'Art history is being sidelined': Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox on why TV abandoned culture

There is a reason art critics stand in front of paintings when talking about them on TV. But what if you just have sound? Joint hosts of the Stories of Art podcast, Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox talk me through the joys of art history in words. “You can watch [the podcast] on YouTube or podcast channels like Spotify, but for people who are purely listening, we try to focus on the narrative surrounding the picture, or the artist,” explains Fox.

Stories of Art does what it says on the tin: the two men providing the stories behind the making of our most famous art works. One’s an art historian (Fox, who teaches at Cambridge University) the other an art critic (Sooke, who writes for The Telegraph).

Occasionally, the pair will cover a blockbuster exhibition (the Bayeux Tapestry, for example), but the podcast tends to focus on Great Art Works rather than Great Art News.

“We pick stuff that is evergreen,” says Sooke. “Topicality doesn’t matter,” adds Fox. “We do stories on famous paintings that people are fascinated by and will be listening to for years.” Armed with a lot of data, dates and research, the two men meet up and simply start chatting. It seems the flexible, rangy podcast is perfect for a long conversation about art.

“Detail and nuance are your friends,” says Sooke. “TV can be amazing but is also quite confining. You only have so many minutes. Whereas on a podcast, you have the opportunity to talk for ages about things you are passionate about, so we can have, say, four episodes on Michelangelo. Or Van Gogh. If we feel like it.”

Both men have CVs bristling with arts shows they have presented on terrestrial television, but the days of plentiful coverage of the arts on TV are over. A time when the regular schedules would include the likes of Civilisation, Arena, The South Bank Show or Late Review is a distant memory.

“I think, since Brexit, we have been living through a negative and challenging time for the arts,” says Sooke. “There is an anti-expert, anti-elitist frame of mind out there, and art history, which is perceived as being elitist, has come a cropper. It’s very sad.”

“Alastair and I started making arts shows when the BBC was at the centre of a conversation around culture in the UK,” says Fox. “There was a lot of high-quality programming. We have seen how the capacity of the BBC to commission arts shows has diminished, thanks to budget cuts and changing appetite.”

Because there is no appetite, there is no budget. And there is no appetite, not just because of Brexit, but because art history is being written out of the curriculum. In England, History of Art A-Level is available in only one state school north of Nottingham. And television no longer picks up the slack.

“The BBC and Channel 4 were where I got my cultural nourishment,” says Fox. “I would watch Waldemar Januszczak, Simon Schama and Sister Wendy in her caravan. There are no programmes like theirs today. Art history is being sidelined.”

Why does he think that is? “I think it’s a loss of confidence. We are living at a time when the BBC is fearful about being seen to be too privileged and elitist. The BBC must serve a wide public, but does that mean it can’t do art history?”

We exchange rueful observations about Match of the Day, which is both elitist (focusing on the Premier League) and uses experts, but then football coverage is never going to be sidelined.

Still, if you immerse yourself in Stories of Art, you will be taken from Hokusai’s The Great Wave to cannibalism courtesy of Géricault, via Van Gogh’s ear and Michelangelo’s Adam. The podcast has had nearly half a million downloads in the past month.

“What we are passionate about is getting art history out there, and doing it via this podcast,” says Sooke. What is his favourite work of art? “Oh, that’s easy. Lightning Field by Walter De Maria. It’s a field in New Mexico in which there are 400 polished stainless steel poles. You’re taken out there by a cowboy and stay in a shack all night watching the sun set and then rise across all these poles. I proposed to my wife there.”

And Fox’s favourite? “The Flagellation by Piero della Francesca, which is in Urbino, Italy. Nobody really understands it, or why there is this image of Jesus being whipped alongside three men who look as if they’re standing around waiting for a bus.”

Anything they disagree about? “Yes. I don’t like Starry Night by Van Gogh,” says Sooke. “James thinks it’s flawless.” And there you have it. For your history of art fix, Stories of Art might just do the job.