Horror Art: Attraction and Captivation

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A magazine artist’s task is to sell the magazine. The primary sense is vision, followed either by touch or hearing, and, of course, visual arts appeal to sight. Their images attract and captivate. There are many reasons that they do so, such as the artist’s use of intensity, color, shape, size, line, space, and a host of other principles and techniques. Not one of the least of these techniques--and the subject of this post--is the artist’s use of the incongruous, the incompatible, the inconsistent, the inappropriate, the absurd, the odd, the strange, the bizarre, the mismatched, the contradictory, the abnormal, the peculiar, the unusual, the anomalous, the fantastic, the irregular, the atypical, the uncharacteristic, the improbable, the unusual, and, of course, the horrible.

In an earlier post, “The Horror of the Incongruous,” we suggested that one of the reasons that horror fiction appeals to readers is that it represents a catalogue of the damned--of phenomena and incidents that fall outside the known, the understood, and the accepted.

We like our world to be neat and tidy. Therefore, we create categories, labeling them according to their contents, and thus, in a neat and tidy manner, classify and divide our world. This classification and division of our collective human experience we (rather arrogantly) call “reality.” Anything that doesn’t fit our schema is damned as “illusory” or “fantastic.” (In The Book of the Damned, Charles Fort explains the way in which data that don’t fit the neat and tidy schema of the sciences is “damned” by their practitioners.) If we designate the categories of human experience “the applecart of reality,” horror fiction, we may say, upsets this applecart. It makes us suppose, as Hamlet was bold enough to assert, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in. . . [our] philosophy.”

We like to think that we know it all, because omniscience puts us in control of our lives and our destinies, enabling us to be the masters of our own fate. Horror fiction, by acquainting us with shadows, suggests that we are not yet fully the illuminati we long to be. Therefore, we are not as fully in control as we would like to be. We are dependent upon forces and powers--and--perhaps, beings--unknown as well as known that are far stronger than we. What’s worse, according to horror fiction, not all of these forces and entities are benign and benevolent; some are hostile and lethal. In short, the bogeyman is real, and he’s far more powerful than you and me--and he’s not only after us, as Stephen King has reminded his fans, but he’s gaining on us.

Since horror fiction pops the balloon of human pomposity, it’s iconoclastic (and, one might add, realistic).

But wait a minute. I thought this post was about horror art, you might be thinking. Well, literature is art, of course, but, by “art,” perhaps you were thinking visual art--drawings, paintings, and the like.

So was I.

However, to talk about visual art that depicts horror themes and images (in order, let us remember, to sell horror fiction), one must first understand what is at the root of all evil (or, at least, horror’s dramatization of evil and its consequences and how such evil may, at times, at least, be vanquished--for a time, at least). In horror fiction, the wickedness, like the horror that it produces, often derives from this uneasy sense that all may not be as neat and tidy with the world as we thought and that “reality” may not be itself all that real.

What attracts--what appeals to--one person may not attract or appeal to another, for we all have out own interests and tastes. Therefore, this post can address only certain art that has attracted and appealed to its author, yours truly. In discussing those artists’ work that I do address, I have chosen from among illustrators and painters who have worked largely, if not exclusively, in the horror genre or who have illustrated mostly the fiction of horror writers, and I have excluded computer graphics in an old-fashioned preference for pen and ink or oils.

Specifically (in this post, at least), I am considering Margaret Brundage and Virgil Finlay. (The art of Rene Magritte and H. R. Giger is considered in other posts.) Alas, even with such a small sample, I am considering only one work by each. Otherwise, this post would be a book unto itself.

Art by Margaret Brundage

Okay, Margaret Brundage, then.

Her work features scantily clad women threatened by hideous monsters--a staple theme of early horror fiction in which scantily clad women were deemed irresistible not only to all red-blooded men but also to all monsters, regardless of the color of their blood. (Think The Creature from the Black Lagoon or King Kong or even Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.)

Author L. Sprague de Camp summarizes her work’s theme as depicting “naked heroines being tortured, raped, and disemboweled,” and Forrest J. Ackerman describes her art as portraying “titillating pulchrinudes” of “naked ladies being sacrificed, semi-clad heroines being menaced by all manner of monstrous beings.”

In cover after cover of Weird Tales, Brundage reiterated this theme, seldom painting much else. In her artwork, men don’t have to compete merely with other men for the captivating women whom Brundage depicts, but they must also compete with such monstrous rivals as black gods (or their oversize idols, at any rate), shadow people, witches, and decapitated skulls. A woman’s virginity, in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s and 1950’s, was a commodity that needed to be protected from and defended against the various monsters (symbolic of rapists and lesbian seductresses) who threatened it, Brundage’s art implies, offering, at the same time, both a chance for a bit of voyeuristic ogling and sexual fantasies that stopped just short, presumably, of the rape that the images imagined as real threats, allowing virtuous adolescent readers--who tended, by far, to be males--to become the champions of these ladies in distress.

Every boy (and even a few lesbian seductresses) might be a potential rapist, her art suggested, but they can also choose to be a Sir Galahad and protect and defend a lady’s virtue. If they chose the former course, the result would be horrible, indeed, but, if they chose the latter course, the result would be chivalrous. Sex was no more horrible, in itself, than temptation; the horror lay in the choice that a boy made in relation to sex and the temptation that scantily clad women posed. The adolescent reader of the Weird Tales that Brundage illustrated could be saint or sinner or, in the parlance of horror fiction, the hero or the monster. As with so many other choices that confront a boy, the decision that he makes with regard to sexual temptations is an intersection of sorts, between good and evil, right and wrong, heroism and horror.

Art by Virgil Finlay

Next, Virgil Finlay.

His art is executed in clear, fine lines and with sharp contrasts between light and dark shapes and spaces. He also devotes much space to stippling and crosshatching to add shades, shadows, and borders. His art, much of which adorned the cover of Weird Tales, contains more than a few scantily clad, or even nude, feminine figures. However, his women are not potential rape victims. Instead, they are enchanting enchantresses or sexy sorceresses or mystical maidens. More varied than Brundage’s art, Finlay’s work is known more for his technique than for its theme. It is the quality of his work that attracts the eye more than its theme per se, although, since he often illustrated horror, many of his pieces depict images typical of the genre: disembodied eyes, fantastic landscapes, skeletal or demonic figures, skulls, giants, sword and sorcery themes, mystical and magical phenomena, scantily clad women, and blood and gore--just what the largely male adolescent readers of Weird Tales enjoyed.

Art by Frank Frazetta

Theme and technique in the service of metaphor is a good, albeit basic, description, if not definition, of art, visual, literary, and otherwise. In some artists’ work, such as that of Brundage, theme is dominant over technique, whereas, in other artists’ work, such as that of Finlay, theme is second to technique. A literary parallel is H. P. Lovecraft’s stories, which tend to emphasize theme over technique, as opposed to the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, which emphasizes technique over theme. As both Brundage’s and Lovecraft’s work, on one hand, and Finlay’s and Poe’s, on the other hand, indicate, both theme and technique are sufficient, even of themselves, to attract and captivate an audience’s interest. On occasion, as in the art of Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, or Julie Bell (or Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, or William Faulkner), both theme and technique both attract and captivate--rather like Dracula’s daughter or the sirens of old.

For those who might enjoy pursuing their own research of other artists who have been pleased to depict horrors imaginable, if not unimaginable, other artists who have made a comfortable living illustrating Weird Tales and other magazines or individual works within the genre include:

• Margaret Brundage
• Hugh Rankin
• Virgil Finlay
• J. K. Potter
• Frazier Irving
• Steven Stahlberg
• Hannes Bok
• Jason Beam
• J. Allan St. John
• C. C. Senf
• Lee Brown Coye
• Frank Frazetta
• Boris Vallejo
• Julie Bell

We may take up a few others in future posts.

Psychic Vampirism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s shortest short stories is “The Oval Portrait.” However, its brevity notwithstanding, it is a disturbing and horrific tale in which there is an undercurrent of what might be called psychic vampirism. For those who may be unacquainted with the story, a summary of it is in order:

The story’s narrator, who is wounded, and his valet, Pedro, seek shelter within the apartment of an abandoned Gothic chateau situated “among the Appennines.” In the apartment, the narrator finds that the walls--and even the niches within the walls--are decorated with “a number of very spirited modern paintings” and, upon the pillow of the bed, he discovers a “small volume. . . which. . . criticize[s] and describe[s]” the paintings. For some reason--perhaps because of his “incipient delirium”--he takes a keen interest in the paintings.

