This Is the Modern World

This final episode of Andrew Graham-Dixon's latest series The Art of France begins with the Impressionists.

Andrew plunges into one of the most wildly creative periods in the history of art, when France was changing at a rapid pace and angry young artists would re-invent how to paint, finding their muses in the bars, brothels and cabarets of Belle Époque Paris and turning the world of art on its head.

Monet, Degas and friends launched a febrile conversation about the role of painting in the modern world that would pave the way for just about every modern art movement of note, from the Cubists to the Fauves, the Surrealists to the Existentialists and from conceptual artists to the Abstract Expressionists.