TOP 5 HORROR PAINTERS
By Derek Cyr
ARROW NOTE:
I can’t say that I’m into paintings much, never have been and never will be. I
do appreciate many forms of art though, like comic book art (see above) and
am able to recognize what I dig or don’t dig paintings wise. But I’m not into it enough to
explore it. When site reader
Derek Cyr
pitched me his “Top 5 Horror
Painters” story idea
for the site, I figured WHY THE HECK NOT? Some of you might appreciate this stuff
hardcore! So this one’s for all the horror painting lovers out there! Take it
home Derek!
DEREK:
Long before horror movies hacked, slashed, spooked
and dismembered everything in its way, there was an ancient technique that
was very popular at the time, painting. Horror has always been part of life
no matter how far you backup.
With this top 5, I’m going to present you
with painters that helped mold horror into what we know it today. Some are
graphic, some are unusual but all are pretty disturbing. So here we go.
Horror painter #5
Arnold Bõcklin(1827-1901)
This Swiss painter has been known
for his paintings about nightmares of war, plague and death near the end of
his life. ‘The isle of the dead’ is no exception. This painting depicts the
ferrying of the dead across a distant shore. The painting itself is not
that gory, but if you think bringing the dead onto a small island isn’t
space consuming. Think again.
There are some versions of this painting that
actually show hundreds of corpses laying around and rotting while the
ferryman looks for space to store them. But unlike movies, sometimes
paintings are better if left to the imagination.
Horror painter#4
Hieronymous Bosh(1450-1516)
El Bosco as he liked to be called,
was one of the first to introduce us to hell via his painting ‘The last
Judgement’. Bosh is known for his complex illustrations of demonic imagery,
and has said that painting the demon or demonic figures was only meant to
amuse.
Don’t forget, this was in the 16th century, when people
were burned at the stake for believing the sun revolved around the earth,
and that anything from a bad fruit to rain was all caused by the devil. He
gets the number 4 spot just because he liked to f*&ck with people’s minds.
Horror painter#3
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)
Obviously influenced by our number 4
painter Bosco, Pieter did indeed paint hell, but he painted it on earth. The
so nicely titled ‘The triumph of death’ shows bodies lying everywhere in
this one. There is plenty of blood, spears, and damage to go around. What’s
even more interesting here is the amount of detail this guy actually put
into this massacre. I still can’t imagine him waking up, eating breakfast
and going on to paint this all day. This is no PG painting.
Horror painter#2
Edvard Munch(1863-1944)
Illness, insanity and death are the
black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life’.
That quote alone should put our ‘scream’ guy in the number one spot. This
guy lived and breathed horror. Everybody knows his painting ‘the scream’ but
contrary to the others on this list, Munch, almost only painted horror. His
life was rarely surrounded by happiness.
It seems that everything he had
close to him died at the same time. And when people weren’t dying, Munch was
busy painting and drinking, mostly drinking. This caused him to sombre into
depression, only to be cured by electroshock. Sadly enough for us horror
fans, after the shock treatment he and his paintings were never the same. I
wonder why.. This painting is called ‘The vampire’.
Horror painter#1
Dante Alighieri(1265-1321)
Ok so this guy is not a painter but
he deserves the number one spot because one day he woke up and drew a map.
Not just any kind of map, but the map on how to get to hell, ‘Dante’s
Inferno’. Horror and hell have always seemed to go quite right together. In
this drawing you can see the stages of hell for each ‘crime’ committed.
He
takes the seven sins one by one and shows us where we would go (or are
going) depending on what sin is committed. He takes us from the ground right
down to the core of the earth where Satan is supposed to be waiting. It
would actually make a great board game…hum…ya think Wall-Mart would sell
it?
E-Mail the author with
feedback at:
derekcyr@yahoo.ca
ARROW NOTE
2: Thanks for the contribution Derek, mucho appreciated man! And here’s
mine!
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