Documenting artists recap.

I’ve been watching Simon Schama’s Power of Art series currently showing on PBS, but I’m not recommending that you tune in. There’s enough art and context to engage a middlebrow such as myself, but I have two main impressions. One is that Schama reminds me a little of the Clark’s director of education, Michael Cassin, but with the latter’s delightfully animated manner carried to the point of caricature. And secondly, that this series demonstrates by contrast the particular excellence of the films I just showed in the “Documenting Artists” series, and will show in a “Documenting Modern Artists” series come September. The films on Michelangelo, Van Gogh, and Frida Kahlo were each notable in a different style, but the film I want to plug particularly in retrospect is Winslow Homer: Society & Solitude (2007.) Filmmaker Steve Ross was kind enough to bring his just completed film to the Clark for an advance screening, and it delighted a capacity crowd, many of whom stayed around for a lively Q&A afterwards. I urge you to look for it at a museum near you, or eventually on PBS or dvd. The film is a well-rounded view of the life and times of a fascinating American original -- Homer and his era come through vividly in an interweaving of multi-faceted imagery and polyphonic commentary, for a circumspect and many-sided view of the artist and his work.