Art and Anxiety
Tutor: Edward Lines
Subject: History of Art
Maximum Attendees: 10
Course Outline:
Tour through the Tate
Background:
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Europe experienced a period of extreme political, social and economic change. Nineteenth century French philosopher and poet, Charles Péguy, observed that the world ‘has changed less since Jesus Christ than it has changed in the last thirty years’. In 1900 it would have been hard to argue with this statement. For the preceding millennia, navigation had been achieved on land by foot or by animal and over water by rowing or sailing vessel. The nineteenth century saw an unprecedented rate of change in transport mode and speed; the birth of the steam train and steam boat; the motorcar. Great social change occurred as the industrial revolution drove people away from the country and into the sprawling cities. Similarly wealthier classes could enjoy leisure breaks, escaping the city solely for a weekend and spend it in the country. Literature such as Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days vehemently expressed the technological progression. Religious ideologies changed too as the dominance of the Church was increasingly confronted by science and philosophy. Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution challenged the story of the Creation in the Bible and Friedrich Nietzsche wrote of man usurping God in his works Thus Spoke Zarathustra 1887 and The Gay Science 1882. Even international conflicts such as the Franco-Prussian or Boer Wars became an increasingly abstract entity as the ancient custom of hand-to-hand combat disappeared with man’s subordination to mechanic weaponry.
With the technological and socio-political development in Europe lay great anxiety too. How could society fully comprehend the implications of these changes? Where was the world heading as the twentieth century approached? This concern was expressed by artists and philosophers throughout the continent and due to the enormity of subject matter that represented their state of affairs, style varied accordingly.
This one hour gallery talk, in rooms throughout the Tate, will explore the variation in the work of artists in Britain during this period and explain how they depicted this great European anxiety.