Civilisation

(by Kenneth Clark)

Really a compilation of scripts for a television series, this book, much ridiculed and parodied over the years (remember Monty Python’s “Are you civilised? Have you been civilised recently?”), is a wonderful, personal, informed view of humankind and culture from classical times to the then present (1968). Elegiac, nostalgic, pessimistic; almost everything in the arts since has borne out Clark’s view that “we can destroy ourselves by cynicism* and disillusion, just as effectively as bombs.”

800px-Raphael_School_of_Athens

Raphael’s School of Athens, Vatican Chambers – An early version of celebrity voyeurism, featuring Plato, Aristotle in the centre, Euclid, Pythagoras, Michelangelo, Averroes, et al…

[* A cynic being a “man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan.]

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