Critics generally maintain a fractious relationship with the art world.

The Irish writer Brendan Behan once spoke for many a disgruntled creative by claiming that “critics are like eunuchs at a harem; they know how to do it, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.” Yet Tate Britain has just opened an exhibition dedicated to the critic Kenneth Clark, while BBC2 has chosen to mark its 50th anniversary by announcing plans to remake his legendary 1969 series Civilisation.

Why the sudden interest? Clark’s Civilisation was originally conceived as a format to show off the BBC’s brand new innovation – colour television – by depicting, as its young commissioner David Attenborough put it, “the loveliest things created by European man in the past thousand years.”

But for a modern viewer, used to complicated ideas of science and philosophy boiled down into a few inspirational minutes for a TED Talk, the show might’ve been recorded a thousand years ago. Over 13 episodes and 11 hours we are treated to what amounts to little more than a series of mini-lectures from a tweed-wearing, near-dead posh white male espousing the glories of the definitive list of dead, white European males interspersed with lingering shots of the art and the occasional trip somewhere foreign.

God knows what the privilege-checkers of Twitter would’ve made of Civilisation. Clark was hardly the obvious choice to front a populist art show on the supposedly anti-elitist medium of TV: the heir to a Scottish textile fortune who later went on to buy a castle to house his vast collection (some of which is on display at the Tate). In today’s terms it would be like asking Michael Gove to present an episode of Jackanory.

Even at the time, despite its popularity, the programme provoked ferocious disagreement, with Marxist critic John Berger given his own show Ways of Seeing in 1972 to challenge what Berger saw as Clark’s ideological defence of high culture and traditional values. It also inspired Jacob Bronowski’s legendary history of science in The Ascent of Man, and Robert Hughes’ polemic on modernist art in The Shock of the New. The proposed remake has already generated much debate over the need for a female presenter, and greater diversity in the artists and cultures featured.

While some of those criticisms are valid – though, in fact, Clark tried to pre-empt them in an impassioned conclusion to the series – Civilisation remains an extraordinary achievement. No matter his unfashionability, there are few better qualified then or now to discuss European high culture than Clark who devoted his considerable privileged resources to the pursuit of beauty and to financially supporting the likes of Henry Moore. A co-founder of the Art Council, he was also an early champion of TV’s power to bring art to the masses.

It is this weight of a lifetime’s worth of learning that stands out from watching Civilisation today. Forget the arguments over what he leaves out: it is hard to imagine a contemporary remake being afforded the space and freedom Clark gets to include everything from Viking warships to contemporary New York (via the development of Enlightenment humanism).

In actual fact, the BBC claimed to be remaking Civilisation once before, with Andrew Marr’s A History of the World aiming to give an overview view of the 69,000 years of human history Clark didn’t touch upon. They gave Marr six hours. Rather than launch a series of intellectual debates and argument over his critical choices, the biggest impact it made was on British Naturism, annoyed by the use of clothing in the dramatic reconstructions.

All of which goes some way to explaining the unusual veneration being currently afforded to Clark. Civilisation is almost a masterpiece in itself: the perfect beginner’s guide to the history of art, beautifully shot by the director Michael Gill. It even features a young Patrick Stewart in a Shakespeare skit. Forget about waiting for the remake or arguing about its omissions: buy the DVD, invest a few hours of your time in Clark, and you will walk away a little more civilised than when you started.

The opinions expressed in The Columnist do not necessarily represent those of IdeasTap.  

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