After exploring the great legacies of Europe, leading art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon crosses (Art of Spain, Art of Germany) the Atlantic to explore the great themes and dramatic extremes of American art.

The series begins with the early Puritans, majestic 19th century landscapes, and a persistent paradox in American history – an ideology rooted in God and nature, but a reality seeped in blood and the destruction of the natural world.

Andrew also looks at the rise of mechanisation, modernism and abstract expressionism.
He examines the figurative style of Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell and the work of Pollock, DeKooning and Rothko, and argues that abstract expressionism was the first unique and definitive American art.

In the final episode, Andrew takes a look at the age of capitalism and beyond, including the pop art of the 1960s, a return to pantheism, and yet another paradox in contemporary
American culture: ‘filthy’ money versus ‘pure’ art.