VI. The Gaming House
Essay 1: Hogarth and Entropy in the Gambling House Print
By Tate Harrison '22
William Hogarth was a painter and printmaker born in London during the reign of William III (Hubbard, 438). He struggled as an artist until his first original series of paintings and engravings in his thirties. Up until this point, he had been plagiarizing other artist’s paintings to use for his engravings and prints (Hubbard, 439). His emergence as an artist came from his effective use of satire. His method of engraving and printing established himself as his own publisher, creating a reputation that allowed to him to reach a wider group of people (Hubbard, 439). Hogarth preferred to be referred to as an author instead of an artist because he liked to think that his engravings told a story in the same way that a book does. He was much more interested in conveying a message or moral through his work (Hubbard, 441).
Hogarth’s engravings depict the decadence and decay that had devoured society at this time. Decadence is defined as the overindulgence in pleasure, and the obsession over pleasure is why we see a degree of decay in Hogarth’s Prints. Plato says that “everything that comes into being must decay” (Plato, 1158). He goes on to explain how everything “must face dissolution at some point in its existence” (Plato, 1158). Nothing that came to be at some random point in time will last forever. This natural decay seen in all aspects of life is accelerated in Hogarth’s works due to the increasing decadence of society in this period. The decay we know is inevitable according to some. It is an endpoint that will come at some time in the future. Decay is a process, not a specific event like destruction. It is an unavoidable cycle for all things that come into existence (Plato, 1158).
The disorder and chaos that ensues from decadence and decay can be aligned with the philosophical framework of entropy. It takes a significant amount of energy to maintain the status of order. This cultivation of energy is what prevents disintegration. Many argue that systemic breakdown is inescapable in relation to entropy amidst decadence and decay (Mussett, 110). Low levels of entropy are required in everyday life for survival. Humans must use physical sources of energy like fuel for preservation (Mussett, 111). Problems begin to develop when people can no longer hold on to the more abstract sense of energy within entropy. The maintenance required to maintain order and preservation requires all different levels of energy. When this energy is lost, decadence immerges and so begins the downward spiral of society starting with the individual.
Hogarth’s “A Rakes Progress” series is a prime example of how English culture and life and are important in depicting realism during this period. This series is said to have some degree of a “slight phycological miscalculation” (Hubbard, 439). This series was meant to be a reputation of the discrepancies of the middle class. The scenes illustrated in the series are extremely effective in exposing the decadence and decay that is so prevalent during this time. Hogarth’s goal was to use these prints to represent an accurate story of the common vices in the middle class (Antal, 169). The prints in this series are also meant to help the viewer understand the common morality in the 1700s. Hogarth does this by illustrating the life of Tom Rakewell to emphasis the importance of virtue and the battle against vice (Antal, 170). Rakewell finds himself on a path of self- destruction after inheriting a fortune from his father. His decadence makes it impossible for him to establish himself in society. Most of this can be attributed to his creation of political skits in his later years as an attempt to increase his profit. These skits caused his list of enemies to grow rapidly (Hubbard, 441).
There are varying levels of energy and intensity in this print and many of the characters seem to no longer have the necessary energy to maintain order and stability. When analyzing print 6 we see Tom Rakewell front and center on a knee with his fist in the air. He has just lost the fortune he inherited from his father gambling with the men sitting at the round table behind him. He is shown in a true state of chaos and anger. Tom’s decadence created from his inability to maintain the entropic energy required to preserve an orderly life has caused him to lead a life of self-annihilation. The second scene is quite the opposite. The two men sitting at the table on the left of the print are at an entropic state that is more of an equilibrium. They are calm and collected. Order is still present in their actions because they have yet to understand an experience that which causes the loss of the necessary energy to maintain order and retain virtue. One of the other scenes is the pure disorder and anger ensuing in the back of the print. All the men with weapons in their hands reacting to the other disruption and disagreement in the back of the print. These three phases of the entropic cycle can be closely compared to Mussett’s teachings. She says that “it cycles energy into different forms and degrades it in the process” (Mussett, 111). The cycle and degradation are the same differences we see in the behavior and state of the two calm men in the front left, Tom in front center, and the men with weapons in the back. The slow loss of energy leads to further corrosion withing the cycle itself. It is inevitable decay once the path has begun. The fourth scene is the smoke coming from the ceiling in the back of the print. The gambling house itself is on fire and this causes confusion for the gamblers. The smoke itself is entropic because there was energy required initially to start the fire that created the smoke. However, the smoke also causes a loss of energy in individuals. This loss of energy prevents them from sustaining order and leads to the chaos and confusion that is evident in the print.
Works Cited
- Antal, F. “The Moral Purpose of Hogarth’s Art.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
- Institutes, vol. 15, no. 3/4, 1952, pp. 169–97, https://doi.org/10.2307/750473. Accessed 16 May 2022
- Mussett, Shannon M. “5-7.” Entropic Philosophy Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation,
- Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2022.
- Hubbard, Hesketh. “WILLIAM HOGARTH, THE FOUNDER OF ENGLISH
- PAINTING.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 80, no. 4139, 1932, pp. 437–59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41358993. Accessed 19 May 2022.
- Plato, and John M. Cooper. Plato: Complete Works, Hackett, Indianapolis, 2009.
