THE THRESHOLD OF LIBERTY/THE VIEW FROM THE EDGE

VOL.5 - THE THRESHOLD OF LIBERTY: Surrealism was the last revolutionary art movement of the 20th century, but not so much a "movement" as a religion. Despised by formalists, its effects were enormous. The Surrealists' desire to liberate the unconscious mind helped the "primitive" Rousseau flourish. We visit such little-known monuments to the irrational as the huge Ideal Temple built in rural France over a span of 40 years by a local postman and the Watts Tower and glimpse the fantasy/reality of Ernst, MiroÌ, Dali, Magritte, Joseph Cornell and Jean Dubuffet. Shows how even the New York School-Gorky, Motherwell, Rothko-were affected by Surrealism. Volume 6: THE VIEW FROM THE EDGE: Figurative Expressionism was ruined by the realities of World War II and the horrors of the Nazi death camps, when photography surpassed any distortions of the human body an artist could imagine. Many artists struggled but lost in their attempts to maintain a mythic-religious imagery in the face of increasing secularization of 20th-century life. We examine the insufficiencies this led to when an art world, avid for the importance of myths, tried to extract too much from paintings that could not deliver a complete religious content (e.g., Newman and Rothko).