How Art Made the World (2005)
BBC

Description

Why does our world look like it does? That great modern mystery is spectacularly unraveled in this international landmark series and epic quest across five continents and 100,000 years, via some of the greatest treasures of the ancient world, to the heart of human creativity. Encompassing everything from cave paintings to ceramics and pyramids to palaces, How Art Made the World probes the global trend for unrealistic depictions of the human body; the secret powers of the feature film; how politicians manage to manipulate people so easily; visions of death and the afterlife; and, crucially, why we use imagery at all.

Collected reviews and ratings

9.4 DVD Verdict | Brett Cullum

This is the kind of documentary that I find irresistible -entertaining, moving, and informative all at once. It addresses what all great art does in that it explores the joys and sorrows of the human condition and how we express it.
Read full review (DVD)

9.0 Amazon user reviews

The filmmakers here have cleverly applied many of the theories they discuss on what makes art effective and persuasive to making the documentary itself extremely compelling, from having the camera linger with mesmerizing intensity on the world's most dramatic images, shifting points of view to maintain interest, and employing dramatic tension to advance the narrative.
Read full review (DVD)

6.0 DVD Talk | David Cornelius

The series, hosted by author, teacher, and historian Dr. Nigel Spivey, has a lot on its mind, and in trying to cram it all within a tight five hours, we wind up with more questions than answers. Yet there are enough fascinating revelations here to please fans of history and admirers of the evolution of art.
Read full review (DVD)

5.0 New York Times | Benjamin Genocchio

But did I learn much? Not really, as Dr. Spivey's elegant knitting of disparate if otherwise well-known works of ancient art offers no new perspective on the objects.
Read full review (TV)

4.0 artsJournal | Lee Rosenbaum

The series' peripatetic host, Nigel Spivey, a lecturer on classical art and archaeology at Cambridge University, is engaging and attractive, with a body type more stylistically suited to the svelte images in Egyptian relief ...
Read full review (TV)