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Intro |
Points Of View |
North |
South |
Highlands |
Midlands |
East |
West |
Conclusion
The Heart Of England (The Midlands)
Industrial Heaven and Hell |
In Focus: Berndt And Hilla Becher |
In Focus: JR Herbert
In Focus: JR Herbert
Many artists in the late nineteenth century found
aspects of life brought about by the industrial revolution unbearable.
One solution was to look back to a golden age of the past when they
believed life had been simpler and better.
An extreme case of this search for a past utopia can
be found in J.R. Herbert's Laborare est Orare (To Work
is to Pray) 1862, in which Cistercian monks are shown harvesting
corn within reach of their monastery in Leicestershire on a glorious
summer's day.
- Do you think of yourself as an escapist or a realist?
- Do you yearn for a golden age in which members of a community would collaborate to provide for basic needs, or does the painting make you feel very pleased to live in the 21st century?
- Does this utopia seem real? Think of kibbutz experiments in Israel and television programmes in which groups of people have tried living as our ancestors did. Can utopia ever exist?
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View in Tate Collection