THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

From the 1740's the situation will change because of the Industrial revolution, that brings about deep changes in society and art. Starting from the 1740's coals mines are discovered in the "black counties" in the North - Centre of England and at the same time steam power was applied to spinning wheels. These activities began to be concentrated in metropolitan centres.

Industrial revolution brings about some consequences:

the landscape changes: we have a phenomenon which is called urbanisation: people moved from the country villages, where the life had gone in the same way for centuries, to big industrial towns. In this period we have melancholic writers, like Oliver Goldsmith: in this work, "The desert village", he laments the loss of the old way of life in his native village.

on the economy: it is no longer based on trade, agriculture and grazing but on industries; they don't disappear, but the most important source of money is the industry.

social background: we have tow new classes that didn't exist before: the industrial middle class, who is called also the capitalists and whose only interest is money, and the industrial working class, that means the proletariat.

art: the position of the artists changes: before the industrial revolution, artists either lived under the financial protection of the aristocracy or, like the novelists, they lived on the money they earned selling their books. This is because the XVIII century middle classes wanted to learn, so they read novels; now the industrial middle class considered art a waste of time and money and artists were considered like parasites; so, for the first time they were abandoned, the middle class don't care about art. For that reason, they had a double psychological reaction: on one hand, they felt frustrated and depressed, and on the other, they felt superior and divine and they thought that the other people were ignorant. They often committed suicide, like a scottish poet, Thomas Chatterton: he began to write at the age of 18 but nobody bought his works, so he went to London and tried to have his poems published but no one did that, so he committed suicide throwing himself into the Thames. In this way he became a mythical ure for the romantics, and not only in England.

In order to understand art we must concentrate on the word escape: artists were not in harmony with the place and time they lived in. They felt ill at ease, so they escaped:

physically: they travelled around the world in search of a better place to live in;

psychologically: it brings about the birth of new themes or old themes seen in a new light.

The new themes, that are sources of inspiration for artists, are:

a new attitude towards death: artists committed suicide to escape; before the Industrial Revolution, artists considered death as a natural event, not to be pondered over. If someone spoke about death, he would commit the sin of pride, because men had to accept their destiny. Now, death becomes a morbid obsession: artists found inspiration from the corruption of the flesh; they went at night in the graveyards. So the art  wasn't as solar as the neo-classic one. A new school was born in Europe in that period, that is the graveyard school, whose most important exponent is Thomas Gray. He wrote "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"; the elegy is a poetic form of melancholic atmosphere, with a meditative tone. Another important writer is Edward Young, who wrote "Night Thought"; there's also and English painter: William Turner.

a new conception of the past: during the Neo-classical Age, the past was considered like a static block of Greece and Rome, without development, it was not moving. Now the artist in his mind moves from the present to the past in search of a better age. The conception of the past changed from static to dynamic and the better age is finally set on the National Middle Age; artists concentrated their attention to this period. This attitude was present in all Europe. An example of this new conception of the past are the Ossian's Tales, wrote in this period by James MacPherson. He was Scottish and obsessed by the Middle Age; so he wrote some mediocre lines and he put the signature "Ossian" on the end of these. Then he left the manuscript in a cave for a while; when they looked old, he took them to London and they were published in all Europe. Ossian was an ancient bard, but he had never existed, so the Ossian's poems are a fake. They became a hit.

The obsession for the past gives birth to the Gothic Novel. The word "Gothic" comes out from the architecture to call the art of North Europe; the  opposite is Romanesque, the Mediterranean art. The novels are called Gothic Novels because they are set in Gothic buildings and convents. The first Gothic novelist is Horace Walpole, who wrote The Castle of Otranto. The Gothic Novel represents a fit of nationalistic anticatholicism, the characters are perverted Italian-looking monks who corrupt innocent English-looking virgins; they represent the corruption of the Catholicism against the innocence of the Puritans. The most famous novel was written in this period but it is different; it is "Doctor Frankenstein" written by Mary Shelley, the wife of P. B. Shelley, who died in front of Portovenere.

artists became obsessed with the wild nature: in the Neo-classic period, nature was controlled and the most beautiful are the gardens. Artists made the nature more beautiful in the gardens. The Industrial Revolution destroyed nature, with the built of a lot of factories, but wild nature remained. Artists spent a lot of their life on the Alps or in the wild districts of England.

they love the innocence of children and of primitive people: they are still not corrupted by the Industrial Revolution. The myth of the "Bon Sauvage" of J.-J. Rousseau.