Pleasure and Violence: Hogarth’s "The Four Stages of Cruelty" (1751)

Hogarth soon followed Industry and Idleness with another, even more, popular series, The Four Stages of Cruelty. A tale of poverty, crime, and punishment, The Stages of Cruelty is, in many ways, Hogarth’s most searing piece of social critique. But it is also most powerfully an expression of his deep and enduring faith in the power of art to change society for the better. In this lecture, Meredith Gamer considers how the Cruelty series works, at once, to expose and repair the harm that humans do.
William Hogarth was an English painter and printmaker. Born in London in 1697, Hogarth went on to undertake an apprenticeship as an engraver, which he later abandoned. He is most noted for his serialised works satirising society and morality. His works became hugely popular due to the mass production and distribution of his etchings. In this series, Mark Hallett (Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre), Meredith Gamer (Assistant Professor, Columbia University), and Elizabeth Robles (Lecturer, University of Bristol) will introduce you to Hogarth and his most noted works.
TW: Depictions animal cruelty
Shot and edited by Jonathan Law
Music by Daniel Birch, 'Sustained Light', 2021, CC BY 4.0

[@numidianarchers195]

Excellent content; truly enjoyable and edifying. Meredith Gamer is superb. Tom Nero's dead or near dead hand is also pointing (as is his club above the horse, the arrow above the dog etc) to the cauldron and the void it represents for skeletal traces of the deceased. I found Hogarth's use of the phrase, "the infant race" curious thinking first that he meant the English but suspecting that he spoke of children and adolescents. Regardless, by this remark Hogarth suggests that cruelty is not the product of well-reasoned thinking. An 18th century crime wave! I'd never have thought such a thing possible but context is everything. Well done. I heard of this work only today as a colleague in History of Humour presented on the Massacre of Cats (~). Found this channel in an internet search.

[@JohnIanGaming]

Thank you for explaining this to me! I found the 4 stages of cruelty at a museum and I was to lazy to read the letters about it so I went to KZbin and searched it up and I found this, its very well explained thank you very much.

[@zoelawson6840]

Fascinating lecture and really well delivered.

[@PaulMellonCentr]

Glad you enjoyed it!