition - especially in a world where the books about artists like Holbein are insanely outnumbered by books about any of the Impressionists). Two comments about the illustrations: First off, thank God for google images. Some art should never ever be shown as a fragment. Courbet's "Funeral at Ornan" is a case in point. Secondly, I've always felt that captions for artwork should include date and location in addition to artist and title. How hard is that?

I rate this book very high brow and definitely redolent of tweed and fine leather.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kenneth Clark was an historian of art who wrote and narrated the first color BBC documentary, Civilisation, and produced a lavishly illustrated book along the same lines. The film was shown at Grinnell College during my freshman year. Thereafter I picked up the book.

Both book and documentary are not so much histories of art as they are histories of (primarily western) civilization earmarked to great and illustrative works of art.

Grinnell College is not the place to go if one enjoys the spendors of nature. It is surrounded by corn, alfalfa and soy fields. Grinnell is not the place to go it one enjoys the night life and distractions of cities. The town itself is small with virtually no night life. Grinnell is a good place to study because there is little else to do there. Our work, however, was punctuated every weekend by films presented in the Alumni Recitation Hall, films of generally of high quality, films like Clark's Civilisation.

[John Sutherland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fitting companion to the excellent videos of the same name. Kenneth Clark was one of those delightful english gentlemen with an impeccable education, and who use english properly and to whom it is a pleasure to listen, and to watch (other than for seing his english dentistry). It traces the precarious survival of christian civilization in the last thousand or so years, through the accomplishments of that time that--unlike history--cannot easily lie: its Art; its Books; and its Architecture; all, thanks to the value seen in those things by the Christian Church, one of the few sources of wealth at that time. It is a cornucopia of pleasure in every way, bringing those delights before us that we would otherwise never see, or even know about.

[Michael Moats · Rating 2 out of 5]

Expecting a book about civilization but what I got was a book about art. Painted with a broad brush it rushes through history from 1100 CE until mid 1900's. No mention of atrocities, wars, reformation or any other huge historical event. If all you are interested in is a sweeping history of art without any significant mention of events behind the art, this is your book.

[Roxana · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stele si nu pentru ca nu ar fi intersanta sau lipsita de informatii utile, ci pentru ca in formatul acesta nu are sens.
Cartea este plina de descrieri are unor caldiri si opere pe care nu le vezi. Ori se adreseaza doar studentilor la arte si pasionatilor, ori se adauga poze. Altfel, e un chin sa citesti si sa tot cauti imaginile pe telefon.

[Whoknew? · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just don't ask Sir Kenneth about the Spanish....funny how he could present an overview of European art without so much as a word about them. Hmmmm.

[Hrisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a nice read but I wish it was less Eurocentric…

[Julian Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Kenneth Clark is virtually an unknown to most North Americans, but is a legend in Great Britain. Perhaps I, too, would be one of the ignorant creatures without a clue about his existence had it not been for my remarkable high school history teacher, Mr. Bob Cox, who showed us many episodes of Clark's excellent thirteen-part BBC television series, Civilisation. This book is essentially the transcript of Clark's narration, edited for clarity and book format. (The recordings of the television program, made almost 50 years ago, are difficult to obtain, so reading this book was the second-best thing I could do.)

Like I said, Clark was a remarkably talented individual and scholar of the arts. At the age of twenty-seven, he was in charge of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. By the age of thirty he was running the National Gallery of Britain. He was knighted at the age of thirty-five, and after twelve years of heading the National Gallery -- through the Second World War, no less -- he accepted the chairmanship of the newly-formed British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Once the BBC was well-established, he decided to write and present television programs about the arts, of which Civilisation is the most well-known. And so on. Now, you could reasonably argue that given the incredible classist English society, and the fact that Clark was born into a family of privilege, he was always destined to do great things. That may be the case, but even by the barometer of the silver spoon class, his accomplishments are remarkable.

So I was excited to sit down and work my way through this immense volume and admire the many illustrations within it. Truth be told: It was a bit of a slog. A television script without accompanying motion visuals is rather dry, and Clark's academic writing style is outdated nearly sixty years later. True, Civilisation the television program was aimed at a British layperson audience of the 1960s, but there is a foundational element of knowledge about the arts and culture that regrettably I don't possess. (I imagine that this was part of Mr. Cox's agenda in screening this program in the first place.) I suspect the visuals would have allowed the viewer to follow Clark's train of thought in a more seamless way as he moves from artist to artist and historical event to historical event, but written down, it was extremely difficult to tie the threads together.

Were one to make a program like this today, it would likely include more personal opinions from the presenter; Clark is quite restrained about his own viewpoints on anything through the first twelve chapters of the book. But in the thirteenth chapter, entitled "Heroic Materialism", Clark lets loose -- as much as a life peer can let loose in the 1960's -- and that almost makes this entire difficult journey worth it. At the beginning of Civilisation, Clark attempts to define what the word means to him; after all, the book itself is subtitled "a personal view". He opens Chapter 1 with the statement that he doesn't really know, but paraphrases Victorian critic John Ruskin, who states that true civilizations leave behind enduring records of deeds, words, and art. (Let's set aside Clark's very 1960's Western Euro-centric bias and British snobbery.) By the time we reach "Heroic Materialism", you see that Clark, even sixty years ago, is quite pessimistic about the worship of capital and how dehumanizing it is -- uncivilized even. Clark's observations prefigure the current (2025) state of inequality and end-stage capitalism so much that many of them are worth quoting in their entirety:

The early pictures of heavy industry are optimistic. Even the workers didn't object to it because it was hellish but because they were afraid that machinery would put them out of work.

