About this season
The first series on television in the U.S. to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists, "Art in the Twenty-First Century" is a Peabody Award-winning biennial program that allows viewers to observe the artists at work, watch as they transform inspiration into art, and hear how they struggle with both the physical and visual challenges of achieving their visions. "Art in the Twenty-First Century" airs on PBS and online in the U.S. Full episodes are available to watch on Art21.org and YouTube.
Episodes (4)
1. Place
Aired 21 September 2001 • 60 min
Sculptor Richard Serra, "street artists" Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee, photographer Sally Mann and installation artist Pepon Osorio. Serra, seen installing one of his massive steel-plate structures in the atrium of an office building, needs a big place for his works. McGee and Kilgallen make gallery art but prefer grafitti. Mann, known for nude photos of her children, is now doing landscapes. And, says Osorio: "I need to create a space. That is overpowering."
2. Spirituality
Aired 21 September 2001 • 60 min
Ann Hamilton, who works with textiles; impish multimedia artist John Feodorov; miniaturist Shahzia Sikander; and James Turrell, whose medium is light itself. Linking them: spirituality, "a thread that connects us all," says host S. Epatha Merkerson. "I think ambiguity is where the spiritual lies," says Feodorov, who combines Navajo and Christian themes provocatively. Turrell explains how he designs his projects "to bring the cosmos closer."
3. Identity
Aired 28 September 2001 • 60 min
Bruce Nauman, Maya Lin, Louise Bourgeois and Kerry James Marshall, "four contemporary artists who deal in notions of identity," says Steve Martin, who introduces the hour. Marshall uses black themes in his paintings and installations; 90-year-old Bourgeois, a sculptor, frequently fashions hands; Lin, known for the Vietnam War Memorial, is seen at work in Grand Rapids, Mich. And Nauman makes psychologically infused videos and installations, including an outdoor stairway.
4. Consumption
Aired 28 September 2001 • 60 min
Mel Chin, Matthew Barney, Michael Ray Charles and Andrea Zittel, artists "who raise questions about the things we consume every day," says tennis great John McEnroe, who introduces the hour. Marshall explores racial stereotypes; filmmaker Barney approaches themes of sex and conflict elliptically; Zittel lives in---or wears---her utilitarian "installations"; and Chin's art has found its way into everything from a burned-out Detroit house to TV's "Melrose Place."