A jaunt through five millennia of art history in just one minute
This meticulously animated short by the Chinese new-media artist and educator Cao Shu traverses some five millennia of art in a single minute. As flickering images move chronologically, in flipbook fashion, through a parade of styles and artistic movements – from Ancient Egypt, to the Impressionist era, to the 20th century avant-garde – a gender-shifting character makes a series of simple movements, seemingly ambling through the history of art.
Director: Cao Shu
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Nature and landscape
After independence, Mexico was in search of identity. These paintings offered a blueprint
15 minutes
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Mathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes
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Art
A young Rockefeller collects art on a fateful journey to New Guinea
7 minutes
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Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
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Art
Defying classification, fantastical artworks reframe the racism of Carl Linnaeus
8 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes
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Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
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History
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes