Hogarth's Modern Moral Series: The Rake's Progress When Hogarth embarked on his second Progress in 1733, ‘the rake’ was a long established symbol of masculine waywardness and depravity. An inveterate consumer and ‘man of leisure’, the rake of convention fritters his fortune, usually inherited, on sex, drink and gambling. Along the way he amasses huge debts and seduces, impregnates and abandons at least one young woman. As with the prostitute, a literary convention had developed in which the rake starts life as an impressionable young man from the country who comes to the city after inheriting money and swiftly embarks on a dissolute life. His fate typically involved venereal disease, debtor’s prison and death.
Peter Greenaway's film (writing and direction) Nightwatching is about the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Initiated by The Netherlands' Kasander Film Company, Nightwatching is based around the paiting of Rembrandt's most famous picture "Nightwatch". The film's premiere (Venice, September 2007) was accompanied earlier by a special installation Greenaway designed for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was shown next to the actual "Nightwatch" painting and casted some light on the characters portrayed in the famous work.
Joan Didion wrote in "The White Album," her book on the era, that "many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969." Sketchy details began emerging that day from a gruesome murder scene in exclusive Benedict Canyon. The fenced estate had been the home at various times of Henry Fonda, Candice Bergen and, more recently, Roman Polanski, the hot young director of the previous year's film sensation, Rosemary's Baby