What is the Modern Face of Horror?

[SennFan]

 

[wakeride74]

 

[Duggeh]

 

[electrathecat]

 

[Mr.PD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by electrathecat

Okay, that face frightens me.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.PD I don't get it. Nothing in the painting is frightening. Not the face of either character, not anything. They are not evil looking, or menacing or anything. It's a lovely painting, and I wouldn't mind it hanging in my living room.

PD: The horror is not literal but metaphysical. The problem with Lovecraft's version of that idea is that he tried to make it obvious, which is never as frightening as the implication of phenomenal power and murderous intent.

To see the implied horror in the sphinx, you have to understand what will happen to Oedipus if he answers incorrectly, and how little his fate matters to the sphinx itself. You must also understand that many beings from Greek myth are only superficially anthropomorphic: Their bodies might look human or animal, but they are something else entirely. Hence, the god that causes people to combust if he is looked upon; the god that gives birth in his leg; the ability of Medusa and her sisters to ossify onlookers, which is beyond mere ugliness (otherwise, the mirror would offer no remedy) and suggests the metaphysics of life reversal (the return to paralytic inertia). In a sense, Lord Krishna is Medusan when He tells Arjuna that gazing on His true face would induce lunacy in the viewer: Though Krishna is speaking of unbearable complexity, not ugliness, He is nevertheless conveying that the essence of a god or mythical being is often so untranslatable as to be forbiddingly alien and destructive; there is also the sheer horror of scale: of the endlessness of time and space as gods experience it. Graphic paintings of Nrsimhadeva and Kali can induce more visceral reactions, though Their horror is far more effective in classic descriptions, and, in a sense, the literal violence makes it harder for many of us to take Them seriously. (Hence the Kali finger puppets bought by a friend while visiting Calcutta.) Lovecraft has the same problem; so does David Lynch when he tries to depict aspects of Francis Bacon's paintings.

Even so, I would argue that, in the case of Kali, the true horror of Her image is metaphysical, since the battlefield is endless and metaphorical, as is the cycle of spilled blood that begets the demons She is beheading, as is the pitch and scope of the madness of the Goddess Herself.

My point re Oedipus and the Sphinx could apply to any number of other aesthetically beautiful paintings, such as the various depictions by Waterhouse of nymphs (here and here) and sirens plural and singular, or of La Belle Dame Sans Merci as depicted by Waterhouse or even Sir Frank Dicksee, or of Rosetti's painting of "Lady" Lilith -- Lilith, also known in Cabalism as the Child Devourer, of whom I myself have had frequent and hideous dreams. Horror films never frighten me; these paintings sometimes do.

Always, the implication is the worse for being implicit. I once noticed that effect in a Rosicrucian painting of Mephistopheles, in which the esteemed devil seemed not menacing or seductive but contemptible and harmless. The depiction of a bumbling and pudgy horned bureaucrat, who seemed startled to have appeared before Faust, seemed more resonant (and less unintentionally comic) than any other version I'd seen. The image provides one solution for Faust's having risked grisly damnation for a few years' contentment: his sense that the force he bargained with was harmless and perhaps even incompetent. Psychopaths often appear so to future victims: there is never creepy music, never deranged grinning, but only the appearance of banality just before the chloroformed handkerchief.

For me, the face of horror is impervious. No matter whether its expression is uncomprehending, unforgiving, cryptically enraged or inscrutably detached, the effect is to suggest its predatory powers and the victim's absolute insignificance.

For similar effect in the depiction of a place without any face whatsoever or evidence of carnage, see Eismeer, by Caspar David Friedrich.

 

[chadbang]

I can't believe we have Scrypt on this forum. Incredible...

 

[daycart1]

Wow, great post, Scrypt--and thanks for the pix. I'd forgotten about Waterhouse.

 

[chadbang]

Any irony in the French actually doing the first face transplant? — "LES YEUX SANS VISAGE"

 

[YamiTenshi]

Wow, my roommate has two pictures of La Belle Dame San Merci hanging in the living room...

now I'm scared...

 

[Edwood]

Beware.




-Ed

 

[chadbang]

"For me, the face of horror is impervious. No matter whether its expression is uncomprehending, unforgiving, cryptically enraged or inscrutably detached, the effect is to suggest its predatory powers and the victim's absolute insignificance."

Yes, yes. Nicely said. Like the child who pulls legs off of a turtle. Malevolent, detached, clinical.


I feel much the same way about this chap for some odd reason. The creator of Body Worlds. Maybe it's just his bad luck that his appearance is so... well ....

 

[Unclewai]

Brian Peppers?

google if you don't know who.

 

[vibin247]

Oh the horror...

 

[michaelconnor]

The photo is rather inane, but within the greater context of what was to follow, it strikes a much more insidious tone.
This reference may be a somewhat obscure, but to those who know, this photograph is undoubtedly horrid.