Constable at Tate: Art and Life in Landscape 2006
Distributed by Films Media Group, PO Box 2053, Princeton, New Jersey 08543-2053; 800-257-5126
Produced by Films for the Humanities & Sciences
Director n/a
DVD, color, 60 min.
Jr. High - Adult
Art, Art History, Biography, Geography, John Constable, Painting
Date Entered: 12/20/2007
Reviewed by Sebastian Derry, Temple University“A film about paint, and politics, about love and ambition, and rainbows,” the title refers to famed English landscape painter John Constable (1776-1837) and the Tate National Museum of British and Modern Art, respectively.
Drawing on Tate’s 2006 Constable exhibition, the film highlights the museum’s Constable holdings, as well as several of his works held at London’s National Gallery and elsewhere.
The audio features selected readings from Constable’s letters, with commentary from and interviews with three curators and art historians. Combined they tell Constable’s story by illustrating the man, the artist, and the time in which he lived. Anne Lyles (Curator, Tate), Michael Rosenthal (Professor of History of Art, University of Warwick), and William Vaughan (formerly Pevsner Professor of History of Art, Birbeck College, University of London) judiciously remain off-screen and are only ever heard in voice-over.
Visually, the film intersperses a variety of shots of a wide range of Constable’s paintings (from stunningly detailed close-ups and pans to wide angles) with real life footage of many of the actual locations and landscapes that inspired or are represented in his art.
The end result is an immersive, insightful and often poetic meditation on Constable’s life and work.
This is educational media at its finest.
Unrated, this DVD is highly recommended for all libraries.