Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces

Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces is a collection of documentaries from Juliette Garcias and Stan Nuemann that were filmed between 2006 and 2010 during the study days at France’s Louvre. During these study days the iconic art museum took famous and not so well known paintings from and inspired by the masters, removed them from their settings, and put them through scrutinizing tests, the results shared with and discussed by the worlds foremost experts in art.

The series of documentaries covers five masters; Leonardo, Rembrandt, Pousssin, Watteau, and Raphael. Each segment takes a few of the artists creations and sets them up for discussion. Discussions include the placement of characters within the paintings and the societal codes their positions imply, what X-ray and Infrared results revealed about the paintings, the artists personal life in context with the content of the painting, and so much more.

As an art layman I have to say that the set of documentaries was informative and educational, but on a level of enjoyable education, it left much to be desired as it featured a faceless narrator whose dialogue seemed very read, and a majority of the speakers from the art world were voiced over by interpreters whose deliveries ranged from decent to bland. The discussions themselves ranged from fantastically informative to pretty boring.

If you’re an art lover and have devoted time and memory to the great works of artists from the past then this release should give you a lot to look forward to. On one hand, again, as an art layman, I really enjoyed the more informative bits of information delivered here, but as someone who isn’t that much into art, some of the discussions came off as interestingly as discussion an algebra equation. Overall though, it is definitely a program that I am glad I had the opportunity to watch. Fascinating stuff, but better used for the classroom then the living room.