Alastair Sooke
Birthday: Born in in England, UK
Deathday: Alive
Born 1981, Alastair Sooke is an English art critic, journalist and broadcaster, most notable for reporting and commenting on art for the British media and writing and presenting documentaries on art and art history for BBC television and radio.
TV Credits
Romancing the Stone: The Golden Ages of British Sculpture
Character: Self - Presenter
Alastair Sooke examines three periods in the history of British sculpture and the masterpieces they produced....
Treasures of Ancient Rome
Character: Self - Presenter
Treasures of Ancient Rome is a 2012 three-part documentary written and presented by Alastair Sooke. The series was produced by the BBC, and originally aired in September 2012 on BBC Four. In the documentary Sooke sets out to "debunk the myth that Romans didn't do art and were unoriginal". This is based on the view that Romans heavily incorporated Greek style in their art, and hence produced nothing new or original. Sooke has received some criticism from the media owing to the fact that there is ...
Treasures of Ancient Greece
Character: Self - Presenter
Alastair Sooke explores the riches and unique legacy of Greek art....
Treasures of Ancient Egypt
Character: Self - Presenter
Alastair Sooke tells the story of Ancient Egyptian art through 30 extraordinary masterpieces....
An Art Lovers' Guide
Character: Self - Presenter
With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of cultural highlights. So what should an art lover see on a flying visit? Art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on entertaining and revealing cultural city breaks, offering surprising new insights into famous locations and uncovering hidden gems and untold stories, as they discover how religion, revolution and trailblazing individuals can shape the art - and ...
Movie Credits
The World's Most Expensive Paintings
Character: Self - Presenter
Art critic Alastair Sooke tracks down the ten most expensive paintings to sell at auction, and investigates the stories behind the astronomic prices art can reach. Gaining access to the glittering world of the super-rich, Sooke discovers why the planet's richest people want to spend their millions on art....
The World's Most Expensive Stolen Paintings
Character: Self - Presenter
Art critic Alastair Sooke delves into the murky world of art theft. Despite the high stakes - and often daring - involved, many cases are shrouded in mystery and go unnoticed by the media. Around 47,000 works of art are reported missing each year, yet it is only the heists involving the world's most valuable paintings that hit the headlines. But high-profile or not - once gone, the works are rarely recovered....
Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball
Character: Himself
In Pride And Prejudice: Having A Ball, social historian Amanda Vickery leads the action as a team of experts recreate a Regency ball in honour of the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s popular novel. Joined by Alastair Sooke and a coterie of professionals – a food historian, a costume expert, music history academics and a choreographer who trains a team of dance students to take to the floor– cameras will follow the recreation inspired by Austen’s Netherfield ball. This intimate country house ba...
BBC One - Modern Masters TV docu-series
Character: Broadcaster
Journalist Alastair Sooke sets out to discover just how much artists like Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali have influenced our modern lives, and explains why their art is considered so great....
Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World
Character: Presenter
Alastair Sooke champions pop art as one of the most important art forms of the twentieth century, peeling back pop's frothy, ironic surface to reveal an art style full of subversive wit and radical ideas. In charting its story, Alastair brings a fresh eye to the work of pop art superstars Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and tracks down pop's pioneers, from American artists like James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Ed Ruscha to British godfathers Peter Blake and Allen Jones. Alastair also explo...
Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein at Tate Modern
Character: Alastair Sooke
Alastair Sooke takes us on an exclusive personal tour of the Roy Lichtenstein Retrospective at Tate Modern. Offering an in-depth look at one of the year's most talked about exhibitions, Alastair and guests explore the enduring appeal of Lichtenstein's imagery, debate the controversies around his work and his influence on today's generation of artists and tackle the big question - was Lichtenstein a Pop Art genius and one of the defining image-makers of the 20th century, or a one-trick wonder who...
Robert Rauschenberg: Pop Art Pioneer
Character: Presenter
Rauschenberg was the first artist to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1964, creating a crucial bridge between the abstract expressionists of the 50s and the pop artists who emerged in the 60s. Famous for his 'combines' that elevated the rich junk of life to the status of high art, he continued to work right up to his death in 2008, collaborating with dancers, scientists and social activists on a startlingly broad array of projects....
Constable: A Country Rebel
Character: Presenter
The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country du...
How the Devil Got His Horns: A Diabolical Tale
Character: Self - Presenter
Art historian Alastair Sooke traces the humanization of the Devil figure in medieval art from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries....