countygeneral | 13 points | Jan 05 2018 19:02:53

Pablo Picasso and his contemporaries were the first to see children as independent individuals. This film tells the story of how societies' view of childhood shifted in their lifetime - and thus illuminates the history of that era through painting.

The changing role children play in paintings is particularly evident in a picture done by Picasso in 1969. In "Le peintre et l'enfant" (The Painter and the Child), the child with the brush commands control of the artist, becoming a model instead of a mere object and an inspiration for the painter. This depiction of a child is at the end of a long journey by many generations of painters from Jean Fouquet to Matisse, from Velázquez to Renoir, and from Van Dyck to Picasso. Long after the first icons and religious images, where Jesus was the only child, and long after portraits of the children of princes and rulers that played an important role in the great power games in European courts, Picasso and his contemporaries regarded children as autonomous individuals. The works themselves provide an insight into the life of past centuries. The documentary considers the fate of the children in the pictures as well as the times in which they lived. Seen in this way, the paintings are a mirror of history, artistic representations of social reality. "Art and Childhood” charts the long journey from the Middle Ages and the early Church to the 20th Century: a shared history of emancipation both in painting and in the status of children in society.

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previously on DW DocFilms: Abducted and Sold: Forced Workers in Russia | Soundhunters: A Musical Expedition | Crime Novels and the Third Reich | A North Korean Diary | Marlene Dietrich's Last Dress

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