(AI, anyone?)

The only people who saw through industrialism in those early days were the poets... It took a longish time -- over twenty years -- before ordinary men began to see what a monster had been created.

...

Early iron foundries had been small affairs -- almost family businesses -- and in its early stages the industrial movement had positively helped small men to escape from the more hopeless poverty of rural life. What was destructive was size. After about 1790 to 1800 there appeared the large foundries and mills which dehumanized life. Arkwright's spinning frame, invented about 1700, is always quoted as the beginning of mass production ... he and his like gave England a flying start in the economy of the nineteenth century, but they also produced that dehumanization which obsessed almost every great imaginative writer of the time...

This new religion of gain had behind it a body of doctrine without which it could never have maintained its authority over the serious-minded Victorians. The first of its sacred books -- printed in 1789 -- was the Essay on the Principle of Population by a clergyman named Malthus, which demonstrated that population will always increase faster than means of subsistence. In consequence, misery and want were bound to be the lot of the majority of mankind. This depressing theory, which cannot be altogether brushed aside, even today, had been put forward in a scientific spirit. Unfortunately Malthus' text contained such phrases as 'man has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food'. And these were used to justify the inhuman exploitation of labour. The other sacred books were the economic theories of Ricardo, almost a most earnest man writing in a scientific spirit -- but inexorable. Free enterprise and the survival of the fittest: one can see how they looked like laws of nature -- and in fact were both to become involved with Darwin's theories of natural selection.

When I call them sacred books I am not joking. Malthus and Ricardo were taken as gospels by the most serious and even pious men, who used them to justify actions they would never thought of defending on human grounds.

...

The early reformers' struggle with industrialised society illustrates what I believe to be the greatest civilising achievement of the nineteenth century: humanitarianism. We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct: five to one his answer will be 'kindness'. It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series... Our ancestors didn't use the word, and they did not greatly value the quality -- except perhaps in so far as they valued compassion. Nowadays, I think we under-estimate the humanitarian achievements of the nineteenth century. We forget the horrors that were taken for granted in early Victorian England: the hundreds of lashes inflicted daily on perfectly harmless men in the army and navy; the women chained together in threes, rumbling through the streets in open carts on their way to transportation. These and other even more unspeakable cruelties were carried out by agents of the Establishment, usually in defence of property.

I quote a great deal of this because the parallels to MAGA and American society today are unmistakable. I doubt that in 2025 if you were to ask individuals in America what they think matters the most in human conduct that they would respond "kindness". More likely, they would respond with some variation of "being right" or perhaps more accurately, "getting your way". Kindness, empathy and humanitarianism have now been replaced in Donald Trump's America with a zero-sum-game world view of "well, I've got mine". This, apparently, is what thousands of years of human development -- civilization -- has come to.

Interestingly, Clark doesn't leave us on a good note, even in 1969:

I said at the beginning that it is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. [Ed.: Witness the complete abdication of responsibility by both the Democratic Party and Congress in the face of Donald Trump's first six months of action.]

... Good people still have convictions, rather too many of them. The trouble is that there is still no centre. The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism, and that isn't enough. One may be optimistic, but one can't exactly be joyful at the prospect before us.

Like I said, incredibly prophetic, and I'm sure Clark (who died in 1983) would be horrified about the depths to which his words have come to fruition.

[Dat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendid walk through the museum of Western civilisation, covering primarily its architecture and its paintings since the Dark Ages, but also touching on music and literature, with a highly educated and worldly tour guide. Kenneth Clark holds up art as a mirror to Western society, a reflection of its concerns, ideas and most intense feelings. Although the author is careful to note that art does not necessarily imitate life (perhaps, the opposite is true), his narrative draws clear links from great works of art to the social conditions of their creators -- take, for instance, Michelangelo's David and Renaissance's utmost faith in human greatness or Byron's poetry and the disillusioned Europe following the fall of the Bastille.

What makes the book enthralling is that it is unapologetically individualistic and unashamedly opinionated. Kenneth Clark does not shy away from praising one artist above the rest, from labelling certain individuals and their thought as mediocre, from interpreting historical movements and relating them to successes and failures of post-WWII society. You may not agree with the author's views, but you will not be reading a dry encyclopedia. At its heart, the book promotes the great man theory (and indeed, the book is almost exclusively about great white men) of history and of art: great historical events and great works of art occur due to a handful of singular, extraordinarily gifted individuals who, though born of, transcend their society and their time. To live in a civilised society is to allow such individuals to foster and realise their talents. Is that so? Well, whether right or wrong, it does not detract from the book. To read Civilisation is to indulge in one thoughtful man's perspective on the history of the Western world, as told by its great art.

[Benjamin Clow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an erudite but accessible survey of over a thousands years of art, as Kenneth Clark asks the question, how can we sum up a civilisation? It's witty and beautiful, and I've heard it said elsewhere, that Clark does not speak down to you, but rather speaks to an equal, attempting to learn something from the tremendous order and feeling within the legacy our ancestor's have left behind. This book will make you feel like pondering deep thoughts while walking through nature, or perhaps dusting off your complete works of Shakespeare while following a baroque playlist on Spotify.

[Patrick Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and informative throughout. I will now try and watch the series on YouTube.