MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Civilisation: A Personal View is the book version of the renowned eponymous television series written and presented by British art historian Kenneth Clark. First broadcast in 1969 in Britain, the series consisted of thirteen programmes, each fifty minutes long, outlining the history of Western civilisation from the Early Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. Opening with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the image of wild barbarians at the gates – the invasion the civilisation survived “by the skin of our teeth” – the series presents a classical Western-orientated approach to art history with the traditional focus on great male artists over the centuries. The overview excluded non-European civilisations. Although Civilisation was widely praised at the time, the cultural canon presented by Clark was soon questioned by another BBC series – John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972).