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Indepth Arts News:
"The Apocalypse"
1999-12-17 until 2000-05-05
The British Museum
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
The close of the second millennium is
an appropriate moment to evaluate the
legacy of one of the most vivid and
controversial writings in the Christian
canon, the Book of Revelation. Its
description of an apocalypse that was
both destructive and redemptive
provided a universal metaphor for the
expression of all future eschatology
both collective and personal, a rich
vein of imagery that remains a force in
contemporary culture.
This exhibition, together with the
associated publication, will examine
the pictorial tradition it engendered as
represented principally by illuminated
manuscripts, books, single sheet
prints and drawings from the 11th
century up to the end of the Second
World War. Attention will be focused
on particular episodes or apocalyptic
phases which have often, though not
invariably, occurred at the end of
centuries and have always been rooted
in historical and political
circumstances. Most of the material
will be drawn from the collections of
the Museum's Department of Prints
and Drawings and the British Library,
supplemented by loans from other
collections within the United Kingdom
, continental Europe and East Coast
American collections.
J.Cooke
The Representative of a Great Nation
1799. Hand coloured etching published by
Obadiah Prim.
After the great medieval manuscript cycles, the defining
moment in the development of the pictorial tradition was
Dürer's publication of his Apocalypse woodcuts, which first
appeared in 1498; their resonance has been felt at all levels of
subsequent portrayal, including examples such as the 1921
film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, in which
Rudolph Valentino holds the Revelation of St John adorned
with copies of Dürer's prints. Apocalyptic imagery was
quickly appropriated as a vehicle for propaganda and satire,
becoming secularised at the hands of artists such as James
Gillray in the late 18th century. Gillray's contemporary,
William Blake, evolved through his illuminated prophetic
books of 1790-1820 and a series of watercolours c.1805-10, a
concept of Apocalypse and Judgement that was part of a
personal mythology responding to the millenarian currents and
revolutionary upheavals of the period in question.
The growing secularisation of modern society has in no way
diminished the power of apocalyptic metaphor which has
become embedded in popular culture. Throughout the 20th
century it has continued as a vehicle for visions of both
destruction and regeneration, of nihilistic despair and futuristic
fantasy, in the hands of many writers, artists and film
directors, for the cinema has been a critical factor in the
transmission of such imagery. As the course of the First
World War and its aftermath unfolded exultance turned to
despair; the hope of regeneration was replaced by a sense of
ultimate destruction on a cosmic scale which continued to
gather momentum under pressure of political developments in
the 1930s, achieving a terrible realisation in the Second World
War.
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