Bbc Fine Art Collection

The original art is a human desire, depicting life through a variety of ways, but who are the masters of it? The expression means they must be unique individuals, while also embracing life. "Art Collection" by the BBC performs elaborate and time-consuming search through the years, shuttling around the museums, galleries and private collections in the world and visiting around artists friends and family. It is also showing enjoyment through the creation of classics, interspersed with an introduction to the life of the great masters of art from various periods to gain insight into their artistic core.

With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on three cultural citybreaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats - and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.

Sue Perkins charts the changes in British taste towards domestic art by delving into the stories of contemporary bestsellers and charting the history of post-war prints. She discusses Tretchikoff with Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemmingway, and meets bestselling artists and photographers Jack Vettriano, Mel Allen, Spencer Rowell, Martin Elliot and Sam Toft, as well as discussing the interior design revolution with Habitat founder Terence Conran.

Series which looks at how the Art Nouveau movement flourished in the burgeoning cities of Europe at the end of the 19th century.

A series charting the life and explaining the work of modern artists Picasso, Matisse, Dali and Warhol, and looking at their influence on contemporary art, design and architecture.

On a spectacular journey through Renaissance Italy, Andrew Graham-Dixon searches for the shadowy figure who wrote one of the most important books on art and looks at some dazzling works, including masterpieces of the early Renaissance by Giotto, Masaccio and Donatello. Giorgio Vasari was the grandaddy of all art critics, travelling Italy in the 16th century for his definitive Lives of the Artists. Scorning medieval Gothic, he praised to the vaulted ceilings the revival of classical art and architecture.

Art critic Alastair Sooke delves into the murky world of art theft. Despite the high stakes - and often daring - involved, many cases are shrouded in mystery and go unnoticed by the media. Around 47,000 works of art are reported missing each year, yet it is only the heists involving the world's most valuable paintings that hit the headlines. But high-profile or not - once gone, the works are rarely recovered. Alastair meets one of America’s most notorious art thieves, Myles Connor.

Painter and critic Matthew Collings charts the rise of abstract art over the last 100 years, whilst trying to answer a set of basic questions that many people have about this often-baffling art form. How do we respond to abstract art when we see it? Is it supposed to be hard or easy? When abstract artists chuck paint about with abandon, what does it mean? Does abstract art stand for something or is it supposed to be understood as just itself?

Edward Burra (1905-76) was one of the most elusive British artists of the 20th century. Long underrated, his reputation has been suddenly rehabilitated, with the first major retrospective of his work for 25 years taking place in 2011 and record-breaking prices being paid for his work at auction. In this film, the first serious documentary about Edward Burra made for television, leading art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the remarkable story of his life. Crippled by a rare form of arthritis from an early age, Burra placed art at the centre of his life from his teenage years onwards.

Matthew Collings explores how Turner makes light the vehicle of feeling in his work, and how he found inspiration for that feeling in the waters of the River Thames. Throughout a lifetime of travel, he returned time and again to paint and draw scenes of the Thames, the lifeblood of London. The film reveals the Thames in all its diverse glory, from its beauty in west London, to its heartland in the City of London and its former docks, out to the vast emptiness and drama of its estuary near Margate.