Francis Bacon was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. His paintings are bold and bleak in the figurative style. His paintings sell for millions of pounds and even slash canvasses – Bacon destroyed works with which he was unhappy – sell for small fortunes. Over the course of Bacon’s life he returned to the portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez, and made studies and interpretations of his own. Velazquez’s original shows Pope Innocent X looking pensively out of the canvas as if about to speak, Bacon has his Pope shrieking.
Grunewald painted religious imagery in the style of the middle ages, even though he lived during the renaissance. St Anthony the Great was said to have faced several trials and tests of his faith while worshiping in the desert. In one legend, St Anthony was killed by demons living in a cave, only to revive and destroy them later. This image from the Isenheim Triptych, three image altarpiece shows St Anthony succumbing to their attack. The bizarre collection of demons seen in the Isenheim altarpiece is reminiscent of the work of the more famous Hieronymus Bosch.
Emil Nolde was one of the early expressionist painters, though his fame has been eclipsed recently by other painters of expressionism such as Munch. Expressionism seeks to distort reality to reveal a subjective viewpoint. This painting was made as a study of masks in the Berlin museum, as well as a shrunken head. Throughout his life, Nolde showed a fascination with other cultures and this painting, with its interpretation of various masks, is in that same vein.
Hieronymus Bosch is linked in the popular imagination with his disquieting and fantastic religious paintings. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych showing, on the three panels respectively, the Garden of Eden and the creation of mankind, the Garden of Earthly Delight, and in the last panel the punishments for the sins which occur in that earthly garden. It is that final panel, and the imaginative torments in it, which have become associated with Bosch. A glance at the panel is enough to give a feeling of the horrors divine punishment hold, but a close examination shows the true talent Bosch had for witty detail.
As soon as Fuseli presented this painting, it became famous for its chilling visual of the bane of people’s sleep. The painting was so popular that Fuseli painted several versions. The painting blurs lines, such as happens in one’s sleep, by showing both the dreamer asleep and the content of her dreams. The incubus, a male demon who seduces women as they sleep, sitting on the sleeper’s chest caused some controversy as it lends the piece an overtly sexual tone. Popularity smothered controversy, however, and the painting was made into several engravings and used widely in Georgian and Victorian satirical cartoons
.Kubin worked mainly in the symbolist and expressionist styles, and was most famous for his watercolors and pen and ink illustrations. His work in oils was limited but this piece gives a taste of his macabre style.
This painting became an internet sensation in 2000, when put up for sale on eBay. The sellers claimed that the children in the painting moved at night, sometimes leaving the picture. This website shows some close up photos which show the disturbing details of the painting. Neither of the children have eyes, but perhaps the most unsettling feature are the tiny hands pressed against the glass of the door behind them. The artist was commissioned to paint a sequel to this work, showing the characters in it decades later.
Ivan Albright painted in the magical realist style, but this should not be taken to understand that his paintings were full of fantastical whimsy. Magical realism in art can best be described as a stylistic realism designed to bring the interior ‘truth’ of an object to the viewer. This style is perfectly suited to the subject matter of this painting. In Oscar Wilde’s book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a young man’s sins take their toll on a portrait, and not on the man himself. This painting was commissioned for the 1945 MGM filming of Wilde’s book. Over the course of the film, the portrait degenerates as the young man’s soul does, so Albright was hired to make alterations to this work during filming.
John Wayne Gacy was one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Without giving too many details, Gacy was responsible for the murder of at least 33 young men and teenage boys. Once arrested for these crimes, Gacy took up art to while away the time until his execution. This painting shows Gacy himself, as his clown alter ego Pogo. Dressed as Pogo, Gacy used to entertain children in his local community. It is certainly not great art, and much of the disturbing quality comes from the knowledge of Gacy’s crimes. Notice the pointed corners to Gacy’s mouth make up; most clowns avoid this because it tends to increase everybody’s latent coulrophobia.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream is probably one of the most famous expressionist paintings, and one of the most unsettling. The central figure is seen as an expression of the existential angst everyone must come to terms with.
Bacon is famous for his unsettling art, and for his triptychs. Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion is considered Bacon’s first great art work. The three figures were originally intended to appear underneath an enormous picture of the crucifixion, but they stand alone just as well. The three figures draw on many sources for their expressions and shapes, such as the furies of Greek myth, characters from a Grunewald triptych, and even the film Battleship Potemkin. It is the braying nature of their faces which makes one think of the crowd mocking Jesus on his way to die. Unlike many Bacon works, which have been snapped up by billionaires and hidden away, this work can be seen in Tate Britain. Bacon later returned to this work and painted a larger near-copy. This later work is less satisfactory because it is the flatness of these paintings which adds to their unsettling nature.
On April 26th, 1937, German airplanes, commanded by the Spanish nationalists, bombed the town of Guernica. The story of the Germans breaking their pact of non-intervention in the Spanish civil war got out almost immediately. The Spanish Republicans commissioned Picasso to paint a mural of the bombing for the Paris World’s Fair to further publicize the attack. Ever since its first display, the painting has become a symbol for the brutality and suffering of war. The stark black and white shapes which cover the large canvass are caught in moments of anguish. Perhaps the most moving portion of the work is the figure in the far left; a woman screaming as she cradles a dead child.
terrifying specially water ghost and nightmare