Art as an Apparatus of the Invisible Sublime in Severance

Abstract

This essay analyzes the process of blending styles and visual layering in Severance, as well as the artistic elements that create the atmosphere and narrative. With its cold color scheme, large empty spaces, and references to minimalist painters as well as the uncanny landscapes of Edward Hopper, the show uses modernist aesthetics to underline the solitary nature of the individual. In addition, the Kantian, nature-originated sublime found in nineteenth-century paintings of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and Frederic Edwin Church is warped through the cut-and-paste inserts of video game forms and the rearticulation of their elements in order to create a fluid palimpsest of technological and mythical sublime. © The Editor(s)(if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.