The Shock of the New Season 1, Episode 2: The Powers That Be

The Mechanical Paradise

The irruption of the machine as a catalyst for the change in the forms and visions of artists in the early twentieth century. Cubism and Futurism as the movement of modern world and embodied in a canvas.

60 min

The Landscape of Pleasure

Throughout the work of the Impressionists, Matisse or Picasso, the principle of pleasure and harmony are present in the art of the twentieth century.

Trouble in Utopia

The architectural utopia of modernity and its aspirations for change and social improvement and its failure.

The Threshold of Liberty

Surrealist painters sought extreme freedom through art, exploring the irrational world as well as the world of dreams.

The View from the Edge

The interior of the mind, the obsessions and the forces that dominate life, form the work of modern artists from van Gogh and Munch, to the American abstract expressionists.

Culture as Nature

In the mid-twentieth century the symbols of modern culture reflect the power of the media. Advertising, radio and television became the subject of artists. Pop art broke into the scene.

The Future That Was

The end of modernity makes Robert Hughes raise the trajectory of art and its surroundings during the twentieth century and doubts about its future and achievements.