Madness on Display

Madness on Display

The disturbing details beautifully rendered in the final painting of William Hogarth‘s eight-painting project A Rake’s Progress (1735) continues to draw attention to the scandalous history of Bethlem Royal Hospital, London’s infamous mental asylum. In the 18th century, when Hogarth portrayed a young man whose career of gambling and spending had led him to Bethlem, it was a place where Londoners could come and look at the “mad”. Bethlem displayed the madness and suffering of their patients as a show by allowing the public to visit their “inmates”. Often times, the fashionably dressed rich and powerful would come to the asylum as a social occasion, to be entertained by the bizarre antics of the patients.

 

madness, prison, inmates, patients, public show, London, England, Britain, history, painting, art, William Hogarth, crazy, mental asylum, mental illness, mental health, horrible, masterpiece

 

Image Credit
Feature: Tina Rataj-Berard at Unsplash, Creative Commons
Body: William Hogarth at Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons

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