Essay 2: Entropy and Plate VI The Gambling House
By Harris Stripling '25
Throughout time, many philosophers have attempted to explain the thought processbehind objects, or even ideas, growing older without reservation. One way to start explaining thisis through decadence and decay, which describes the idea of a state which is in a sort of adeadlock or a situation that is not flourishing. However, rather than coming up with a way toprevent the idea of decadence and decay from evolving, what makes this idea particularlyinteresting is that there is ultimately no conceivable solution to this problem. In fact, Plato, inThe Republic, wrote that “...everything that comes into being must decay” (1158). To grant the reader a broader perspective on this topic, the term “decadence” is used heavily in a normativesense whereas “decay” is used in relation to inanimate objects. Furthermore, decadence and decay can be tied to the overarching idea of disorder and chaos. As time goes on and objectsgrow older in the sense of decadence and decay, disorder and chaos is more likely to persistbecause the objects are presently not as up-to-date as they were in the past.
Moreover, this disorder and chaos is what leads many to describe entropy. Entropy can bedescribed in different ways by different professors, but I would specifically like to focus on themeaning that it describes something that falls into disorder gradually. To explain further, entropy is the need for energy investments to maintain order and how costly they get. For example, Shannon Mussett, a professor at Utah Valley University who came to speak to our class,provided the example between entropy and maintaining a household; she said that it is hard to maintain order and keep everything clean in a household when you are focusing your energy onsomething other than cleaning, such as studying for a final exam. If you are studying for anexam, the house will naturally become unclean and messy, even though you are exerting thesame amount of energy to study as you would to clean. In other words, because you are choosingto spend your energy studying rather than cleaning, the house will naturally fall into disorder. Moreover, decay, rather than decadence, can be more closely tied to entropy, and it can be seennot as a top-down approach, but rather a general disorder that tends to spread all over the place. Lastly, “decay as entropy” can be seen as simply a continuation of time, unlike “decadence ascorruption” which is the thought process that an idea always is leading to something.
In his series, “A Rake’s Progress,” the eighteenth century artist William Hogarth creates several paintings, which were later engraved, depicting the mighty fall of the character, Tom Rakewell, due to his gambling and prostitution problems. Most of Hogarth’s works are oftenexamined and described by onlookers and fellow engravers as “mostly satirical caricatures,sometimes bawdily sexual, mostly of the first rank of realistic portraiture.” He likely garnered the idea of creating “A Rake’s Progress” through his personal childhood experiences. Although Hogarth grew up in a lower-middle-class family, what made his childhood particularly uniqueand distributing was that his father went through periods of extreme misfortune “and was at onetime imprisoned in lieu of outstanding debts” due to his gambling and prostitution problems. Throughout the eight engravings of the series, each one shows a different scene, and although they may all be distinctly different, what all the engravings have in common is the fact that they all lead up to Tom being jailed in the madhouse, which is depicted in the final engraving in theseries. The engraving that I will be focusing on is the sixth out of the eight in the series called “The Gambling House.” In this print, there are four specific scenes that should be focused on. The first scene within the print I would like to highlight is Tom appearing in the center ofthe painting kneeling on one knee while raising his fist in the air with his wig and bow on theground. This is likely the first thing you see looking at this print because of his central location inthe image. While it is unclear what exactly is meant by Tom kneeling on the ground with a fist raised in the air, it would not be unreasonable to assume that Tom is pleading to the Lord for help after he just lost his fortune gambling. This scene, along with his chair knocked over on theground, represents the entropy, as well as chaos and disorder, ensuing in the gambling house. By specifically expressing Tom in such a frantic manner, Hogarth sets the tone for the painting of anunhappy, chaotic time at the gambling house.
The second situation I would like to highlight is the smoke that is rising from the ceiling,located at the top of the engraving. This scene could resemble the rising tension and destructionthat is foreshadowing to come in the room. For example, the idea of fire generally representsdestruction and by smoke being present in the room means that somewhere in the room there is fire. This adds to the chaos and entropy that is ensuing in the room because it basically shows that the room will end up burning up and collapsing in the future. This can be related similarly to Tom’s life as his life is ultimately coming to an end soon with his lost fortune and many wrong deeds.The third situation I would like to dive into includes the two people at the table in thebottom left hand corner of the painting. What makes this scene and interaction between these two people much different than those between anyone else in the print is their civilized manner. In other words, rather than shouting or supposedly screaming, this interaction appears to be civilized and well put together. This could represent a side to the engraving that shows the calmness and collectivism that could potentially come about under different circumstances. Although entropy is not directly expressed in this scene, it is still important to note the difference between those two men talking versus the chaos and disorder that is ensuing everywhere around them.
The last and final situation I would like to bring up involves the plethora of weapons found in the plate. For example, upon closer inspection, one can find swords, guns, and fistfights. It is important not to overlook this because these weapons and the violence that couldpotentially ensue with these weapons shows the hostile environment in the room. In other words, although the gun being held in the pocket of the main on the right side was never drawn, the potential for entropy is still there regardless. Even considering this, however, entropy can still beseen in the several swords and fists swinging through the air in several different locations in theplate.
Moving forward, whether it be in relation to these engravings or anything you do in life, the idea of decadence and decay will consistently persist. This being said, the concept of entropywill likewise continue to exist as time goes on, even in everyday life. For example, one can go as far to suggest that entropy can be found in business and economics, such as seen in a recession or unexpected inflation, or even entropy in behaviors, such as having many confusing and overwhelming thoughts that causes one to do irrational actions. In all, while entropy as well as decadence and decay may never have the potential to be stopped, it is important that movingforward we, as humans, learn to live with these concepts and grow accustomed to these ideas.
Works Cited
“A Rake’s Progress.” William Hogarth. Plate VI: The Gambling House. 1732.
“Entropy: The Hidden Force That Complicates Life.” Farnam Street, 12 Feb. 2021, https://fs.blog/entropy/.
Tate. “William Hogarth 1697–1764.” Tate, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-hogarth-265.
“Tom in a Gambling Den.” Tom in a Gambling Den by William Hogarth, https://www.williamhogarth.org/tom-in-a-gambling-den/.