Art of the Western World, the glamorous new series on PBS, was created with many viewers in mind, but I was not one of them. For, with all modesty, I no longer need an introduction to the subject. To gauge the program’s ultimate success, therefore, it will be necessary to apply to those who tune in to the series in a condition of relative unknowing. Will they feel, after all nine of the episodes have been aired, that they now know more about the subject than before? Will they look back upon this series, decades hence, as the occasion of their first opening up to a fuller sense of the visual world? It may just be.
Art of the Western World is an overview, of course, and given the wealth of material that it covers, ranging easily over two and a half thousand years, it could not be otherwise. To judge from the programs already seen, however, some attention is given to most of the issues that need to be covered. Art of the Western World is addressed to an age in which more than ever one cares about “visual literacy,” in which the well-turned-out Westerner is expected to carry within the museum of his mind a core collection of some one or two hundred masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Accordingly, these programs flash onto receptive young retinas what may be their first glimpses of the Parthenon and Chartres, of Donatello’s David, Rembrandt’s selfportraits, and Pollock’s Lavender Mist. It’s all there, and some works, like Claus Sluter’s sculpted Well of Moses (c. 1400), or Tiepolo’s murals at Wurzburg (c. 1750), have been chosen with a judiciousness that goes somewhat beyond the call of duty.
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