WHAT’S THE STORY?
IT was 50 years ago today that a new TV series hit the screens in Britain’s homes. It was different from any programme that had gone before and would go on to be recognised as one of the greatest documentary series of all time, credited with changing the way people viewed television.
It was called Civilisation, and was presented by the UK’s foremost art historian, Kenneth Clark. Indeed the programme was subtitled: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark.
The first episode, entitled The Skin of Our Teeth, opened with a lingering shot of Michelangelo’s David in Florence. This was clearly not going to be lowbrow telly.
Near the start, Clark stood in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and spoke to the camera: “What is civilisation? I don’t know,” before looking over his shoulder at the great church and adding, “But I think I can recognise it when I see it.”
The nation was off on a rollercoaster of a 13-part series that was soon being watched by 2.5 million people each week – unprecedented figures for an arts programme.
WHO WAS CLARK?
KENNETH Mackenzie Clark was the descendant of Patrick Clark, whose invention of the cotton spool made him very wealthy, and Paisley a centre of the textile industry – Clark’s firm would later merge with Coats and the group of that name is still the world’s largest supplier of industrial thread.
His Scottish connections remained important to Clark, who would holiday at the family home – one of several – at Ardnamurchan. His father, also Kenneth, was something of a playboy but encouraged his son’s love of art.
Educated at Winchester, Clark won a scholarship to Oxford but only graduated with a second class degree in history as art history had come to dominate his life.
He would make it his career, and he ran the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford before accepting the job of director of the National Gallery in London. He famously made the gallery a popular venue in wartime, and persuaded Churchill to let one “Picture of the Month” out of the collections, which were then hidden in a Welsh coalmine.
His lifelong quest was to capture the public imagination for art and culture, and he realised that broadcasting gave him the chance to do so, appearing regularly on the radio before becoming chairman of the Independent Television Authority and then making 50 programmes on the arts for ATV. By the mid-1960s, already knighted and shortly to become Lord Clark, there really was only one person to present a series called Civilisation.
WHAT WAS THE SERIES ALL ABOUT?
IN brief it was the history of western civilisation from the end of the dark ages to the beginning of the 20th century.
It took three years to make, and though at first they did not get on, Clark and his visionary director Michael Gill came to a working arrangement that saw them travel 80,000 miles to bring the pictures and buildings of Clark’s view to the small screen.
WHY DID IT BECOME SO ICONIC?
THE public reaction, mainly. Despite – or perhaps because of – Clark’s plummy tones, not to mention the lack of female subjects and the fact that it really was mostly about European art, the programme took off in popularity terms. There was an explosion of interest in art and visiting galleries around the UK and, when the series was a transmitted in the USA, Clark became an overnight sensation. It really did happen that churches moved their services so they wouldn’t clash with Civilisation, and the critics fell over themselves to praise it.
In time it became recognised as a landmark series, one that had changed the viewing habits of people in 60 countries worldwide.
WHAT’S THE LINK TO THE BLUE PLANET?
MANY people think the BBC’s Life on Earth and The Blue Planet did for nature programmes what Civilisation did for arts, by taking an innovative approach to telling the story of life as we know it.
There is a strong link between them and other such programmes over the decades. The original and sequel series, and similar series such as Planet Earth, all featured the brave man who commissioned Civilisation back in 1966 – the then controller of BBC2, Sir David Attenborough. Oh, and Attenborough also commissioned The Ascent of Man, The Old Grey Whistle Test and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Not bad, David.
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