While glancing through the New York Times a few months ago, my eye caught the headline, Spirits, Gothic Fantasies and Sex, Please, We're British. The article by Alan Riding described an exhibit (Feb 15 - May 1, 2006) at Tate Britain in London featuring Henry Fuseli's famous work, The Nightmare. This exhibit explored
the world of fantasy, mysticism, horror and sexual perversity that found expression in art and literature in Britain between 1770 and 1830 and which, fueled by novels, movies and even pop music, later became known as Gothic.From the Tate website:
Gothic Nightmares explores the work of Henry Fuseli (1741�1825) and William Blake (1757�1827) in the context of the Gothic � the taste for fantastic and supernatural themes which dominated British culture from around 1770 to 1830.
Featuring over 120 works by these artists and their contemporaries, the exhibition creates a vivid image of a period of cultural turmoil and daring artistic invention.
The central exhibit is Henry Fuseli�s famous The Nightmare 1781. Ever since it was first exhibited to the public in 1782, this picture has been an icon of horror. Showing a woman supine in her boudoir, oppressed by a foul imp while a ferocious-looking horse glares on, the painting draws on folklore and popular culture, medicine, concepts of imagination, and classical art to create a new kind of highly charged horror image. This is the most extensive display of Fuseli�s art seen in Britain since 1975 and includes around sixty of his most important canvases and drawings including Titania and Bottom c1790, The Three Witches 1783 and The Shepherd�s Dream.
A selection of works by Fuseli�s contemporaries and followers, dealing with themes of fantasy, horror and perverse sexuality, complement his work. This includes over twenty-five exceptional watercolours and paintings by the visionary artist William Blake, among which will be The Night of Enitharmon�s Joy, The House of Death c1795; his vampire-like Ghost of a Flea, The Whirlwind: Ezekial�s Vision c1803�5; The Witch of Endor Raising the Spirit of Samuel 1783 and Death on a Pale Horse c1800.
The exhibition is further enriched with works on Gothic and fantastic themes by, among others, Joseph Wright of Derby, George Romney, James Barry and Maria Cosway, John Flaxman and Theodore von Holst, and features a large group of caricatures by James Gillray, whose satirical works incorporate some of the most inventive cosmic and fantastic imagery of the era. A special section of the exhibition presents a recreation of a �Phantasmagoria� show � a kind of animated slideshow with sound effects and shocking images � giving visitors to the exhibition a chance to experience at first hand the same chills and thrills as their forebears in the 1800s.
As a literary phenomenon, the Gothic has had an enduring influence. Mary Shelley�s Frankenstein (1818), and the novels of Matthew �Monk� Lewis, William Beckford and Ann Radcliffe are still widely read. Modern Gothic novelists including Angela Carter, Patrick McGrath and Toni Morrison are highly regarded, and the Gothic continues to influence film and TV � from classics like Nosferatu (1922) through to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997�2002) � and visual artists like Glenn Brown and the Chapman brothers. This exhibition is the first to explore the roots of this phenomenon in the visual arts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Fuseli himself
was the son of a portrait painter, Johann Caspar F�ssli (1707-82), but he originally trained as a priest; he took holy orders in 1761, but never practised. In 1765 he came to London at the suggestion of the British Ambassador in Berlin, who had been impressed by his drawings.Fuseli has also written extensively on art.
Reynolds encouraged him to take up painting, and he spent the years 1770-78 in Italy, engrossed in the study of Michelangelo, whose elevated style he sought to emulate for the rest of his life. On his return he exhibited highly imaginative works such as The Nightmare (Detroit Institute of Arts, 1781), the picture that secured his reputation when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1782 (there is another version in the Goethe-museum, Frankfurt). An unforgettable image of a woman in the throes of a violently erotic dream, this painting shows how far ahead of his time Fuseli was in exploring the murky areas of the psyche where sex and fear meet.
His fascination with the horrifying and fastastic also comes out in many of his literary subjects, which formed a major part of his output; he painted several works for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and in 1799 he followed this example by opening a Milton Gallery in Pall Mall with an exhibition of forty-seven of his own paintings.
Fusely was a much respected and influential figure in his lifetime, but his work was generally neglected for about a century after his death until the Expressionists and Surrealists saw in him a kindred spirit. His work can be clumsy and overblown, but at its best has something of the imaginative intensity of his friend Blake, who described Fuseli as `The only man that e'er I knew / who did not make me almost spew'.
psyche, n. [Gr. psyche, the soul.]
1. The spirit or soul.
2. (Psychiatry) The mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior and consciously or unconsciously adjusting or mediating the body's responses to the social and physical environment.
3. That which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason
4. The immaterial part of a person; the actuating cause of an individual life
The portrayal of the psyche in art interests me a great deal. A person's true identity is found in the psyche, as are the keys to what makes them tick. The psyche is a stew-pot in which personal characteristics, reactions to events, choices, and spiritual forces work upon one another to influence thought and action. That the psyche may be artistically portrayed suggests that a Christian artist might be able to depict the spiritual reality driving the forces operative within all of us. A person encountering such art might find him/herself caught, in a manner of speaking, with his/her psycho-spiritual clothes off.
Because of this ability to reveal truth in a most arresting and penetrating way, art may have an �in� with a person that the rational spoken or written word does not � if indeed, as the definition states, the psyche is the seat of reason. I suggest that it is much easier to deny matters of mind or heart than of the psyche (where matters of heart and mind intertwine with all other aspects of the person) itself. The very depths of a person � those places to which the mind wanders in an unguarded moment or upon being prompted by some association, or things that play out in a perspiration-soaked midnight dream � tend to be where fascination rather than denial lies.
