Critical Studies

An online collection of streaming video titles, delivering over 500 hours of documentaries and interviews illustrating the theory and practice of a variety of art forms and providing the context necessary for critical analysis.

A Web-based digital video delivery service providing streaming videos from Films Media Group. The Art and Architecture collection currently includes over 800 educational video titles.

What happens when the artists becomes the art? In Transformation, three artists satirize society and reinvent icons of literature, art history, and pop culture by inhabiting the characters they create and capturing the sensibilities of our age. It is a personal portrait of Yinka Shonibare MBE, Cindy Sherman, and Paul McCarthy-three contemporary artists refashioning their identity by way of extreme and avant-garde techniques in costume-making, sculpting, make-up, and cinema, and casting themselves as leading "characters", so we may see ourselves, and our world, more clearly.

John Virtue is painting an impressionist landscape on an enormous canvas laid out in a field. While he paints, he discusses how he expresses himself artistically through creative brushstrokes rather than through realistic imagery. Through Virtue we learn how the elevated social status of artists in general, and physical changes in the composition of paints, have allowed for more artistic experimentation with a wider variety of mediums and techniques. Individualists such as Titian, Constable, Van Gogh, and Pollock are discussed.

When a movie hero leaps into a taxi and shouts, “Follow that blue car!” he takes the driver’s understanding of color for granted. But, physiologically speaking, can we be sure that the hues we perceive are the same? How do you actually describe them? To what degree are they created in our brains? This program explores what color really means to us, with expertise drawn from the realms of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and art. Shedding light on the role of color in the animal world and how it influences moods and reactions, the film features brain researcher Beau Lotto, who conducts a series of experiments to prove that perception is key. Meanwhile, color-blind artist Meghan Simms prepares to undergo gene therapy in the hope of improving her response to chromatic stimuli. A provocative and engaging report. Contains brief nudity. A BBC Production. (59 minutes)