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Witches at their incantations 1646died long before the revived fashion for all things gothic but his painting seem to have predicted the taste for the sublimeGlowering skies, gnarled trees craggy cliffs. |
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| Dracula |
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| Frankenstein |
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| Henry Fuseli The Nightmare exhibited 1782 Oil on canvas, 1210 x 1473 x 89 mm |
In this three-part series, Andrew Graham-Dixon looks back at 19th century Britain and its obsession with all things Gothic. The series explores how an inspired group of architects and artists spurned the modern age, turning to Britain’s medieval past to create some of Britain’s most iconic art works and buildings.
Inspired by the tumultuous Industrial Revolution, John Ruskin was among those who created architectural wonders, using the cutting edge of technology to create a brand-new British style of architecture. While in art and literature, the Gothic allowed Horace Walpole, Bram Stoker and Dickens to capture the terror, weirdness and social ills that plagued Victorian Britain.
Episode 1 of art of Gothic horror:
Britain’s Midnight Hour begins in the middle of 18th century England, when an entirely surprising thing happened. Out of the age of Enlightenment and Reason a monster was born – a Gothic obsession with monsters, ghouls, ghosts and things that go bump in the night! From restrained aristocratic beginnings to pornographic excesses, this episode shows how the Gothic Revival cme to influence popular art, architecture and literature.
Episode 2
Episode two explores how, as the Industrial Revolution promised the modern world inexplicable wonders, Gothic art and literature became both backward and forward looking.
In her novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warned of the dangers of how science could get out of control, while Sir Giles Gilbert Scott used Gothic architecture to memorialise Prince Albert as a medieval hero. This episode also show how poets indulged in hallucinatory drugs to reach new Gothic heights.
episode 3
In the final episode, Gothic fantasy horror is outstripped by real horror, as the truth of mechanised warfare in 1914 dawns on an innocent world.
The programme highlights how the language of Gothic would come to summarise the horrors of the 20th century – from Marx’s analysis of ‘vampiric’ capitalism, to Conrad’s dark vision of imperialism and T.S.Eliot’s vision of The Wasteland, a Gothic narrative seemed to make sense of the modern world more than any other.
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