In my teen years I was drawn to what might be called mildly macabre novels such as those by Peter Straub and John Knowles, though I was unaware of any actual genre to which such writings might belong. (Interestingly, Knowles has written about Fuseli, though I haven�t read these writings.) I was not thrill-seeking or secretly revelling in taboo (neither writer provokes either), but understood that there was a complex world of motive, passion, confusion, fear, and angst within the psyche of (most) every human. Hardly any one in polite society seemed to speak of this, however, except to say that such passion and turmoil weren�t acceptable (or at least so it seemed in my world). Persons who committed wrong acts, especially those based upon desperation or misdirected passion, were the abject, the base, the criminal, the loose, the wild, the unprincipled, or the undisciplined. In dread fear of becoming such a creature myself, I searched books, hoping to find truth and understanding in order to come to terms with my own troubled psyche. (I did not know God in those days.)
Of course I'm not recommending that anyone make an idol of such exploration, or of the darker recesses of the psyche. Nor do I suggest that anyone flaunt these things (by dressing as if half-dead or off the set of a B-rated horror flick and/or behaving in the above-described manner). But to ignore those dark crannies of the mind by shoving them under the proverbial bed or into the back of the metaphorical closet isn�t such a good thing either. The crannies are still there � one�s own private shrine -- or private dungeon.
I would say that a good deal of evangelical Christianity either blatantly or subtly emphasizes �looking the part,� i.e., appearing to be pious and holy and possessed of only clean thought and affection or else safely exorcizing any unclean thought or affection upon first appearance. (Definitely reflective of �worldly� influence � beyond matters of propriety in public, of course.) But what of things that are clean and pure, spiritually speaking, but don�t look so good? What of the things are aren�t so clean and pure yet nevertheless need to come out and be dealt with, even by the Christian?
What happens when someone who�s managed a good appearance, perhaps even sincerely so, experiences an event that causes him or her to snap, and suddenly the crannies begin to ooze? How might such a person�s Christian friends react? By recoiling in horror and saying, �Oh! S/he must not be a true Christian after all!� or by saying, �Oh my...here�s someone who really needs our help�?
Of course, it is important that any Christian who �falls,� in any respect, repent. But sometimes a person may be so shattered that they can�t even do that for awhile. What might other believers do about it? Offer platitudes and quote Scripture, or offer judgment, or, allow the person some space and time while continuing, in a non-preacherly way, to minister to their needs?
You�re probably wondering where I�m going with all this, or how it relates to The Nightmare. I�d say it has to do with honesty, with honest portrayal and assessment of both spiritual reality at the deepest level of our hearts, minds, and souls and of the possibility of redemption, in both art and real life.
C. S. Lewis managed to do what I�m talking about in his writings such as the Chronicles of Narnia. In The Magician�s Nephew, he introduces Uncle Andrew through an exchange with Andrew�s nephew Digory. Andrew thinks he possesses a special wisdom hidden from the rest of most �ordinary� folk, and seeks praise and congratulations for his �accomplishments.� He cloaks evildoing in euphemism; for example, he calls something �unwise� rather than �wrong.� By telling poor Digory, who involuntarily yells in surprise upon accidentally stumbling into Andrew�s rooms, �If you start making a noise your Mother�ll hear it. And you know what a fright might do to her,� (Digory�s mother was very ill), he expresses manipulative, disingenuous �concern� of the most gut-wrenching, tooth-grinding type.
Uncle Andrew exploits the weaknesses as well as the honor of others by duping them into doing what he is too cowardly to do himself, risking their safety in the process. He exploits animals (guinea pigs, both real and metaphorical) for his experiments: �That�s what the creatures were there for. I�d bought them myself.� When Digory expresses shock and anger at what Uncle Andrew has done, Andrew�s reaction is to patronizingly turn the accusation away from himself and back upon his accuser: �You really must learn to control that temper of yours, my boy.�
(At the book�s end, Uncle Andrew, who �has made himself unable to hear my voice,� as says Aslan, receives from Aslan �the only gift he is still able to receive� � the relief of sleep for a time, and return to London (from Narnia). After that, �Uncle Andrew never tried any Magic again as long as he lived. He had learned his lesson, and in his old age he became a nicer and less selfish old man than he had ever been before.� But he still bragged about Jadis.)
Perhaps there is a way to visually do what Lewis has done using mythical (representative) forms, poses, color, lighting, and all other techniques and methods available to a visual artist, in the way that Fuseli did in The Nightmare. Musically, much can be done to express action and states of being as well as emotion, in order to tell a story or depict a reality in a deep-reaching way. Certainly a theatrical production or film could do this as well (which is partly why I was disappointed with the cinematic version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe � I didn�t think it illustrated very well what was going on spiritually inside the characters, unlike the book.
Early Christian and Medieval art portrayed much, via pose, convention, and symbol, of Biblical story and Biblical truth. Even during the Renaissance, Christian truth and honor were still prevalent (in a more humanistic depiction.) But most non-religious art since the Enlightenment has sought to depict a different reality than the one of the Bible; it has sought to glorify all things human (humanism) and undermine, ridicule, or outright shatter �traditional� or Christian morality. And, sadly, much Christian art in the modern era has become sappy, trite, obscure, or dull.
I would like to see gifted modern Christian artists reclaim art, using all methods available to reach and �re-enlighten� contemporary humankind. Beyond pretty pictures (not that those don�t have their place) or rousing (dare I say, entertaining?) tales and inspiring figures, or even morality pieces, I would like to see art that gets real, gets deep, and uncovers what�s really going on inside of human beings. I'd like to see it demonstrate that a nightmare can be turned into a most glorious reality of truth and redemption, from the psyche outward.
(edited 5/22)
