Miniseries
8 episodes · 1997
1The Republic of Virtue
Robert Hughes charts the foundation of a national identity that sought architectural inspiration from Greece and Rome. He also looks at America's earliest major painters.
2The Promised Land
Robert Hughes explains how America was shaped by Europeans.
3The Wilderness and the West
Art critic Robert Hughes looks at America's majestic landscapes, exploring how artists have contributed to the religious and patriotic connotations of nature.
4The Gilded Age
Robert Hughes considers how the Civil War industrialised society, bringing steam power, the Brooklyn Bridge, plutocrats and an urban underclass. Nostalgia for loss entered the culture and brought the Museum Age.
5A Wave from the Atlantic
Mass immigration at the turn of the century confirmed America as a multicultural society but also brought increased poverty and slum life. Robert Hughes examines how this was often reflected in art.
6Streamlines and Breadlines
Robert Hughes considers America during the 1920s and 30s, including the skyscraper as the image of modernism, the Depression, regionalist art and black art.
7The Empire of Signs
Robert Hughes examines America's development into the art capital of the west between 1945 and the late 1960s, with the advent of abstract expressionism and pop art.
8The Age of Anxietyfinale
Robert Hughes focuses on work that responded to the Vietnam War and civil strife. He traces the development of minimalism and ends up on top of an extinct volcano.