After Pedro drops off to sleep, the narrator changes the position of the candelabrum so that its candlelight better illuminates the pages of his book, and, as a result, he discerns a painting in an alcove that had been previously lost in the room’s shadows. Bordered by an oval frame, the painting depicts the head and shoulders of “a young girl just ripening into womanhood.” Her “arms. . . bosom. . . and. . . hair” seem to dissolve into “the vague yet deep shadow” that represents the “background of the whole,” and the narrator, upon first glimpsing it, is startled, mistaking the picture for a disembodied head.

After returning the candelabrum to its original position, the narrator again consults his book, reading about the picture in the oval frame. According to this text, the young woman had been the wife of the “passionate, studious, austere” artist who, married to his art before he’d taken the young woman as his wife, painted her portrait. A happy person, she’d disliked only the art that kept her husband from her. When he’d asked to paint her portrait, however, she’d obediently sat for him, for days on end.

At last, the book declares, the artist finished his work, declaring it to be nothing less than “life itself!” and, turning to “regard his beloved,” he found that she was dead.

In a tale so short and simple, a lesser artist than Poe might have had great difficulty in elevating the story to the level of art, but Poe, of course, is one of the great masters of the horror genre. Because of the subtlety with which he writes and because of his own knowledge of human nature, which was more than a little tinged with cynicism, he imparts to his tale an unexpected psychological richness. Much that the story conveys is left unsaid and must be inferred by those readers who are able, as it were, to read between the lines.

The wife is in the flower of womanhood, and has a carefree, loving, and happy heart. Her husband, however, seems to love his art--which is to say, himself, since his art is an expression of himself--more than he loves her. It is to her beauty that he is attracted more than to her, as a person. He views her as a fitting subject for his art, and asks her to model for him, despite her dislike of “the Art which was her rival” and her dread of “the pallet and the brushes. . . which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.” As he paints, spending all his time with the very “pallet and brushes” that she detests as her rivals for her husband’s affection, rather than with her (as other than a model), her health fails, and she becomes “daily more dispirited and weak.”

According to the book that “criticise[s] and describes[s] the paintings,” the color in the portrait’s cheek is obtained at the expense of her own lifeblood: “he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.” The last brushstroke with which his masterpiece is completed ends her life. Symbolically, his art represents his nature, which is as narcissistic as it is “passionate, studious,” and “austere.” Paradoxically, as an artist, he is a creator; at the same time, his creativity destroys the woman whom he claims to love. His passion for his work sucks the life from his bride. The artist is a psychic vampire who is willing to kill in order that his art may thrive. Artists are like Brahma and Shiva of the Hindu Trimurti, both a creator and a destroyer at once, and every work of art is a still life of sorts, a Vishnu, or preserver, created of the essence of the life (or lives) upon which the artist’s imagination has fed and, daily, continues to feed.

The theme of Poe’s story is reminiscent of that of a poem, “My Last Duchess,” by one of the author’s contemporaries, Robert Browning (1812-1889), although Poe’s story was written before Browning’s poem and there is no evidence that the two works have anything to do with one another:

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

It is more likely that these artists both understood the paradoxical creative-destructive duality of the artist. In Browning’s poem, a duke appreciates the portrait of his late wife more than he appreciated her (whom, the poem suggests, he may have killed), because it is both beautiful and passive. (The young wife in Poe’s story is also beautiful and obedient.) The women’s passivity or obedience allowed the artists to create beautiful portraits, although these qualities also allowed them to destroy the realities that these portraits represent. Therein, Poe suggests, lies the horror of art in general and of "The Oval Portrait" in particular.

How to Haunt a House: Part V

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In the four previous posts in this series, we deduced a number of principles, or rules, that apply, in general, to fiction that involves a haunted house. These rules can be used to create a haunted house in both printed and cinematic horror stories.

