The Art of Compression

Series in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the incredible story of Russian art - its mystery and magnificence - and until now a story untold on British television.

The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett, all teeth and glasses, burst on to our screens in the 1990s. An instant star, she travelled the world in her habit telling us the story of Christian art and painting but revealing little of her own extraordinary story. Arena goes in search of the 'real' Wendy, who, at 82, talks frankly, humorously, and profoundly about her life and spirituality for the first time.

Watercolours have always been the poor relation of oil painting. And yet the immediacy and freedom of painting in watercolours have made them the art of adventure and action - even war. It has been an art form the British have pioneered, at first celebrating the greatest landscapes of Europe and then recording the exotic beauty of the British Empire.

The art colony of St Ives in Cornwall became as important as Paris or London in the history of modernism during a golden creative period between the 1920s and 1960s. The dramatic lives and works of eight artists, who most made this miracle possible, from Kit Wood and Alfred Wallis to Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, are featured in a documentary which offers an alternative history of the 20th century avant-garde as well as a vivid portrayal of the history and landscapes of Cornwall itself.

Series in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the incredible story of Russian art - its mystery and magnificence - and until now a story untold on British television.

Two years in the making, "The Art of FLIGHT" gives iconic snowboarder Travis Rice and friends the opportunity to redefine what is possible in the mountains. Experience the highs, as new tricks are landed and new zones opened, alongside the lows, where avalanches, accidents, and wrong-turns strike.

Richard Clay immerses us in the febrile world of viral media, exploring the popularity and meaning of internet memes, from LOL cats to emoji, pratfall videos to 'dank' alt-right satire. Playfully fusing the conventions of a BBC Four authored documentary with a throwaway YouTube video style, the film examines the rise and rise of this new visual language and asks what makes a few memes cut through and spread so intensely, while the vast majority fall quietly by the wayside.

Francis Bacon is the essential British painter of the twentieth century. From the end of the Second World War until his death in 1992, he created an extraordinary body of intense and uncompromising figure paintings and portraits. Drawing on diverse influences including Picasso, Velasquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X, the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge and Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin, Bacon undertook a pitiless analysis in paint of himself and his friends, of the human body, and of our place in a godless universe.

Thirty years on, and one might well fear that the critical excesses of (relative) youth will have to be expiated at last. Was this recital really as marvellous as some of us thought at the time in spite of the reservations of our elders and betters? And does it stand now, as subsequent comparisons have tended to suggest, not so much as the early work of a great singer in the making, but rather as containing much of the material by which her achievements as a singer can be most favourably judged?

Stock market experts often provide the same words of wisdom over and over: Invest for the long haul. Diversify your portfolio. You can ‘t beat the market. And while this is great advice for the average investor looking to secure their retirement, these rules aren ‘t as hard and fast as the experts may want you to think. History has shown us there are plenty of individuals who beat the market and beat it consistently. Consider Warren Buffet or James Simons—examples of investors who executed the right combination of steady investment methods and calculated risk over decades to build truly impressive fortunes.