{"id":1788,"date":"2022-10-31T10:06:39","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T10:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/?p=1788"},"modified":"2022-10-31T16:55:59","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T16:55:59","slug":"10-scary-pictures-for-halloween-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/2022\/10\/31\/10-scary-pictures-for-halloween-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"10 scary pictures for Halloween 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a9 Dave Cockburn<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Today is Halloween.\u00a0 As usual, I\u2019ll take advantage of the creepy spirit of the occasion and display ten pieces of macabre art that I\u2019ve come across and liked during the past year.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve sometimes heard the work of the great 18th<\/sup> \/ 19th<\/sup> German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich<\/a> described as \u2018occult\u2019 and, yes, there is something strikingly metaphysical in his depictions of puny-looking humans confronted by the huge, bleak awesomeness of nature.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never found his art particularly disturbing, though, until I encountered his 1814 painting The<\/em> Chasseur<\/em> in<\/em> the<\/em> Forest<\/em>.\u00a0 It features the always foreboding image of someone \u2013 here a lost dragoon \u2013 about to venture into a mass of dark, towering, primordial-seeming trees.\u00a0 What awaits him in there?\u00a0 Something cosmically evil and terrifying?\u00a0 Quite possibly.<\/p>\n

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From commons.wikimedia.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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From the sublime to the (splendidly) ridiculous.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a very different rendering of a spooky forest, courtesy of Catalan artist Vincen\u00e7 Badalona Ballestar<\/a>, who died in 2014.\u00a0 Ballester was responsible for the covers of many of the schlocky John<\/em> Sinclair<\/em><\/a> stories \u2013 Sinclair, according to Wikipedia, is \u201cthe name as well as the protagonist of a popular German horror detective fiction series (of the pulp fiction or penny dreadful variety).\u00a0 Sinclair, a Scotland Yard chief inspector, battles all kinds of undead and demonic creatures.\u00a0 The series appears weekly and has been running since 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From unquietthings.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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And more, sinister woodland appears in this pen-and-ink work by German artist Fritz Schwimbeck, which was inspired by \u2013 I don\u2019t know if it actually illustrated an edition of \u2013 Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em> (1897).\u00a0 Drawn in 1917, it presumably depicts the bit near the beginning where Jonathan Harker is picked up by the Count\u2019s mysterious coach and coachman.\u00a0 The tiny scale allowed for pictures on this blog doesn\u2019t do justice to the glorious detail of the picture so, to appreciate it properly, please go to this entry on the horror-art website Monster<\/em> Brains<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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From monsterbrains.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n

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Speaking of Dracula, I feel I should show something by Swiss-born, UK-based artist Oliver Frey<\/a>, who passed away in August this year.\u00a0 As a kid, I was very familiar with Frey\u2019s work, since it adorned the covers of Hamlyn Books\u2019 compendiums \u2013 \u2018encyclopaedias\u2019 is rather too sensible a word for them \u2013 of spooky stuff aimed at juvenile readers: The Hamlyn Book of Horror<\/em> (1976), Hamlyn Book of Ghosts<\/em> (1978), Hamlyn Book of Mysteries<\/em> (1983) and Hamlyn Book of Monsters<\/em> (1984).\u00a0 These commonly featured monsters and supernatural creatures of popular folklore and popular culture glaring out from their covers and going \u201cGrrrr!\u201d, as frighteningly as was permitted for children at the time.\u00a0 I recall Dracula on the cover of The Hamlyn Book of Monsters<\/em> having a stake stuck, surprisingly bloodily, in his chest.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a later picture by Frey of the vampirical Count, this time from the cover of issue 32 of Fear<\/em> magazine<\/a> in 1991.\u00a0 It\u2019s done with Frey’s impressively melodramatic and sinewy flair.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Newsfield \/ Oliver Frey<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s more biting, and painful-looking clawing, going on in this work by the 19th<\/sup> \/ 20th<\/sup> century Polish painter Boleslaw Biegas<\/a>, whose output included \u2013 I\u2019m quoting Wikipedia again \u2013 \u201cmythical, monstrous and female chimeras, which symbolised a battle of the sexes.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s a battle that the female chimera in this graphic and muscular picture is definitely winning.\u00a0 It\u2019s entitled Le<\/em> Baiser<\/em> du<\/em> Vampire<\/em>, but come on \u2013 that\u2019s not a vampire, but a harpy, a half-woman, half-bird creature from Greek mythology, who tormented the hapless King Phineus in the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece.\u00a0 You may be able to see this picture for real in the Polish Library in Paris<\/a>, which contains the Boleslaw Biegas Art Collection.<\/p>\n

