Sweet Music Centre

Plato believed that it’s only the dead who see the end of war. Some are fortunate enough for death frees them but some horrors that men witness are destined to stay forever. Highly disturbing and extremely visceral Goya: Chronicler of All Wars features the Spanish artist’s etchings that form the Los Desastres de la Guerra or the Disasters of War series and even though separated by centuries these images man’s contempt of his fellow hit as hard as images from present day war.

After the French plundered key Spanish locations during the Peninsular Wars, Goya and a few other artists were invited to witness the massacre and “paint the glories of the inhabitants”. Unpublished till 35 years from his death, Goya’s stark imagery is now seen as a protest against the violence he witnessed. Goya took almost a year before he started etching and viewing the macabre depiction it’s clear why Goya never exhibited them during his lifetime.

The series is divided into episodes that centre on incidents from the war, its aftermath, the famine that hit Madrid in the 1811 and the disillusionment that ensued with the rejection of the Spanish Constitution by the monarchy. The severity of Goya’s monochromatic strokes hardly leaves anything to be imagined. In fact the imagery is so raw the one finds it difficult to believe them. Goya bares the chaos of the battlefront; the shock of the soldiers and the turmoil in great detail and one segment of the exhibition highlights the details to show the artist’s process.

Goya’s brush shows an almost equal amount of dismay in the perpetrators as well as the victims. In the segment Las Victimas with bodies strewn across the streets, Goya represents the loss of identity amongst the death and even recreates classic Biblical icons of pain while drawing the burials; these images are ominous and leave you profoundly unsettled.

Disenchanted and dreary, Goya’s strong dedication to show post-war life as it were comes across clearly in the segment where he uses animals to parade the rule of Ferdinand VIII.

It wouldn’t be incorrect to call Goya a harbinger of photojournalism as contemporary photojournalists use the same level of commitment to reveal present day war. Brutal sounds emanating from the accompanying video installation; the darkness of the room with just enough light to reveal the savagery of war and its utter uselessness, as an exhibition Los Desastres de la Guerra is beautifully designed and presented.

Count Dracula has been resurrected many times in the movies, especially in the Hammer ones. Conversely, he has also been killed off much more than once. When it came to coming up with some pretty novel – and gruesome – ways of disposing of the evil count, Hammer films were certainly outstanding in this respect.

In Dracula (1958), Hammer’s debut film in the Christopher Lee series, the count is vanquished by his arch enemy Professor Van Helsing (played so brilliantly by Peter Cushing), who bravely leaps across a table, whilst chasing Dracula through his castle, and pulls down the curtains, exposing the bloodsucker to the thing that is always guaranteed to roast a vampire into dusty nothingness: the sunlight of dawn. As Dracula crumbles away under the combined destruction of the sun’s rays and Van Helsing’s makeshift crucifix, hastily formed from two pieces of candelabra, we are witnessing the start of what would go on to be such an entertaining, iconic series involving the vampire lord.

In Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965), the count is resurrected in the most gruesome manner imaginable: servant Klove cuts the throat of a suspended corpse over the sarcophagus containing Dracula’s remains… and as the blood flows down onto the ashes, the count slowly materialises back to life, whereupon he proceeds to feast on the vulnerable female visitors to his castle. At the climax of this sequel, Dracula slips under the ice to a watery grave as a priest shoots at the frozen moat around his castle.

But you can’t keep a good vampire down. In Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968), the count is resuscitated from his icy grave by the blood from the head wound of a priest who stumbles and falls down onto the spot under which Dracula’s body is lying in suspended animation, cracking the ice and trickling the blood onto the vampire’s lips. The death scene in this movie is truly my favourite Dracula exit of all. After a desperate struggle with the hero Paul (played by Barry Andrews) outside his castle, Dracula falls off a cliff and becomes impaled on a large cross, previously thrown down there by the hypnotised heroine Maria (Veronica Carlson). Some awesome Dracula death throes ensue, with the impaled count staggering around the woods with the top of the huge cross protruding from his chest, gasping and screaming in agony, blood pouring profusely from his body, as he gradually disintegrates, leaving only a crimson, viscous mess all over the cross and ground.