American Visions

Episode 2

The Promised Land

Robert Hughes explains how America was shaped by Europeans.

Episode 3

The 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.

Episode 4

The 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.

Episode 5

A 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.

Episode 6

Streamlines 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.

Episode 7

The 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.

Episode 8

The Age of Anxiety

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.