Cunk on Earth is savvy, well-written parody of BBC culture shows. The series comes in five half-hour episodes that are all mildly amusing and witty. Philomena Cunk (Diana Morgan) is the show's "presenter" to use the jargon developed by the BBC for its high-brow art survey programs. Cunk is a woman without much overt sex appeal, earnest and completely befuddled -- she has a somewhat cartoonish appearance with lavish red hair and a dead-pan delivery. She seems baffled by most of the stuff that she sees and conducts a series of interviews on-camera with various British experts, mostly affiliated with important colleges and universities. This is a time-worn formula, dating back to Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, the pioneer enterprise of this sort, and Cunk effectively parodies the form, at least, in its more recent incarnations. We see Cunk trudging around in various picturesque locations. About a third of the episodes consist of her voice-over as she marches from place to place, often without any motivation -- we see her pacing around on a beach for instance or in meadows in Scotland or the desert in the American Southwest. Her interviews with authorities are filmed in profile with Cunk interrogating various worthies who sit across from her. The professorial types are, apparently, real academics and, generally, unsightly themselves. These interviews have some of the character of Ali G's conversations with luminaries on his show -- in those interviews, the other participant isn't in on the joke and Sasha Baron Cohen uses the format to pillory his victims, asking them idiotic questions and, then, pouncing on their responses to demonstrate on-air their viciousness and smug hypocrisy. Cunk is much less mean-spirited and the interview subjects seem to grasp that they are being parodied and, in fact, generally respond to the comedian's questions with sober, even, witty responses -- in other words, there isn't the somewhat sour gotcha aspect of Cohen's similarly designed interview scenes. Cunk's questions are overtly idiotic but the academics respond in good faith, heroically trying to forge some kind of meaning from her nonsensical inquiries. The show depicts the history of the world in its five quick episodes and it's blithe, fast-moving, and reasonably funny. The pleasures in the show involve the skillful deployment of parody of typical solemn BBC documentaries andits clever script that isn't laugh-out-loud funny but always witty and amusing.
Joseph Leo Koerner is an art historian, born in Vienna (his father was an artist and photographer) and, apparently, teaching now in England. Koerner is a specialist in the German renaissance and has written excellent books on Lucas Cranach, Durer's portraits, and Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel. Sky TV, the BBC affiliate in Scotland, produced a three-part series featuring Koerner on the Northern Renaissance -- one episode considers Jan van Eyk, the second show is about Duerer, and the third program is on Bosch and Brueghel. Koerner's excellent work on Cranach is presented in summary in the second show. The program is artfully produced and, now, available on You-Tube. (Look under Joseph Leo Koerner, Northern Renaissance,) Koerner has himself made movies and he deploys a whole range of cinematic devices to dramatize his points. The show, however, is similar fundamentally to Cunk on Earth. Koerner, who isn't particularly photogenic (he lacks Kenneth Clark's waspish and patrician good looks) is shown marching around in various city squares and museums. Sometimes, like Philomena Cunk, he stops and talks to the camera, invariably in a ultra-literate and articulate way. On occasion, there are "talking head" interviews of various specialist, including in the Van Eyk show his own wife. The material is mostly familiar to me, but exceptionally well-presented and Koerner has some fascinating theories about several major art works that he presents, albeit in a simplified form compared with his highly complex and densely argued books, throughout the three episodes. Koerner is worth studying and, I think, the northern renaissance show on You-Tube is a good place to begin your encounters with his work. (Koerner has a very formidable lecture on Bosch that somehow involves the Nuremberg Trials and the corruption of German art critics by the Nazi regime -- this lecture, a classic Art History slide show with comments, is also available on You-Tube and highly recommended. The lecture is hard to follow but immensely seductive and Koerner is really speaking from the heart in this presentation -- this study is tremendously ambitious and moving.)
Alexander Nemerov is Diane Arbus' nephew and the son of the famous New York poet, Howard Nemerov. Alexander teaches at Stanford, specializing in American art, and a number of his lectures are also available on You-Tube. Nemerov is a poet-historian and his lectures are essentially digressive, very loosely connected reflections on certain works of art that he admires. Nemerov obviously loves art and has an intimate relationship -- that is, intensely close and lived-in -- with the works that he discusses, I have several of Nemerov's books and think that his televised lectures are, perhaps, more persuasive than his highly lyrical writing. In both books and lectures, Nemerov makes claims for his favorite works of art that can't really be substantiated and that, often, seem to me farfetched and contrived. But the man has a superb presence and his theories are much more persuasive in person, as it were, when we see him speaking to an audience and groping his way forward. (Nemerov doesn't use notes; he pauses and, then, proceeds haltingly in a way that is associative -- his demeanor reminds me of accounts that I have read of Emerson's lectures; his presentation include large amounts of verbal improvisation.) Nemerov is pretty sober, but when he gets excited, he will make little asides to his audience, particularly when he has presented something that would now be politically incorrect -- "What's wrong with that?" he will challenge after reading some particularly problematic quote. I've watched Nemerov's introductory lecture at Stanford to his course in European Art History -- it's fantastic and I would like to sign up for the seminar. (The You-Tube video seems presented as a kind of ad for Nemerov's course.) There's a lecture on one of Edward Hopper's New York paintings that is superb -- I can't recall the "argument" of the lecture, probably because most of the connections the lecturer made seemed implausible to me. But the lecture is, nonetheless, inspiring. Nemerov's magnum opus on You-Tube are his six A.W. Mellon lectures (National Gallery of Art) on the Hudson River School of artists -- although he talks about everything under the sun. I'm halfway through these programs and they are fantastically interesting although just about everything Nemerov says is questionable. Nonetheless, the man is fascinating in his own right, has a gift for finding wonderfully interesting and strange quotations, and, if you are interested in Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School (and its affiliates like William Sydney Mount and the Luminists), I strongly urge to find these lectures and watch to them. They are on You-Tube and each about seventy minutes long and reasonably filmed -- the slides are clear and Nemerov's voice is well-recorded so that you can hear what he is saying. Some of his lectures on You-Tube seem to be filmed covertly on cell-phones and these are hard to watch.
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