This post brings these rules together in a simple list that is likely to be handier and dandier than the separate lists in the previous posts. In writing about fiction, especially fiction that is often about supernatural or paranormal events, it’s a good thing to have one’s guidelines readily available.

These nine rules apply to the interior of the haunted residence:

1. It should be spacious--the bigger, the better.
2. It should house many rooms.
3. A haunted house often symbolizes its resident’s state of mind.
4. A haunted house is often associated with the resident’s past.
5. A haunted house may be the portal to another dimension or to hell itself.
6. To be, horrors must be perceived (even mysterious phenomena, whether paranormal or supernatural, must be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and/or touched).
7. A haunted house will probably have an emotional effect upon its resident.
8. The phenomena associated with a haunting should also be associated with the resident and with his or her mental states, moral failings, or personal experiences.
9. A haunting may result from a condition or set of circumstances other than ghostly habitation (mental illness, practical joke, hoax).

These four rules apply to the grounds upon which the domicile stands:

1. Relate the place with death and decay.
2. Ensure that the estate is at least ten acres in size, remembering that the bigger the grounds, the better.
3. Make the estate isolated, and surround it with a high wall or a forest.
4. Associate the house with its resident (the story’s protagonist).

By the way, you might also check out the entries that are relevant to ghosts, poltergeists, and haunted houses in both The Skeptic’s Dictionary and James Randi Educational Foundation’s An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural for information and tips as to how to introduce, maintain, and develop a skeptical parallel to the supernatural or paranormal explanations of the haunting. You may also want to read the Chillers and Thrillers posts “Alternative Explanations,” Parts I through IV. Horror fiction works best, perhaps, when the author gives the reader both a natural and a supernatural or paranormal explanation of the bizarre incidents in a horror story, as we show in “Horror By the Slice: The Lurking Fear” and “Creating Mood in Horror Fiction.”

Have fun in creating your house of horrors!

How to Haunt a House: Part IV

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The grounds upon which a haunted house stands (or crumbles) are also haunted. The land is unhallowed, or unholy, ground. As such, its vegetation is apt to be withered and sere. The grass, if any remains, is likely to be brown and scrubby. Shrubs will more than likely be shriveled or leafless. Trees will be grotesque, stunted trunks projectong a twisted tangle of bare branches. Flowers won’t do well. Rosebushes may bear thorns in abundance, but few or no blooms will appear to alleviate the gloom. The ground itself may be not only bare (and barren) but may also be lined and fissured with great, deep cracks. If there are any statues, they will be of strange figures. Some may be missing heads or limbs (or they may have extra heads and limbs). Others may bleed or weep blood. A figure may even moan or groan, perhaps due to a human soul imprisoned within the marble or granite stone. Hounds or other guard dogs may prowl the grounds. The entire estate is likely to be surrounded by a tall wall that is topped with a spiked, wrought-iron fence. Sometimes, instead of a wall, a thick forest hems in the estate. Wild animals live among the trees--wolves, wildcats, and worse--that keep guests at bay.

The estate may feature a family burial ground or a few gravesites. If so, the graves are likely to be marked with crumbling headstones or weather-stained crosses that may bear strange symbols and other bizarre inscriptions. A lake, or tarn, may be present, but it will be a lifeless body of water, uninhabited and unvisited by animals. The estate is likely to be isolated. Its residence and any other structures it contains will be the sole building or buildings for miles in any direction.

With as many features as we have cited, it’s obvious that the estate must be large, rather than small, especially if it is associated with a mansion or a castle. It shouldn’t be under ten acres, although it can be much bigger. There is apt to be rolling or drifting fog, white and thick enough to limit one’s vision and to conceal shapes within its gloom. Across the yard, at a distance, anyone who is unfortunate enough to trespass upon the estate will see the exterior of the haunted house, or its façade.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” brings many of these classical elements of the haunted estate together in his description, at the narrative’s outset, of the house and its grounds:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

From these observations, we can deduce the following rules concerning the estate upon which a haunted house stands:

1. Relate the place with death and decay.
2. Ensure that the estate is at least ten acres in size, remembering that the bigger the grounds, the better.
3. Make the estate isolated, and surround it with a high wall or a forest.
4. Associate the house with its resident (the story’s protagonist). (Note Poe's "eyelike windows.")