Kenneth Clark's fine tv show: Civilisation

I knew Kenneth Clark (1903-83) from watching his Civil­is­at­ion series on tv in 1969 and from his involvement with one of my favour­ite art historians Bern­ard Beren­son. And more recently I read Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civil­isation by James Stourton (Collins, 2016). 

Born in 1903 into a wealthy textile-based family, Clark progressed through Winchester and Oxford Uni, helped by supportive nannies and teachers. Then he was mentored by Bern­ard Beren­son in Flor­en­ce.

Stourton’s book analysed Clark’s mixed experiences. Clark was a product of the Edward­ian wealthy classes and by 28 he’d became Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean. And King George V (1910-35) per­sonally encouraged Clark to become Keeper of the King’s Pict­ur­es. His classy family back­ground and education ensured a successful career.

Stourton analysed Clark’s emotional and intellectual contra­dictions. He loved his wife Jane (d1976) who had also read history at Ox­ford; they married in 1927 and had 3 children. Jane won his praise early on for her elegance and her role as a host­ess, despite her tem­p­er and booze. Meanwhile Clark’s mistresses fared no better than the wife. Independent women rarely appeared in Civil­isation, neither as creative art­ists nor as patrons. When a woman seemed unfitting, she was des­cr­ibed as an unstable spouse of a long-suffering husband who was forced to seek sol­ace else­where. Clark’s tv present­at­ion of women as objects of desire or insp­ir­ation was close to how his own women were portrayed.

The Civ­ilisation programme had focused largely on Europe, but Clark saw 2 big problems: 1]he loathed the megalomania of Vers­ail­les and wanted to exclude it from Civilisation and 2]the series avoid­ed Spain because it was still ruled by Franco. I Helen have another problem - why did BBC make a series that excluded the cul­tures of the Far East, In­dia, Africa and Central-South America? His omis­s­ions were not because of other cultures’ inferiority, but because of his ignorance. Yet de­spite the concentration on Europe, Clark’s tastes since child­hood had been far from Euro­cen­tric.

Clark became Director of the National Gal­lery in 1938. He had the National Gallery’s masterpieces evacuated to the Welsh mines; and he rein­vented the remaining gal­lery as a cultural centre in wartime Lon­don, including concerts and temporary exhibitions. And great acq­uisitions of art by Bosch, Rubens, Rembrandt, Hogarth and Ingres were protected. Yet the staff were almost ent­irely against him, which led to his re­signation as soon as the war ended.

Clark defined civilised values as moral virtues, using the Enlight­enment’s rationality and the Victorians’ human­itarianism as great examples. But con­trary evidence from his own life suggested that civilisation may have been imp­lic­ated in acquisitive vice.Clark was laughed at for his uber-priv­il­eged background but he had a great range of expertise. Unlike other authors, Clark’s books were very readable documents, the most famous: Leon­ardo da Vinci 1939, Piero della Francesca 1951, The Nude 1956 and Feminine Beauty 1980. [Clark’s art hero John Ruskin also wrote very readably]. Many people did think Clark was arrogant and snobbish. Blushing at his own inher­it­ed privileges, Clark saw himself as a toff who’d been pro­moted to the status of a sage. So he did the right thing - he sec­retly depos­it­ed funds in the bank acc­ounts of artists who needed subsid­­ies.

In 1954 Clark accepted the chairmanship of the Independent Television Authority and, to the dismay of the BBC, defended the crud­ity of the new commercial channel. But Clark was a nat­ural on screen and he’d already made dozens of programmes for ITV.