Apocalypse in British Art and Visual Culture in the Early Twentieth Century

This book is the first substantial study of the presence and relationship with the concepts of apocalypse, eschatology, and millennium in modern British art from 1914 to 1945, addressing how and why practitioners in both religious and secular spheres turned to the subjects. The volume examines British art and visual culture's relationship with the then-contemporary anxieties and hopes regarding the orientation of society and culture, arguing that there is an acute relationship to the particular forms of cultural discourse of eschatology, apocalypse, and millennium. Chapters identify the continued relevance of religion and religious themes in British art during the period, and demonstrate that eschatology, apocalypse, and millennium were thriving and surprisingly mainstream concepts in the period that remained vital in early to mid-twentieth-century society and culture. This book is a research monograph aimed at an audience of scholars and graduate students already familiar with the core focus of modern British art and cultural histories, especially those working on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or the concepts of apocalypse, eschatology, and millennium in Theology, Sociology, or other disciplinary settings. It will also be of interest to scholars and students working on war and visual culture, or histories of imperialism. It will benefit scholars of early twentieth-century British art, demonstrating the intersection of art and religion in the modern era, and critically qualifies the standard secular canon and narrative of modern British art, and the general neglect of religion in existing art-historical literature.

Thomas Bromwell is a postdoctoral research fellow at tPaul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

1. Introduction, 2. 1. Terminology and the Eschatological Context, 3. 2. Death and Sacrifice, 4. 3. Resurrection and Redemption Beyond Death, 5. 4. Retrospective Apocalypse, 6. 5. The Kingdom and the Ultimate Paradise, 7. 6. Illustrating the Apocalypse, 8. 7. Prospective Apocalypse, 9. 8. Apocalypse Come, 10. Envoi