Art That Made Us: Lights in the Darkness (BBC Four Monday 23 October 2023)

Art That Made Us: Lights in the Darkness airs Monday 23 October 2023 on BBC Four.

What is this episode about

The turbulent years after the Romans left Britain are vividly depicted in this episode. Despite its reputation as a period of darkness, the Middle Ages were actually a time of brilliant creativity and unprecedented cultural exchange.

Through encounters with contemporary artists and ancient art, as well as interviews with experts and curators, this alternative history of the British Isles reveals how Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse peoples battled for dominance, leaving behind enigmatic artefacts that continue to haunt the landscape and the imagination.

An intriguing glimpse into the psyche of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers is provided when sculptor Antony Gormley meets Spong Man, a one-of-a-kind clay figure that once sat on a funerary urn from the 5th century. Meanwhile, Scottish artists Dalziel & Scullion marvel at the monumental Aberlemno Stones (c.500-800 AD), thought to mark the hard-fought boundary line of the Pictish kingdom, and Welsh poet Y Gododdin (from the 7th century) is performed by actor Michael Sheen.

Artist Cornelia Parker explores the broken and twisted state in which the gold artefacts of the Staffordshire Hoard were discovered at Stoke’s Potteries Museum. Like the stones, the artefacts fuse pagan and Christian imagery. The Reverend Richard Coles, who discovered the elaborate Lindisfarne Gospels, used the newly-spread English language to simplify the Latin. Maria Dahvana Headley discusses her hip-hop feminist translation of the epic poem Beowulf and provides an analysis of the English used in the original text.

Mapmaker David McCandless and British Library curator Claire Breay investigate the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi, which provides a fresh perspective on the Isles’ place in the world. In his graphic novel, “1066,” author Woodrow Phoenix examines the Bayeux Tapestry, the embroidered propaganda of the Norman conquest, to better understand the sudden and dramatic end of the Anglo-Saxon age.

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When can we see the episode

Art That Made Us: Lights in the Darkness airs Monday 23 October 2023 at 9.00pm on BBC Four

Featured Image Credit: BBC Four