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From oldpaintings.tumblr.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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From Greek mythology to Norse mythology.\u00a0 I like this elegant, anime-style depiction of Hel<\/a>, the female goddess of death who rules the Norse underworld, which appears in the book Norse<\/em> Gods<\/em> (2017) by Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans<\/a>.\u00a0 But who\u2019s the giant, fearsome-looking canine beside her?\u00a0 Is it her brother Fenrir<\/a>, the monstrous wolf who, it\u2019s prophesised, will gobble up the sun on Ragnar\u014dk, the Norse Day of Judgement?\u00a0 Both Hel and Fenrir were the off-spring of the giantess Angerboda and sneaky trickster god Loki, presumably before Tom Hiddleston started to play him in the Marvel superhero movies.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Johan Egerkrans<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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In Christian mythology, Loki\u2019s nearest equivalent is of course Satan, which brings me to my next pick.\u00a0 This is The Devil Skating When Hell Freezes Over<\/em>, by the 19th<\/sup> \/ 20th<\/sup> century English Pre-Raphaelite painter John Collier<\/a> \u2013 no relation to the writer John Collier, famous for his sardonic short stories, who was born 50 years later.\u00a0 I like this painting not only for its cheekiness \u2013 I love how that tail slips out through the split in the back of the overcoat \u2013 but also because it seems to be an ironic riposte to the celebrated painting by Henry Raeburn, The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch<\/em><\/a> (or The Skating Minister<\/em>), often cited as Scotland\u2019s most iconic painting.<\/p>\n

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From tumblr.com <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Still on the subject of Christian devils, here\u2019s 17th<\/sup> century Italian painter Salvator Rosa<\/a>\u2019s take on one of the most popular art-subjects in Christendom \u2013 The Temptation of St Anthony<\/em>, which he painted in 1645.\u00a0 Rather than have the long-suffering saint under attack from a whole army of ghoulish creatures, which has been common in other renderings of the story, Rosa provides him with one main adversary.\u00a0 It\u2019s a hideous-looking thing.\u00a0 Although it\u2019s an amalgamation of different animals, with a bird\u2019s body, horse\u2019s skull-head, rat\u2019s tail, boar\u2019s tusks, plus a tiny set of human genitals, these disparate parts meld together and create something that looks disturbingly whole and unified.\u00a0 Indeed, it resembles something that could have crept out of the hold of the space-cargo-ship Nostromo in Alien<\/em> (1980), had Ridley Scott decided to enlist an Italian Baroque painter to do the production design rather than H.R. Giger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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From linusfontrodona.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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This next item, which I believe is the work of modern Turkish artist Soner \u00c7akmak<\/a>, evokes the devil too.\u00a0 In its subtle, strangely melancholic way, it captures the childhood terror of being alone in your bedroom at night, when you\u2019re still too young to figure out what\u2019s real and what\u2019s imaginary in the world around you.\u00a0 You can especially relate to that feeling if, like me, you spent your childhood somewhere like Northern Ireland in the 1970s, where there were plenty of loud-mouthed, red-faced religious idiots around you assuring you that some frightening concepts indeed, like Satan and his demons in hell, were<\/em> real.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Soner \u00c7akmak<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Finally, straight after Halloween comes Mexico\u2019s delightful, skeleton-crazy<\/a> Day of the Dead festival.\u00a0 In recognition of that, I usually try to include a picture featuring skeletons, bones and skulls.\u00a0 So, here\u2019s an illustration from the 1901 calendar of the Antikamnia Pharmaceutical Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which supplied doctors and druggists with tablets for combatting fevers and reducing pain.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of many skeleton-themed pictures by artist (and doctor) Louis Crusius<\/a> that the company used in its marketing materials.\u00a0 It seems bizarre that a company peddling a medical product \u2013 meant to fight off ill-health \u2013 would use such an obvious symbol of death to promote itself.\u00a0 But then, the story of the Antikamnia Pharmaceutical Company was pretty bizarre.\u00a0 It was prosecuted and shut down after the discovery that its tablets contained a banned substance called acetanilide, which reduced the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen, which among many other bad effects caused takers of the tablets to turn blue.<\/p>\n

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From dangerousminds.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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And that\u2019s it for another year.\u00a0 Happy Halloween!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  \u00a9 Dave Cockburn   Today is Halloween.\u00a0 As usual, I\u2019ll take advantage of the creepy spirit of the occasion and display ten pieces of macabre art that I\u2019ve come across and liked during the past year.   I\u2019ve sometimes heard the work of the great 18th \/ 19th German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich … <\/p>\n

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