Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway

Hayeon Park

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW(03)

25 September 2015

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway

             The first time I saw ‘Rain, Steam and Speed– The Great Western Railway’ was during one rainy afternoon in Han-ga-ram Art Museum. The sky in Seoul on that day was still dark even until noon. The surrounding environment made me feel as if I was in a tense fairy tale, with exceptions to the thunder and lighting. It felt like the dark afternoon gave me an assignment to resolve something while I rode my way by the train. Many people on social networking sites said that Seoul resembled the city of Gotham and it was scary. But I was pretty sure that the weather helped me concentrate on the painting even more. ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway’ had some differences between superficial appearance and the hidden meanings. Superficial appearance of the painting looked calm and silent but there were hidden meanings giving warning.

            ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway’ by William Turner looked calm and silent superficially. It  was drawn as if the painting mimicked the sky on that day. There were train that seemed to stop, gloomy fog and cloudy river in the painting. That is why the drawing was familiar to me. Especially, the train with large wheels was heading towards visitors that were looking at it from a straight point of view. So I was wondering whether it was stopped or onrushing towards us.

 Contrary to outward appearance of the painting, ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway’ had some hidden meanings giving warning. First, you can see some white bundles within the painting. If there had not been a digital copy of the painting I would have never known what the true identity of the ‘white bundles’ were. Ironically, there was one white rabbit as the digital art indicated. At the period of time William Turner drew this picture, an Industrial Revolution had happened and machines set the trend absolutely. It all changed like Turner’s name indicated. People who used to plow went out to learn the ways to push buttons at a factory. So there was one interpretation that the rabbit symbolized nature that was being pushed backwards by the industrialization. It is most likely that William Turner intended to show the greatness of industrialization. Second, in the picture, the form of the train surrounded by the fog wasn’t clear. This indicated that he wanted to represent the tremendous speed of the train which could not have been compared to a horse and carriage. But William Turner didn’t paint only to show that kind of the greatness. William Turner showed us that civilization was driving out of breath. He might have wanted to let us know that machines will overtake human beings someday. Lastly, a third thing, there were two horses plowing the field on the right side of the bridge while a boat fisherman and girls dancing were drawn on the left hand side. They were drawn very dimly. This implied that they too would disappear soon among the crowd celebrating the Industrial Revolution.

After I knew the details about the picture, the Korean film ‘Snowpiercer’ by director Bong Jun-ho suddenly came to my head. The train in the movie, Snowpiercer, ran indifferently no matter how vicious and awful of an occurrence happened. But from the outside the train resembled a placid incubator. I thought carefully if there was a difference between the trains from the 19^th century and the ‘Snowpiercer’. My answer was that the sweet jelly of red beans, ordinary foods, degrade to protein blocks which were made of cockroaches while delicious foods became more luxurious. In other words, both of them showed that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger. Plus, all they presented was only order that existed except human beings. Now, one line that did not appealed to me while watching the movie went through my mind. “We need balance about everything”. William Tuner might also want the balance between humans and machinery.