All Rise...

Judge Brett Cullum removes all his clothes and calls it art.

The Charge

Learn about naked people!

The Case

Tim Marlow has been hosting BBC specials explaining art to people in simple terms. There is a big following of his particular brand of art education. He's great at giving us a good grasp of how paintings and statues work in history, and his latest series The Nude in Art does an admirable job to help audiences understand what a naked figure means according to when it was produced.

Marlow starts off with cave drawings and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and winds up one hundred minutes later looking at modern sculptures from latex that look far too real. We see stylized images, realism, and grotesque works from surrealists and impressionists. Most all of the pieces you would expect pop up without much fanfare. We get to hear the stories of the Venus de Milo, the statue of David, and Venus on the Half Shell. But there are also some lesser known works that get highlighted. It's an entertaining journey through naked people throughout history.

The DVD is (pardon the pun) bare bones both in presentation and in supplements. We get the shows with no frills…er…no extras. The transfer looks like a BBC television production broadcast in standard definition without any doctoring. It is certainly clear enough, but it doesn't look spectacular or eye popping. The audio is also a simple stereo, so not much to rave about there either. The disc doesn't need to be loaded with extras or a masterful demo level transfer, this is after all a lecture on art. The disc satisfies in that regard, and doesn't push things any further. Why dress up a simple lecture on nudity?

The Nude in Art With Tim Marlow is a British lecture on naked people, so it never feels quite as dirty as it should. It's entirely proper and academic, and an entertaining way to learn about what nudes have meant to various cultures throughout time and across geography. It makes for an educational hour and forty minutes despite all the naughty bits on display. The disc does the topic justice, and offers no extra coverage along the way.

The Verdict

Guilty of making naked people culturally relevant.

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