Review: BBC Art Of Gothic

The Art Of Gothic programme i thought was very interesting in how it explained how 'gothic' means a lot of different things depending on the era and whether it was novel,paintings, architecture etc.

Andrew Graham- Dixon presented a BBC Four programme on how 19th century architects and artists made a big impact and looked at past medieval Britain and the modern age to create buildings and paintings inspired by the gothic meaning that they had discovered.

The meaning of gothic came from the Italian renaissance where they explained it as 'anything that isn't civilised'. The 'Castle of Otrantro' was the beginnings of the gothic era and was a massive inspiration to later gothic novel writers. This novel was actually very poorly written however it caused so much fuss because it was something that people of that time had never heard of before. No one was ever allowed to talk about dark and mysterious thoughts like those written in the novel so when all these fantasies came about through the book people were stunned. A lot of famous novelists who wrote about these fantasies and deep, dark thoughts didn't actually want anyone to know that it was them who had written about it so they changed their name that was published on the book. When Horace Walpole wrote the Castle of Otrantro he also changed his name because previously he has been publicly humiliated for the fact that he had a gay encounter with his cousin, this was seen as very wrong at the time and when his novel came out it showed a lot of fantasies involving men.

In the documentary they then looked at art and paintings of that time and also way before gothic horror became so popular. They found that a lot of painters had included gothic like fantasies in paintings. He mentioned the term 'Sublime' which meant the fear of natural occurrences such as waves, storms etc. These were painted into scenes involving dark stories to make the scene more believable and realistic. He also found that people like William Shakespeare who was massively influential and still is to the present day also included gothic parts within his sonnets. Macbeth has a very dark meaning to it.

Another very important part of gothic horror is the romance involved within it, it's a big part of novels and art. At the time that it came about, sex, relationships and sexual fantasies were never spoke about. When these novels were presenting ideas about sex and relationships everyone was very shocked to hear it. The Mayor of London's son inherited a huge amount of money and threw a 21st style birthday party, but it turned out to be a 3 day orgy.

The French revolution (1787-1799) brought the fear of gothic horror to life. There was a lot of violence which brought peoples nightmare's to life. New machinery was introduced such as the Guillotine which meant peoples heads were being cut off just like the scenes in paintings and novels of horror.

I enjoyed watching parts of the documentary however, some parts were boring and i lost concentration. The parts that i did find interesting were good and related a lot to that of the novel i am studying which is why i had full concentration on parts. It gave me a better understanding about how diverse the term gothic horror is and how it can relate to a lot of different things in culture, such as paintings, novels, architecture, plays etc.