Why Does This Count as Art?

You have stood in front of a canvas that looked like nothing — and felt cheated. Here is why it was painted, and how to feel it. One hour on a whole century of abstract art. Kandinsky painting a flood seen from the eye of God and laying down two strokes a day; Mondrian squeezing the universe into three colors; Rothko returning a fortune so his paintings would not hang over a restaurant, and building rooms you sit in until you weep; Pollock's drips that the CIA quietly shipped around the world; Richter scraping the horror of Birkenau into paint. By the end you will know the two families of abstraction — the grid and the storm — and exactly how to stand in front of one and let it work on you. Lecture 6 of the series «An Art Historian's Lectures». 00:00 The picture with nothing in it 03:36 The subject is a trap 08:36 Art takes over from the church 12:22 Kandinsky: the man who painted God 17:27 Two floods 23:15 Mondrian: the formula of the world 29:18 America, and the color that ambushes you 35:02 The painter as shaman 40:03 The spy who sold Pollock 43:45 The scream after Auschwitz 48:30 A language for everything 54:04 How to stand in front of one Subscribe if this is your kind of thing.