See how modern artists, obsessed with death and darkness, looked to medieval Gothic works of art for inspiration

At the end of the 19th century, artists turned gothic. Works like Vincent van Gogh’s Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette (1886), Edvard Munch At the deathbed (1893) and that of Hugo Simberg The garden of death (1896) was an example of a preoccupation with mortality.

Although their works were inspired by the issues of the time, these painters did not create such motifs in a vacuum. Now an exhibition in Helsinki, Finland, explores how they looked to medieval art for inspiration.

“Gothic Modern: from darkness to light” at the Art Museum Ateneum juxtaposes medieval and Renaissance art with the work of modern masters and emphasizes the Gothic themes that connect them. Per one statement from the museum, all the works of art on display ‘address life’s big questions in a brutal manner and with dark humor’.

Art history focuses on the blossoming scene in Paris, where “Impressionism became Post-Impressionism, leading to Cubism and then the birth of Abstraction,” as the New York Times‘ writes Nina Siegal. But for many Northern European artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Berlin was the center of culture, attracting artists interested in a “darker, more spiritual interpretation of life” – often inspired by prevailing themes from the Middle Ages.

“What emerges from a medieval Gothic worldview, as this exhibition highlights, is the passion of pain, the passion of longing for the spiritual, for a greater meaning of the mysteries of a world,” said the exhibition’s co-curator. Anna Maria von Bonsdorffthe director of Ateneum tells the Art newspaper‘s Stephen Smith.

Many renowned artists were inspired by this morbidity. Van Gogh, for example Head of a skeletondepicting a skeleton with a cigarette between its teeth, gives death a nonchalant appearance. The Dutch artist painted it as part of an anatomical exercise, and some experts think he was just laughing Times.

But as Von Bonsdorff says in the publication, the skull could also be a reference to the ‘dance of death”, the idea of ​​the inevitability of death, which was a common subject in European art during the late Middle Ages. “Because there is a cigarette in it and he is grinning, he has a very modern attitude,” Von Bonsdorff told the newspaper. Times. “It’s death in a modern setting, death as the dandy.”

Munchthe Norwegian painter of The Scream (1893), was influenced by German medieval art, while Austrian artist Marianne Stokes drew on medieval Gothic themes. These artists may have been responding to the industrialization, social turbulence and international tensions of their period, with Europe heading into the First World War as co-curator of the exhibition. Julia Simpson tells the Times. According to the statement, the exhibition is unexpectedly relevant to modern crises: curators began preparing the exhibition before the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

As von Bonsdorff tells Art newspaperToday’s youth “do not share the ideas of older generations about a fixed identity, the belief in utopias, that the world will get better, or that there is such a thing as heaven on earth.” The modern artists featured in the exhibition were plagued by similar beliefs – and they found meaning in the clear focus on mortality of earlier eras.

“These types of images in Western art since the Middle Ages have reminded the viewer of the brevity of life and of a painter’s skill in portraying that sad dilemma,” von Bonsdorff adds. “We need rituals to guide us, to navigate the dark times, to give life meaning – not with the vision that tomorrow will always come, but in the power of the present.”

“Gothic Modern: from darkness to light‘ can be seen at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki until January 26, 2025.