HALLOWEEN SPECIAL! Spooky Season Meets Art History

Art Blog arthistory Blog Edvard Munch Francisco de Goya halloween holidays season skull spooky The Scream Vincent Van Gogh

SPOOKY ART HISTORY!


Since Halloween is just around the corner, we’d like to celebrate it our way by getting into the spooky vibe through art! The next selection of masterpieces may be unconventional, but it has the most haunting details and creepy facts.


We’ve capture the spookiest of them all! From The Scream by Edvard Munch, to the creepiest Art by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.. and a work from one of the most famous Artists ever, Vincent Van Gogh.

This one is easier to digest, I swear!...

''Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette.'' by Van Gogh

Even tough we admire him for painting amazing landscapes and skies that seemed to move, it is known in his final years he suffered from a series of mental illnesses, but he always had his slight sense of humor.. 

 

Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette, Vincent Van Gogh. (1886)

 

While he studied in the Art Academy in Antwerp, there were plenty of anatomical and traditional drawings to be madre regularly as an exercise but Van Gogh, rebelliously created this funky skeleton with a lit cigarette being held in between his teeth. 

 

''A Monster and His Son'' by Francisco de Goya.


Between 1819 and 1823, Francisco de Goya made a series of 14 works of art called the Black Paintings. Amongst them, there is a piece in particular that has made art lovers shiver! The blackest painting of Goya’s black paintings: Saturn Devouring His Son, a frightful oil painting of a father feasting on his child. It is very important to mention that this painting is indeed extremely famous and an important piece of the puzzle in the Art History timeline since it represents Expressionism even before it was a real thing in the art world! 


The painting symbolizes Roman Mythologys' darkest stories! Saturn was the leader of all Titans because he overthrew his own father Caelus to become the ruler of the universe.

In the fear of his own offspring doing the same thing to him one day, he killed and ate up each and everyone of his children shortly after their birth. Francisco de Goya portrayed this atrocity in his art, and 100 years later the painting is displayed in one of the world’s most visited Art Museums: Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. 



Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco de Goya. (1823)


Still, the artist never created this series to show publicly, he actually made them for his own home! Imagine this in your kitchen, oh no! I would certainly lose my appetite - Artist Ana Karen, VIII 's Team.



''The Famous Scream'' by Edvard Munch.


You’ve possibly seen the famous Edvard Munch painting of The Scream, right? I’ll show it to you!



Munch is known for his dark and twisty paintings, very in-theme for this  Spooky Season! The scene of the painting looks dreamy, but it was actually inspired by a real-life location and a frightening phenomenon! 

These are Munch exact words written in his diary about his in inspiration for The Scream: 


“One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below, I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.” - Edvard Munch.

Now you know it, and from the artist himself! Wasn’t that creepy?

SHOP VIII Home & Arts Spooky Artsy selection:  

 The Skulls Series Archival Prints. 12 x 18 x 1.5 in. Gallery Wrap Canvas.

Have a Happy Halloween Art Lovers! 

 

Author: Ana Karen Morales Q.
Editor: VIII 

  

Bibliography: 
Vandewalle, F. Goya, Saturno. https://www.flickr.com/photos/snarfel/5945909767
Wikimedia Commons. Edvard Munch The Scream. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edvard-Munch-The-Scream.jpg
Grada, D. Famous Painting Halloween Costume. https://pin.it/1wanQ2x.
Wikipedia. Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_of_a_Skeleton_with_Burning_Cigarette.

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