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Arts & Communication

ARTICLE
A chamber of horrors: Spanish art and its

enemies

Sarah Symmons*
The School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex, Wivenhoe
Park, Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom

Abstract
This article traces connections between reviews of Spanish art in Britain between the
18 and the 21 centuries and the public pre-judices that seem to have remained
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constant. Beginning with the famous London exhibition of 2009, The Sacred Made
Real, the article addresses the origins of the language of reviewers, from the late
17 century to the Age of Enlightenment; to 19 -century debates about Catholic art,
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and the dislike of waxworks, effigies, and polychrome sculpture. Reviews and critical
writings about Spain and its art are often linked by the same exaggerated rhetorical
hyperbole with regard to the raw realism of some Roman Catholic imagery from the
16 century onward. Attempts to promote the art in Britain have met with unexpected
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results. The growing popularity of Spanish artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco
Goya, and Salvador Dali exercised a long artistic influence in the 20 century. This
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article suggests that the “enemies” of Spanish art did as much to promote the artistic
*Corresponding author: value of Spain as did its admirers. Reactions and criticisms to Spanish art from the
Sarah Symmons
(drsarah.symmons@gmail.com) British, which spawned hostility or indifference among Protestant writers, from John
Ruskin to Philip Hamerton, were also to create a whole new creative endeavor at
Citation: Symmons S. A chamber
th
of horrors: Spanish art and its the end of the 20 century. Anger, anxiety, and transgression became new artistic
enemies. Arts & Communication. promptings and it is here that links to British Surrealism appear. The figure of an
2025;3(2):3604. artist from the past as a purveyor of horror, whose work summoned up associations
doi: 10.36922/ac.3604
with death, deformity, and violence, came to characterize the art shown at the 2009
Received: May 8, 2024 exhibition in 21 -century London. Works of such importance and influence were
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1st revised: July 19, 2024 also to become unclassifiable but were also broached as a source of new artistic
inspiration.
2nd revised: September 3, 2024
Accepted: September 3, 2024
Keywords: Spain; Polychrome sculpture; Waxworks; Catholic; Goya; Prints; Horror;
Published online: March 24, 2025 Transgression
Copyright: © 2025 Author(s).
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons
AttributionNoncommercial License, 1. Introduction
permitting all non-commercial use,
distribution, and reproduction in any Various public reactions to Spanish art have appeared in Britain for several centuries and
medium, provided the original work it is the contention of this article to suggest that, in terms of both opinion and rhetoric,
is properly cited. little has changed. The exhibitions referenced in this paper have drawn indifferent or
Publisher’s Note: AccScience outright hostile critiques about Spanish art from newspaper and periodical reviews,
Publishing remains neutral with as well as from academic art historians. Over time, from the 18 to the 21 centuries,
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st
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional it is significant that while the details of such critiques may alter, the arguments seem
affiliations. rooted in familiar pre-judice. The aim here is to analyze such pre-judice and suggest

Volume 3 Issue 2 (2025) 1 doi: 10.36922/ac.3604