Happy May, Muddy Colors. Sadly I have been sick for about a week with a two fisted attack of allergies and a headcold, so I’ve been spending a lot of time resting on my couch and going thru boxes of tissues. As is my custom while sick, I watched a lot of documentaries. I don’t know why, but I have less trouble following nonfiction than fiction when I’m drifting in and out of naps. I happened upon an old fave of mine, this BBC doc on Holbein:

Which was originally a BBC special, hosted by Waldemar Januszczak. Waldy (as he calls himself) is quite a character, and you kind of love him or hate him, depending on how you feel about the level of Personality you like in a host. I’ve really come to enjoy him, so I decided to go on a deep dive. I knew I had seen at least a dozen good art docs from him (I think I’ve referenced the one on Manet here before) and wanted to see if I could find a playlist. Well, buckle up, because there’s more than a few, including this one from the Youtube channel Perspective that has collected 55 (!) of them:

I really like him as a host, because he gives a good sense of movements as a whole, and does a really good job contextualizing Art History within current events and other art movements going on at the time. We like to draw an arbitrary line between “Commercial Art” and “Fine Art” but that’s really an illusion. Fine Art is also commercial, whether it was for a wealthy individual patron or an institution like the Catholic Church. And thus, economics and politics affect art movements as much in history as they do today. However, most art documentaries don’t give you the bigger picture, and many of Januszczak’s docs do. Some of my favorite films of his are not about single artists, but about cultural histories and art movements as a whole.

After a few hours I decided to do a proper deep dive and see what his backstory was. If you go to his website you’ll find another treasure trove of links and videos. And if you read his long bio, you’ll see he’s been the art critic for The Sunday Times in the UK since 1993, which is an impressive tenure. Most of the art documentaries he’s produced himself and they’ve been mainly for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK.

Do yourself a favor and the next time you have been struck down by sickness (or just feel like having an educational excuse for some relaxing) check out the playlist. Here’s some of my faves:

And while not a documentary, exactly, this series he did with a famous art forger was really interesting also:

Enjoy! I’m going back to the sick bed. Er, couch.