History
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.
Halloween
Art
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.
Comics
Tips for a TRULY Scary Halloween Party
Spider webs and peeled grapes are scary, but you know what would make a really scary party?
In 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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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.
Art
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?!
Art
Critical Halloween 2014: Costume Competition
Everybody to the polls! No, we're not talking about the US elections tomorrow — although you should also go to those polls — we're talking about Hyperallergic and the Storefront for Art and Architecture's annual Critical Halloween costume contest.
Art
New York's Most Unusual Halloween Ritual
In one of his last great performances, Harry Houdini escaped after 90 minutes from a coffin submerged in the swimming pool of New York's Shelton Hotel (today the New York Marriott East Side).
Art
Goblins, Ghosts, and Ghouls in Japanese Prints
If you want to hear a terrifying ghost story this Halloween, look to Japan.