Sometimes a work of art requires a
bodily response from its viewer: the feeling of “getting under the skin”, the
queasiness of stomach, or shudders through the spinal cord. More often than not, these responses come
from looking at artworks of the terrifying, the grotesque, the creepy, or
sometimes all of the above. But how can
an artist achieve these feelings? How
have artists attempted to portray these adjectives through the ages?
The
Terrifying, the Grotesque, and the Creepy explores the different, and yet
often similar, ways in which artists have sought to invoke these feelings
through the ages. The exhibit is chronological in format, moving from Bosch and
his followers in the Netherlands, to the Romantic era, and finally to the surrealist
movement of the 20th century.
Using these divisions, the works can be thought of in pairs. However, all the paintings show some sort of
overlap with each other. Frequently,
artists use a warm color palette with many neutrals with either dark or
gradated backgrounds. Perhaps more
important to note however, is the way in which creatures are combined to make
new creatures, body parts are dismembered or distorted, and odd parings are
placed together. Ultimately, though,
whether or not these works are successful achieving a physical response is up
to the viewer to decide.
Hieronymus Bosch, Death
and the Miser, 1485/1490, National Gallery of Art, 1952.5.33
Although Hieronymus Bosch painted from about 1450 to 1516,
he defies the inventiveness, which invoke feelings of terror of the grotesque.
Here, Bosch places the viewer at the scene of someone dying. The realities of death are shown as a as a
gangly skeletal creature is literally knocking at the door. At the same time, he creates tension between
the worldly and the heavenly, as the angel looks upward towards a
crucifix. Here, Bosch uses a primarily
warm color palette with red-orange and warm neutrals.
Follower of Hieronymus Bosch,
Christ’s Descent into Hell, 1550-60,
Oil on wood, MET museum, 26.244
Christ’s Descent into
Hell is by one of Bosch’s many followers, often imitating Bosch’s firey
landscapes filled with fantastical creatures throughout the 16th and
17th centuries. However,
Walter Gibson, a scholar of Bosch, contends that “the deeply religious and
didactic content of Bosch’s imagery quickly evaporated, leaving only whimsical
forms capable at most of arousing a pleasant shudder in the spectator”1,
implying that the richness of Bosch’s paintings become lost. Although certainly containing terrorizing and
creepy elements, Christ’s Descent into
Hell, lacks inventiveness compared with an authentic Bosch painting. Again, note the warm color palette.
Henry Fuseli, The
Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches, 1796, oil on canvas, MET museum,
1980.411
Fuseli continues in the line of inventiveness combining
elements of unlike creatures, most notably in the seemingly faceless, rough
head on the beautiful body of a woman.
Along with this combining technique Bosch often used, Fuseli also uses
warm neutrals and a gradated background.
Unlike the paintings by Bosch and his followers, however, places the
viewer directly in front of the action, making his audience a part of the
scene. Furthermore, by making the scene
about an action about to happen, Fuseli creates tension within his viewers as
they anticipate the fate of the child.
Francisco de Goya, Saturn
Eating His Son, 1819-1823, Museo Nacional del Prado, P00763
The palette of warmth continues with Goya. However, instead of creating a background of
eerie gradations, the figure emerges from a background of pitch black. Saturn himself is of orange gradations, as
though he is glowing with fire. Goya
paints with physical strokes giving a painterly quality that adds to the haphazard
and wild look of Saturn. Finally, the
bright red lines along the tattered parts of the dismembered son draws
attention to the most grotesque part of the painting, forcing the viewing to
focus on the eating of the son.
Hans Bellmer, La Poupée,
1936, Gelatin silver print, MET museum, 1987.1100.444
Although this photo contains magenta spots and the door
seems to have a yellowed tinge, the black and white quality of the print gives
off a feeling of coolness, discontinuing the theme of the warm color
palette. Like the Goya, the “figures”
emerge out of a background. Furthermore,
the theme of misappropriation continues as the legs are out of place and
dismembered from their bodies. Like the
Fuseli painting, femaleness is put out of place and gives a similar feeling of
being confronted as the close-up of legs are placed directly in front of the
viewer.
Salvador Dali, Bulgarian
Child Eating a Rat, 1939, oil on canvas, private collection
Dali embodies the paring of the unlikely to create
creepiness and grotesque in Bulgarian
Child Eating a Rat. Similar to Death and the Miser, there is tension
between the heavenly and death, or what is not supposed to be. The child is painted with soft, pastel like
colors. This, along, with the yellow
glow, give the child a sweet, heavenly quality.
This is directly contrasted with the rat in the child’s mouth. The lines of the rat are sharper and more
clear and the colors more cool. Like the
Goya, the red blood causes the viewer to focus on the utter grotesqueness.
Notes
1 Gibson,
Walter. Hieronymus Bosch. Singapore: C.S. Graphics, 1973, 151.
