The 1864 Spectropia used optical illusions to manifest ghosts in Victorian homes, and was designed to attack the quackery of Spiritualism.
Halloween
Posted inHistory
Vintage Halloween Cards Are the Stuff of Nightmares
Anthropomorphic pumpkins, mirror divination, and space-traveling witches all appear in the curious collision of imagery on vintage Halloween cards.
Posted inHistory
A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes
In 1903, an inventor patented a method of preserving corpses in glass, one of a number of radical inventions that has sought to resist death’s decay.
Posted inHistory
Elaborate Halloween Costume Tips from a 19th-Century Guide to Fancy Dress
Looking for a Halloween costume? Here’s a 19th-century guide to dressing for fancy balls, with costumes for witches, carrier pigeons, glowworms, and air.
Posted inArt
Why Chinese Art Is Swarming with Colonies of Tiny Bats
If the bat is an animal associated with spooky stories in the West, the bat motif has a whole different connotation in China, where the creatures symbolize good luck.
Posted inComics
Tips for a TRULY Scary Halloween Party
Spider webs and peeled grapes are scary, but you know what would make a really scary party?
Posted inIn Brief
From Bob Ross to a Monet Haystack, This Year’s Best Art-Related Halloween Costumes
There were the usual Andy Warhols, of course, but it’s not often you see a Louise Bourgeois with phallic sculpture in hand.
Posted inArt
When a Drowned Woman’s Face Became the Muse of Paris
The face of “L’Inconnue de la Seine” was a fashionable fixture of salons and studios, her enigmatic expression of a slight smile and closed eyes haunted by stories of her suicide.
Posted inArt
The Unsung Woman Artist Behind Your Tarot Cards
In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith collaborated with occultist A. E. Waite on the most popular tarot deck of the 20th century.
Posted inArt
The Real Corpses That Served as Models for the Doomed Crew of the “Raft of the Medusa”
For his most monumental painting, Théodore Géricault borrowed corpses from morgues and asylums to capture the ghastly horror of the 1816 Medusa shipwreck.
Posted inArt
The First Known Depiction of a Witch on a Broomstick
In the 15th century, the image of the witch flying on a broomstick first appeared, its meaning laden with sexual and spiritual depravity.
Posted inArt
DEMOnstrate Your Creativity at This Year’s Critical Halloween Costume Competition
Halloween is next weekend, and what better way to get into the spirit of things than celebrating a feared ghost of art and architecture at Storefront for Art and Architecture’s annual Critical Halloween?!
