John Martin | TateShots

This is the inaugural exhibition of John Martin's Apocalypse. It is painted by John Martin Sadek In Search of the Waters of Oblivion from 1812 and is an impressive and extremely read painting and was the first painting to receive attention in the press when John Martin exhibited it. at the Royal Academy in 1812 and he was from very humble origins, he had no conventional artistic training, he had very few connections and then the London art world, so the way to make a name for himself as an artist was by exhibiting works that he was going to receive critical attention the Academy's annual exhibitions in the early 19th century were embraces of density this painting stood out from the crowd because when it is very red and landscape painters are usually green, brown or gray, it is quite large, it would have caught the eye. attention. itself and is sublime in its painterly effects, so in all of these ways, John Martin is creating an image that was calculated not only to fit the standard rules of art and the conventions of art, but that was going to go further beyond them in the search for a spectacular effect.

It is the painting that gave Martin his greatest fame not only nationally but internationally. It is the feast of Belshazzar as a biblical theme showing the writing on the wall that warns the corrupt king of Babylon Belshazzar of the fall of his empire the palace that Martin invented was of enormous proportions, he claimed at one point, it must have been a mile long and he takes every opportunity to include the incident in detail and a fantastic drama in the sense of the composition, you have the prophet Daniel, who is correctly interpreting the writing on the walls.

The warning to King Belshazzar, who on the right is cowering in fear surrounded by his courtiers, is probably the most famous of John Martin's paintings as the great day of his wrath occurring towards the end of his life and showing a scene of Total catastrophe and destruction. in the end of the world as prophesied in the biblical book of Revelation, here you can see the shattered earth, a moon turned into blood and entire cities convulsed in on themselves with humanity and destroyed mercilessly in the foreground, it is part of a triptych of paintings . sent on tour in 1854, when John Martin dies in 1861, it is claimed that the great day of his wrath and the accompanying photographs had been seen by up to 8 million people, so apparently more than one in three people had seen these photographs here at the Tate.

Britain, His Great Day of Wrath and the accompanying images of the Last Judgment Triptych have been installed in a specially designed theater space. We wanted to recreate or evoke a sense of the drama that these Cleanser Duende images were originally exhibited in the 1850s and 1860s. This light and sound spectacle connects these images with a much more contemporary experience of blockbuster entertainment. We know that these paintings were dramatically displayed by Gaslight and not only in gallery spaces but also in music halls, theaters and civic spaces, you know. While we wouldn't normally see ours, we also know that occasionally they were a descriptive lecture, so there would be a mustachioed gentleman pointing out the details of the paintings and dramatizing their content.