The Art Of Gothic - Britain's Midnight Hour: Blood for Sale - Gothic Goes Global Review

Gothic is everywehere, even today. It began as a medieval revival and by the mid 19th century it had spread in most aspects of people's lives- novels, poems, paintings, architecture etc. In the third, and last episode, Dixon shows us how the gothic horror had influenced books, films, TV, technology, art and even fashion of the 20th century. 

The biggest influence on the film making industry of 20th century was Dracula, gothic novel by Bram Stoker (1897). About a vampire that lived in a house called Carfax, outside London. The novel looks back, on the gloomth, and forth, through the 20th century. Stoker mentiones new media such as the telephone, phonograph, Kodak camera and typewriter.
Das Kapital, written by Karl Marx (1867), is also gothic novel with a vampire as the main character. Marx warns people of Capitalism and how people are slaves of the modern world. One of the first people to ever read Das Kapital was William Morris, a revolutionary socialist. He was the first person to start the Arts & Crafts movement, was against the industrialization and longed for the past times. While studying at Oxfrord College, The nature of Gothic by John Ruskin, inspired him so much in life that later he even reprinted the book. After college, with his friends, he started his own company Moris & co., where they hand made wallpapers, carpets etc. 
Joseph Conrad published a novel in 1899 Heart of Darkness, about Charles Marlow and his expirience at the Congo River in Africa. Conrad touches on the subjects such as colonalism and rasism caused by European imarialsim. 
There was also T. S. Eliot, a gothic poet that made a big impact on the gothic literature with his poem The Waste Land (1922). The poem is very visual and every line contains gothic symbols; bats, river Thames, ruins, churches etc. 

The greatest gothic painter of the 20th century was Francis Bacon. Just like Eliot's poem, his paintings are full of gothic symbols.

"Study of a head of a Screaming Pope"
Yale Center for British Art

Oil on canvas

1952

Artist: Francis Bacon

(source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/03/28/arts/francis-bacon-the-restlessness-of-human-existence/#.VQVlEdLz2OM)

In 1913, another William Morris started his own car making company (factory) that was completely opposite to Morris & Co. Taking the assembly line from Henry Ford and with a huge number of employers, Morris produced 20 cars per week. Today people are replaced with machines and the company produces 900 cars daily. 

The Granada Cinema in Tooting, built in the 1930s looked more like a gothic palace than a cinema. F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu (1922), A. Hitchcock's The Lodger: Story of the London fog (1927) are just some of the first horror films, along with Dracula (1931). Dixon was right, if you think about it, cinema is the ultimate gothic house - we watch old films with actors that are dead, but they come to life every time we watch them.

Interior of Granada Cinema

Tooting, London

2010

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granada,_Tooting#/media/File:Granada_Tooting.JPG)

Gothic narative seemed to make more sense to the modern world than any other. Gothic is not only in our books and film, but in our minds, too. As Morris said; "We shall be our own goths", and I completely agree with this quote.

reference found on March 14th 2015