Page 95 - Art First: Simon Morley: Lost Horizon

How to lose an horizon

Frank Capra’s 1937 film version of James Hilton’s 1933 novel
Lost Horizon provides a densely intertextual and inter-medial set
of engagements with the synchronic desire of utopian ideals and

the massively diachronic contexts from which the film and novel
emerged. Both film and book serve as a catalyst for Simon Mor-
ley’s exhibition sporting the same title, with paintings, tex tiles,
video and other media carrying the ‘lost horizon’ resonances.

Writing and directing utopian works during the interwar year
period (of course no one knew it as the interwar period at the
time though it was clearly a time of global economic upheaval)

surely is tantamount to risking fate or at least risking charges
of uninformed escapism. Capra and Hilton, however, wrap
their works in the turmoil from which they emerged and tinge
their transcendental, utopian themes with socially and politi-

cally cognizant tones, ones that work throughout Capra’s
corpus from the 1930s and 40s and in Hilton’s novels and