Strike Terror into the Art - Esther
It might be a European thing but when I think of Hallowe’en, my mind doesn’t go to the bland toothlessness of pumpkins or even witches – unless they’re Tam O’Shanter’s.
No, I think of forests, rituals & evenings that go dark early & suddenly. I think of wet soil recently turned over & mushrooms you shouldn’t eat.
In Scotland, we always had the tradition of Guising, not Trick or Treating. It amounts to the same activity, but even the suggestion of acting as something you are not, disguising yourself - particularly in homemade masks & costumes - suggested a more sinister prospect. Today Hallowe’en is not dealt with widely in Scottish schools on religious grounds although this was not always the case. Growing up, I recall my disappointment at missing a Hallowe’en party at primary school (the only one I recall) due to illness & being brought a bag of sickly sweets from a classmate afterwards. I clearly remember the lantern’s eyes flickering in the corner of my darkened room & the smell of toffee apples.
We weren’t allowed to do guising properly. We could do the dressing up in disguises bit, but scavenging the neighbourhood for sweets smacked of begging in the general view of our household. Then of course, there was the danger of strangers, the cold, the dark & the general unknown (not that any adult would have offered to come with you or anything, but never mind...)
In 1970s Aberdeen, the fear of child snatching, although differently portrayed in the media, was still real & visceral. This too was a murky tradition of sorts, dating back to the 1700s when street children were stolen & sold as slaves. In 1979 a child had been kidnapped from the indoor shopping market & then tortured. Around that time, a man in a car had followed my brother in the street.
I had never seen a real pumpkin until I was an adult & even then only in supermarkets in October. Instead, we had neepy lanterns - nasty, difficult, stinky folk horror objects that were infinitely more difficult to carve & for much less reward. You were better off tackling their weight & hardness armed with axes, chisels & swearing than knives & spoons.
Neep lanterns were turnips or swedes carved to look like nothing less than shrunken heads, especially when you threaded your scratchy, hairy rope through the sides in order to carry them around. Even scraped out, they weighed a ton. Once lit, the candles inside would trigger a noxious neepy smell that was unlike anything else & evoked nothing other than late October. It is in the spirit of this more unsettling (even when humorous) Hallowe’en that I have selected some works for this 31st October…
Self-Portrait With Skeleton (Ken Currie, 2015)
Today you can find any number of “vintage” creepy photos, genuine or otherwise of children & adults alike dressed up for Hallowe’en with even the most vague internet search. Even early on, spooky pictures could be faked. Few of these are credited but I’m sure if you don’t find them, they’ll find you…
John Kenn Mortensen’s (1978) horror pictures on post-it notes touch a similar nerve however. Beautifully drawn, he has created a world where there are monsters everywhere. Unfortunately, it is our world. You cannot escape.
Babs Webb produces some of the most beautifully rendered & genuinely disturbing pieces today. Although her images are supernatural in quality & content, her concepts are contemporary, psychological & human, such as anxiety, insomnia & self-loathing. In Vacant Memory (2018) she explores the true horror & questions of memory. This piece explores the disintegration of memory & asks how & why our brains compensate for what we have falsely remembered or forgotten altogether.
Illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood (1870-1917), Hilaire Belloc’s (1870-1953) Cautionary Tales for Children (1907) genuinely gave me pause for thought as a child. The tales were unflinching, the illustrations equally so, as in the final drawing of “Jim, who ran away from his nurse & was eaten by a lion.” Unlikely, but not impossible & therein lies the dread…
In a similar vein, the work of Edward Gorey (1925-2000) is legendarily weird & has influenced generations of so-called creepy-cute & lowbrow artists. He should have been working in an earlier time, his art is so entwined with our perceptions of supernatural Victoriana.
Charles Addams (1912-1988), cartoonist & inventor of The Addams Family brought wit to his creepiness, nevertheless no tribute to Hallowe’en art would be complete without him. With sophisticated humour & the creation of an entire world (albeit a recognisable one, including many clever cultural references), his technique was so polished he frequently needed no words to reveal a punchline.
Despite it being an authentic group portrait creep-master Ken Currie’s (1960-), Three Oncologists (Professor RJ Steele, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschieri & Professor Sir David P Lane of the Department of Surgery & Molecular Oncology, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee), (2002) has the air of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632) & 19th century illustionists combined. Currie’s doctors turn towards us, ethereal & apparently in possession of magical powers, if not phantasms in themselves. They appear to have gore on their hands, as if they’ve been illicitly slicing someone open rather than saving lives. One does wish one had been there when they first set eyes on their portrait…
Relishing the body-shock domain is Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865), whose condemnatory & reproving paintings are as melodramatic as they are technically proficient. Faime, foie et crime (Hunger, Madness & Crime, 1853) depicts a hysterical woman in the throes of cooking & about to eat her dead baby. Whether the baby was killed at her hand isn’t clear.
Wiertz’s The Premature Burial (1854) deals with a peculiarly turn-of-the-century obsession. What to me is most disturbing about this rendering is the possibility of escape then the fading hope to come…
In 1919 Harry Clarke (1889-1931) immaculately illustrated the short story The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) but here, buried several feet down in the earth, the victim’s resistance is futile.
Another Poe/Clarke favourite is from The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Even viewed without the story, it’s a shocking scene – a dead & decomposing figure lying on a bed, still voiding bodily fluids & all the more believably repulsive in black & white. A mysterious figure lurks in the doorway beyond. Where there is detail in this darkness, it’s significant & flawless.
As a delicious postscript to this incredible illustration, there exists a phenomenal photograph of Harry actually in act of creating it. You can clearly see the work. All the signs of a working artist of the time are there – the easel, patterned wallpaper, paraffin lamp, ashtray & matches. Yet it’s his visage that is blurred as he stares you in the eye. He turns as if startled, as if he’s doing something he shouldn’t; he doesn’t want you to look. & in a way, it’s true. For what he’s doing is dangerous work. He’s invoking the aesthetic, if not the spirit of Poe - & he’s been caught…
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