VISION ON: FILM, TELEVISION AND THE ARTS IN BRITAIN BY JOHN WYVER

Abstract

Wallflower Press 2007 £45.00 $85.00 (H) £16.99 $28.00(P) 254 pp. 25 mono illus ISBN 978-1905674404 (H) 1-905674-39-8 (P) The subject of arts television is a complex one because since the 1950s (when television became a mass medium in Britain) there have been so many channels, one-off documentaries, magazine programmes, thematic series, and notable film directors, editors, producers, presenters and arts topics. It is hard, therefore, to write a coherent historical narrative that also does justice to the various arts and the various types of arts programmes that have been devised over the decades, and in places Wyver's text does degenerate into a list of names and titles. Furthermore, the fact that he chose to address two objects of study – television programmes and Arts Council films – adds another dimension of difficulty. Sometimes he pauses to analyse a programme or series in detail and this generates perceptive accounts. For example, early on he considers John Read's 1954 BBC television film about the painter Graham Sutherland. Among the major television series that Wvyer discusses in some detail are ‘Civilisation’ (1969) ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972) and ‘Arena’ (1975 onwards). He rightly celebrates the achievements of such strands as ‘Monitor’, ‘Aquarius’, ‘Omnibus’ and ‘The South Bank Show’ plus the innovative arts programming that characterised Channel 4 during the 1980s. For some years this channel has sponsored the Tate Gallery's annual Turner Prize. In Autumn 2007 Channel 4 incestuously revisited a BBC2 classic of arts television via the series ‘This is Civilisation’, written and presented by Matthew Collings. One significant absence from Wyver's book is any consideration of the architecture, art and design programmes produced for the Open University, transmitted on BBC2 during the 1970s and 1980s, with commentaries and interviews by such scholars as Tim Benton, Tim Clark, Griselda Pollock and Fred Orton. Although aimed at a specific and minority audience they were, in my opinion, among the most sophisticated and critical art history programmes so far produced. Vision On was issued to celebrate the newly established online Arts on Film Archive (http://www.artsonfilm.org.uk), which contains more than 465 documentary films produced by Arts Council England between 1953 and 1999. (It is a great pity that the Council's funding of such films has been discontinued.) The archive, a unique record of British and international post-war art and of documentary filmmaking in the UK, is a research tool of great value to art historians. The book's launch was accompanied by a series of events looking at the history of British art documentaries held at Tate Modern, with a programme of screenings of works from the archive. The latter was established by a team from the School of Media Arts and Design, University of Westminster. One of the team – Joram ten Brink – contributes a preface to Wyver's volume. This book was also published at a time when concern was being expressed about a general ‘dumbing down’ of British television and many thinkers were asking the question: ‘What is television for?’ One answer might be: ‘To continue to provide illuminating programmes about the arts of the past and the present to educate and entertain the public’.