Thursday, 19 March 2015

The Art Of Gothic




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/11175260/the-art-of-gothic-review-episode-one-bbc-four.html

The Art of Gothic which was presented on BBC Four by Graham-Dixon, was told like an enthusiastic tale. This is a spooky documentary of how the middle and upper classes of the 18th century England and other country’s went a bit crazy for the scary stuff.

Over the first episode, Dixon explores how the Gothic genre continued  between the Georgian era into the Victorian, and how it reflected the 'anxieties' of the British mind.  'From restrained aristocratic beginnings to pornographic excesses,' Gothic revival came back to influence art, literature and architecture.

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/adelaidean/image7288/air_pump.jpg.html

The visual interpretation of gothic pieces of art such as Joseph Wright of Derby’s ‘Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’, and paintings of the ‘Sublime’ are passionately discussed by Dixon. One of the artists that Dixon speaks passionately about is Salvator Rosa, (1615-1673) he was a Neapolitan painter of rugged landscapes, poems and plays of witches. When I fist saw this painting it really freaked me out, but you can see what Dixon was taking about, the lighting he painted on each moment of the painting was like a flash of lightening, illuminating each scene for your eye to follow its gruesome tale.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/salvator-rosa-witches-at-their-incantations

He also frequently dramatised readings of Gothic literature, from Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (told to be the first gothic novel) extracts from Matthew Lewis’ controversial ‘The Monk’ and Mary Shelley’s classic ‘Frankenstein’, are great insights into the literary form of Gothic literature, it shows how different writers captured, created and interpreted the Gothic movement.

Alongside the extracts and visual aids of the paintings and architecture, Graham-Dixon examines the biographical background of the artists, writers and architects to give a wider overall exploration of the era in which the Gothic movement dominated.

The Art of Gothic is a compelling documentary series which examines the 18th Century British idea of all things Gothic, it is insightful in the way it is questioning this idea and discussing what Dixon calls the ‘two faces’ of the Gothic.

I think this series has helped me grasp the ideas they had at the time, the way they saw Gothic to how we see it today, and how we always try and interpret the literature and ideology they held in such high regard. 

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