The Power of Art is a new PBS series, based on the book by Simon Schama, and made with his cooperation and participation.

In a series of eight broadcasts, the program will examine eight artists and their impact on the history of art, and on the cultural, political and social currents of their time. In the process, the shows will apparently focus on one painting by each artist that the author considers particularly significant and explore that work in depth.

I learned about this series from Nita Leland’s Exploring Color and Creativity (I reviewed her recent book The New Creative Artist back in February.) While I have not read the book on which the series is based, Leland has. She mentions it here and in her post on the PBS special notes that it is the emphasis on the social, political and business aspects, which are not often brought to light, that she found most intriguing.

The eight artists to be featured in the series are Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Caravaggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacques-LouisDavid, J.W.M. Turner and Mark Rothko.

Excuse me? Mark Rothko?

To me, throwing someone like Rothko into that group is like doing a special on Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahams and tossing in Axl Rose, but I’ll try to bite my tongue and bear in mind that perhaps the political and social implications are more important here than the accomplishments of the artists. I won’t know until I’ve seen the program.

The first installment of the series starts tonight, Monday, June 18th at 9PM Eastern on most PBS stations, and is devoted to Van Gogh. It will be followed immediately by the second program in the series, which centers on Picasso.

PBS has a web site in support of the series that has a section for each artist along with an “Explore the Painting” feature that shows some interesting points about the work from the commentary in the program.

The Van Gogh program will focus on Wheatfield with Crows (image above, top), often assumed to be Van Gogh’s last painting. Though that is far from certain, much symbolism has been read into the painting as a result. It will be interesting to see the program’s take on its significance. One of the fascinating things about this painting is that it was part of a series of paintings of wheatfields that that Van Gogh painted in a very unusual elongated shape, on canvasses with an almost cinematic aspect ratio (bearing in mind that this was 1890, and the word “cinematic” was essentially meaningless).

The original painting is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The “Show Enlargement” feature on their site, while a poor substitute for a nice big digital image, does let you zoom way in on the image and see it in greater detail than on the PBS site.

For the Picasso segment, the focus will be on his amazing anti-war masterpiece Guernica (image above, bottom); also, interestingly enough, painted on a large canvas with elongated, cinematic proportions. The original painting is now in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia in Madrid, to where it was moved in 1992, stirring up controversy because it defied Picasso’s wish that it be displayed at the Prado. (There is a larger version here, click for enlargement.) There is some history on the painting from a different PBS special here.

It’s interesting to note that a large scale tapestry copy of Guernica, a painting in which Picasso expresses his horror at the cost of war and his “…abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death”, hangs in the United Nations building in New York at the entrance of the Security Council chamber. The tapestry was a gift to the United Nations by Nelson Rockefeller and was meant to be a reminder to all nations of the terrible price of war in human suffering.

On the day in 2003 when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave their press conference at the UN in a effort to stir up support for the war in Iraq, a large blue curtain was placed over the work. Excuses were made that it was a request of the TV crews to simplify a distracting background, but word got out from the attending diplomats that it was actually representatives of the US government that had pressured UN officials to have it covered during the conference.

The power of art, you say?

OK, so you’re Jupiter, the most powerful of Roman gods (Zeus in the Greek stories), and apparently the randiest as well, and you’d like to add the beautiful but shy river goddess Io to your long list of conquests; most of whom you’ve caged into a liaison by some form of deception or disguise. What to do…?

Let’s see now,… you did the turning into as a swan routine with Leda, appeared in drag as Diana, goddess of chastity, to seduce Callisto, came on to Antiope as a satyr, turned into a golden shower to reach Danae in her tower (OK, stop that snickering in the back row), and did the abduction thing with Europa,… what’s left?

Hey! How about appearing as a cloud and wrapping Io in your airy but irresistible embrace before she realizes that she’s been had. By Jove, that’s a great idea!

Apparently 16th Century painter Antonio di Pellegrino Allegri, who is known by “Correggio”, the name of his native town, thought so too, and made the story of Jupiter and Io the subject of the most striking of a series of paintings of the “Loves of Jupiter” commissioned by Federigo Gonzaga in the early 1500’s. The others included The Abduction of Ganymede, Leda and the Swan and Danae.

The painting of Jupiter seducing Io in the form of a cloud is striking in its depiction of the god’s countenance emerging from the cloud to kiss Io’s sensually upturned face, the beautiful modeling and delicate tones of her figure, luminous against the contrast of the dark cloud and the bizarre cloud/hand that enfolds her. The original is in the Kunsthstoriches Museum in Vienna.

Correggio was a masterful painter of the High Renaissance who was most active in the city of Parma. His influences included Mantegna and Leonardo, whose impact you can see in the delicate rendering of faces, hand positions and sfumato technique in Correggio’s early works. In his later career Correggio’s daring use of perspective, brilliant colors and dramatic compositions heralded the arrival of the Baroque period.

One of the most notable of Correggio’s works is the Assumption of the Virgin, painted on the inside of the cupola of the cathedral of Parma. In this large scale fresco (35′ x 40′, 11m x 12m) he creates an astonishing illusionary space in which your view is lifted into a swirling vault of clouds, ringed with angels and saints and blazing with a core of heavenly light.

I’ve listed some resources for Correggio below, including a posting of quotes from the chapter on him from Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. Correggio also left some masterful drawings, though I haven’t had much luck finding examples of them on the web. Try searcing Amazon and others for books.

And what of Io? Well, in addition to having her story be the subject of numerous other paintings, she had the Ionian Sea is named after her passage, as well having one of the innermost moons of the planet Jupiter named after her by Galileo. And while most of the 63 (count ’em) moons of the largest planet in our neighborhood are named after Jupiter’s female conquests, Io is notable as the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. Hot love, indeed.

Meanwhile, what happens to poor innocently seduced Io in the next exciting episode of The Loves of Jupiter? Well, we have the sitcom-like scene in which Jupiter turns Io into a cow (yes, a cow) before jealous wife Juno arrives on the scene. Juno susses the deal and asks Jupiter for the gift of simple cow, which he can’t refuse, of course, and Juno puts the lock on Io by putting her under the watchful eyes of Argos, who has a hundred of ’em (eyes, that is) and never closes more than a couple at a time. The guardian is later lulled to sleep by Mercury with music and stories, Mercury lops off his head and Io is released; and eventually, in some accounts, becomes the first queen of Egypt. And you thought Desperate Housewives had outrageous plots.