I must start by saying i really enjoy Rick Steves travel shows. It’s entertaining, actually includes great travel advice and he covers lots of unknown and historical locations. On the academic side of things, however, he does make mistakes quite often.

The middle ages are my favourite period in (art) history, so naturally i was very excited to watch this almost hour long video on medieval art, but i’m sad to say i was mainly frustrated by the attitude towards the period Rick has in the video.

Imagine: it's the year 500. The Roman Empire that had united Europe for centuries was crumbling, leaving a political vacuum.

This may be semantics, but in the year 500, the Western Roman Empire (which he is undoubtedly referring to here) wasn’t crumbling, it had already finished crumbling in 476, when the last emperor was deposed. 

After Rome fell, Europe was plunged into what used to be called the "Dark Ages."

I appreciate him saying what used to be instead of straight up calling it the ‘Dark Ages’, but saying this is quite useless if you don’t correct the term and explain why it’s wrong after. He doesn’t do this, instead he continues on in the frame of the ‘Dark Ages’, as we will see.

Tilling the fields, most lived their entire lives in a single place, poor and uneducated.

Right, but this could be said for the vast majority of the population throughout history. This was true before the middle ages, and after, and is in no way a defining feature of the time period. Also, people did travel, and education was available to quite a few people, for example in monasteries. 

For centuries, there was little travel, little trade, no building for the future…almost no progress.

And this is where it all goes downhill very quickly. Little travel and trade? Well, that depends on what you consider little. There was extensive, long distance trade throughout the early middle ages. Really? No building for the future? Then surely all those early medieval churches in places like Rome and Ravenna we still can admire are hallucinations. 

People were superstitious, living in fear of dark forces.

That’s not how people work. People weren’t more superstitious than they are now, society just had less knowledge. I don’t exactly know which dark forces he is talking about, but considering almost half of all Americans believe in ghosts (Ipsos, 2019), i don’t know why this is put forward as a primary characteristic of medieval society.

The earliest monastic communities were small — fortified hamlets of humble huts — built like stone igloos. Twelve hundred years ago those Irish monks stacked stones to build chapels like this.

The building he shows here is called the Gallarus Oratory, a quite mysterious building that has been dated from early-Christian to the 12th century, meaning we don’t even know for sure if it is early medieval. However, the main problem with this bit is that Steves suggests that this building is a common and accurate example of what early monasteries would have looked like. It is not, in fact it is quite a unique building. There are many early monasteries that look completely different.

With Christianity now dominant, the grandest structures in town were churches, and they were adorned with the community's finest art…done in the first art style to feel proudly European: Romanesque.

It is ironic that precisely when he says proudly European, he shows Monreale Cathedral, built in the Arab-Norman-Byzantine style, strongly influenced by Islamic and Byzantine art. 

It was called "Roman-esque" because it tried to capture the grandeur of ancient Rome. Churches featured round, Roman-style arches, Roman-style columns, and often even ancient columns scavenged from Roman ruins and recycled.

No, it was called Roman-esque, because it used round arches, like the Romans did. He sort of corrects this luckily. I wouldn’t necessarily call the Romanesque columns ‘Roman-style’. If you look at the capitals, they often show Biblical scenes, people, and animals, which was not common in Roman columns.  The practice of scavenging ancient columns did occur in Romanesque architecture, yes, but it certainly wasn’t a new characteristic, in fact, it’s more an early-medieval thing than a romanesque one. The suggestion that it was meant to invoke the ‘grandeur of ancient Rome’ is just unfounded. It was probably just convenient.

The church tried to recreate the glory of the Byzantine Heaven.

I have no idea what he means by the ‘Byzantine Heaven.

Granada's Alhambra, the last and greatest Moorish palace, shows off the splendor of that Muslim civilization. The math necessary to construct this palace dazzled Europeans of the age.

Considering Europeans were building incredibly sophisticated Gothic Cathedrals at the time, I highly doubt the maths were dazzling, but this is not to take away from the incredible masterpiece the Alhambra is. 

Magnificent structures were built by the sweat of peasants

I don’t think peasants is the right word. Gothic Cathedrals were built mainly by (skilled) labourers. 

Bathed in the light of a Gothic interior, we appreciate how this style — with its huge windows filling the sacred space with light — is such an improvement over the darker Romanesque style.

Very subjective. 

In the Middle Ages, art was the advertising of the day — a perspective-shaping tool. Artists were hired by the powerful to inspire and also to promote conformity.

Certainly, but this is true for today too! 

Accurate realism was not a concern. Paintings came with no natural setting, just an ethereal gold background.

Accurate realism wasn’t the main concern, but to say it wasn’t a concern at all… Many paintings still show incredibly detailed and realistic textures. Also, a golden background was very common, but there were certainly many paintings with a more natural background. 

Bodies were flat and expressions said little.

Expressions said an awful lot in many paintings. Look at some crucifixion scenes for example, where Christ’s face clearly shows intense pain. In fact immediately after he shows Lippo Memmi and Simone Martini’s Annunciation, which has one of the most striking expressions in medieval art, that of Saint Mary. 

Toward the end of the Middle Ages a new spirit was blossoming. People were stepping out of medieval darkness.

Why use the term medieval darkness immediately after having shown the incredible art pieces from this period for more than half an hour?

Cities buzzed with free trade, strong civic pride, and budding democracy, as they broke free from centuries of feudal rule. As this allegory from the 1300s illustrates, once run-down towns with chaos in the streets were becoming places where the shopping was brisk, construction's booming, students are attentive, and women dance freely in the streets.

This is an absurd interpretation of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Lorenzetti. The frescoes aren’t telling a real life story of the changing times, they were made as warnings about what was at stake, and to symbolise the effects good and bad government had on life. Construction was booming in the middle ages too, shopping was indeed brisk before the renaissance, and universities flourished in the medieval period.  

Giotto, considered the first modern painter.

By some, sure, but this isn’t art historical consensus or anything close to it. 

So, in conclusion, this video turned out to be better than it seemed after watching the first few minutes, but there are still some pretty odd parts that i thought needed some correction, or at least some commentary. It was an entertaining video, far from perfect, but certainly enjoyable. 

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This is a photo by Gillian Wearing, \"Me as Cahun Holding a Mask of My Face\", from her series \"Behind the Mask, Another Mask\", shown at the National Portrait Gallery in DC. She did the exhibition alongside Claude Cahun's work. Most of the top images in Cahun's instagram tag are THIS IMAGE. Even by actual art institutions. I can't help but laugh.

This is a photo by Gillian Wearing, "Me as Cahun Holding a Mask of My Face", from her series "Behind the Mask, Another Mask", shown at the National Portrait Gallery in DC. She did the exhibition alongside Claude Cahun's work. Most of the top images in Cahun's instagram tag are THIS IMAGE. Even by actual art institutions. I can't help but laugh.

Edit: go check out Gillian Wearing, she's amazing: https://jeffberryman.com/2011/06/08/gillian-wearing-confessions-and-masks/

Hey!

What influences does Charles Rennie mackintosh take from architecture of the past and what does he disregard ?

Thanks!