Silk, Squalor and Scandal is the name of the newly opened exhibition of the prints of William Hogarth (1697 – 1764) at the Kingston Museum. There are twenty-four prints on display in all; Southwark Street, Beer Street, Gin Lane, the four prints of Four Times of Day, the six prints each of Hogarth’s story series; The Rake’s Progress, The Harlot’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode. Why were these prints so popular?

The eighteenth century saw the rise of paper culture. Developments in reproduction technology meant that more images were available to more and more people because of lower costs. These images could be on posters, theatre tickets. calendars and other paper media. However, increased opportunities to sell their work also meant intense competition for artists. In order to get the public interested in their images, artists had to engage with their patrons in a visual language which they, their patrons, understood. One of the ways that artists did this was to use the language of high art.

By the eighteenth century, this had evolved into a highly sophisticated visual form, having received for its legacy images from the workshops of medieval craftsmen, the masters of the High Renaissance and the Baroque. To make prints more appealing and therefore saleable to the Academy-visiting public, artists drew on this language, used it, inverted it and often lampooned it, using high art as a weapon against itself. Satirists used the language of high art in different ways; from the use of classical modelling and poses in the drawings to the use of imagery and allegories, form and content.

Foremost among these artists was William Hogarth, who possessed the ability to observe life around him and the artistic skills to record it in paintings and engravings. One device of his was to print in series, each successive print telling the next episode in the story, like the chapters of a book. A literate population would have especially appreciated this, the illiterate enjoying the images they could not read.

The prints in this exhibition are juxtaposed with a display by artist Chiho Kato, a series of ‘yellow page’ advertisements, showing how the concerns and desires of contemporary society mirrors those of the eighteenth century in many ways; in our pursuit of bodily perfection, sex, love, money and celebrity.

Silk, Squalor and Scandal is open at Kingston Museum (Wheatfield Way, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2PS, Telephone: +44 (0)20 8547 6460) until April 10.

Email: kingston.museum@rbk.kingston.gov.uk Opening Hours: Daily 10.00am to 5.00pm except Wednesdays and Sundays. Admission Free