Kenneth Clark (art historian)

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Kenneth MacKenzie Clark, Baron Clark (born July 13, 1903 in London , † May 21, 1983 in Hythe , Kent ) was a British art historian , museum director and author. In Great Britain, Clark was one of the most famous art historians of his time through the television series Civilization , which he wrote, produced and presented on television for the BBC in 1969 .

Life

Kenneth Clark was born to Kenneth MacKenzie Clark and Alice McArthur into a wealthy family of Scottish textile manufacturers. He studied at Winchester College and at Trinity College of Oxford University . In 1927 he married his college colleague Elizabeth Jane Martin and the couple had three children: Alan Clark , Colin and Colette.

After her death in 1976 he was still married to Nolwen de Janzé (1922–1989), divorced Lionel Armand-Delille (1913–2007), widowed Edward Denis Rice (1899–1973).

Career

Clark was promoted by the influential American art critic Bernard Berenson , for whom he worked for two years in Italian museums and in Berenson's library at Villa I Tatti in Fiesole. He was soon recognized as a professional in the British art scene. After his first job as a curator at the Oxford Ashmolean Museum , he was appointed director of the National Gallery in London in 1933 at the age of only 30 - as the youngest museum director to date to ever head this renowned museum. The following year he became curator of the Royal Collection , a position he held until 1945. As director of the National Gallery , he was responsible for evacuating the collection to a mine in Wales for protection from the German air raids on London during World War II .

Despite his fundamentally aloof attitude to contemporary art, he encouraged Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland . In 1945 he gave up the office of director in order to devote himself to his writing activities. Between 1946 and 1950 he taught art history at Oxford University. There he held the Slade Professorship in 1961 , the first holder of which was John Ruskin , and which was followed by Anthony Blunt in 1962 .

in the Clark Collection:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Portrait of Gabrielle
in the Clark Collection:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Baigneuse blonde

Clark was an art collector, his collection was auctioned off at Sotheby’s in 1984 . Of the modern artists, he also promoted Victor Pasmore , Ben Nicholson and John Piper . He owned a major work by Samuel Palmer and by Joseph Mallord William Turner the painting Seascape: Folkestone . He bought paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Paul Cézanne , Georges Seurat , Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas during the Depression, when art prices were low . The Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell created a dinner service for him with 48 individual portraits of women.

Clark has been awarded several British medals. In 1969 he was raised to the nobility as a life peer with the title Baron Clark , of Saltwood in the County of Kent, and was thus a member of the House of Lords until his death . In 1949 he became a member ( fellow ) of the British Academy . In 1964 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1972 as an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1973 he was accepted as an external member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts .

Clark and the television

Clark's extraordinary popularity in Great Britain, which earned him the honor of appearing in Monty Python's "Flying Circus", is due to his work for British television. Clark knew how to make complex historical and cultural relationships accessible and understandable to a wide audience.

His work for British television began in 1954 with the establishment of the Independent Television Authority , in which Clark was involved. In 1967 he switched to competition, the BBC, for which he designed the extremely successful and popular series Civilization .

Civilization , fully entitled Civilization: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark , was a televised documentary on the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy from its earliest beginnings, ending before the emergence of abstract art . The series was produced by the BBC and broadcast from 1969. Clark wrote the lyrics, moderated the individual programs and wrote an accompanying book. The series is considered a high point in the history of the BBC. According to his own statements, the program should be a response to the growing criticism of Western culture and the Western value system. Clark saw himself as an individualist, as a representative of Western humanism, and vehemently rejected Marxism . He met the student riots of 1968 in France with incomprehension and expressed this clearly in the 12th episode of Civilization .

Fonts

  • Catalog of the Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of HM King at Windsor Castle. 2 volumes. 1935.
  • Leonardo da Vinci: An Account of his development as an Artist. With an introduction by Martin Kemp . 1939. New edition: London 1990.
  • Florentine Painting: The Fifteenth Century. 1945.
  • Piero della Francesca. 1951. New edition: Oxford 1981.
  • Landscape into Art. 1949. (Text after the Slade Lectures. )
  • Moments of Vision. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1954.
  • The Nude. A study in ideal form. 1956.
  • Looking at Pictures. 1960.
  • Ruskin Today. 1964.
  • Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance. 1966.
  • with Carlo Pedretti : The Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci in the Collection of HM Queen at Windsor Castle. 3 volumes. 1968/1969.
  • Civilization: A Personal View. 1969. (Book for the television series of the same name)
  • Blake and Visionary Art. 1973.
  • The Romantic Rebellion. Romantic versus classic art. London 1986.
  • Another part of the wood. A self portrait. Autobiography. 1974, ISBN 0-340-20811-2 .
  • Animals and Men. 1977.
  • The Other Half. Autobiography. 1977.
  • What is a masterpiece? 1979.
  • Feminine beauty. 1980.
  • Sandro Botticelli's drawings for Dante's Divine Comedy. Based on the originals in the Berlin museums and the Vatican. Bergisch Gladbach 1997.

Exhibitions

literature

  • Michael Levey : Kenneth Mackenzie Clark 1903-1983. Oxford 1985.
  • Michael Levey: Kenneth MacKenzie Clark, 1903-1983 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 70 , 1985, pp. 387-403 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).
  • Meryle Secrest : Kenneth Clark: A Biography . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1984, ISBN 0-297-78398-X .
  • Angélique Armand - Delille, Nolwen, Paris (private print at carnetsdevie.fr) no year 2017

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John-Paul Stonard: civilization restored , Financial Times , 23 November 2013
  2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 14, 2020 .
  3. ^ Honorary Members: Kenneth Clark. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 8, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Notice on the exhibition , accessed on August 7, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Clark, Kenneth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Clark, Kenneth McKenzie, Baron Clark (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British art historian, museum director and author
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1983
Place of death Hythe , Kent