So it’s the mid-nineteenth century and
Peter Jackson hasn’t been born yet, meaning he hasn’t
had a chance to release The Lord of the Rings. (For that matter Tolkien hasn’t been born either, but that’s not important for our purposes.) How is a man supposed to get his visual blockbuster kicks? Enter monsieur John Martin, armed with
naught but a paintbrush, a taste for the
epic, and a knowledge of the Victorian appetite for
Bible-bashing moralism. He swoops across the canvas!
He lets rip his arsenal of colours! Then blamo! Satan is commanding the
construction of Pandemonium, his citadel in hell.
Kazoom! Balthazar is getting
an eyeful of the runes predicting his downfall. Kablamo! Pompeii is up to its armpits in
lava, and the Romans aren’t too
pleased.
Of course, to a
degree all of this is just sensationalism. Those
people fleeing the coming magma, for instance,
throw their arms up as
though featuring not in a recreation of a Bible tale, but a B-movie. Those clouds too,
the ones coming down upon Babylon like a tidal wave,
haven’t we seen them in that other painting,
the one about Judgement Day? Hmm. I’m afraid so. On the other hand
though, it’s hard not to admire the lighting effects.
I daresay George Lucas and the guys at Industrial
Light and Magic had a hand in this. Oh that’s right,
not born yet. Or the people
in that Balthazar painting. Some are standing close,
so close you could almost reach out and touch them.
Others though, are just dots
in a citadel that seems to stretch miles into the core of earth.
Well, I don’t
know if what monsieur John Martin has created is art. But I know that I like it.
[Get it here: John Martin - Apocalypse Now!]
