"Grave Goods"
Jeff Christensen, 2014.
The sight of grave goods makes the viewer think about the fact that human life is transient and death is impossible to avoid. The eerie still life is painted in a dark, ominous color, creating in the viewer a sense of hopelessness of existence, despair and impenetrable gloom. The artist deliberately distorts the shapes of individual objects to enhance the grotesque and bring the painting to the point of absurdity.
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"Diomedes being devoured by his horses."
Gustave Moreau, 1865.
The painting depicts a popular mythological subject. The painter realistically conveyed the suffering of Diomedes and the greed of the horses that devoured him alive. The dark coloring gives a special ominous atmosphere.
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People strive to get what they don't have, but once they get what they want, they don't enjoy the result.
From this, the next need arises very quickly. The race begins and the quality of the goal takes on a different meaning.
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"Heads of Torture Victims"
Theodore Géricault, c. 1810 г.
Géricault set himself the task of depicting the agony of people undergoing torture as plausibly as possible. To do so, he used an expressive painting technique. Before creating his work, the French artist spent a lot of time in hospitals and morgues, studying nature.
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"Night"
Max Beckmann, 1918.
A scene of brigands raiding a family, which is associated with Germany's entry into a special period of history. In his work, Max Beckmann reflected on the brutality that overwhelmed Europe in the twentieth century.
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"Necronome"
Hans Rudolf Giger, 1976.
Everyone has at least heard of, if not seen, the cult movie Alien. But few know to whom we owe the appearance of this creature.
During the filming of Dune (1984), director O'Bannon met Hans Giger.
This Swiss surrealist's conceptual drawings for "Dune" were very influential on O'Bannon's screenplay. After discussing Giger's work, O'Bannon and Schussett realized they knew how the alien creature would behave.
The picture above is part of a series of works that inspired the look of Alien.
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"The Ghost of a Flea"
William Blake, 1820
The canvas depicts a mystical monster, a strange symbiosis of man and insect. The ghost holds an empty cup in his hand and looks inside with a greedy, hungry gaze. In recent years, the artist had become fascinated by mysticism and claimed to have seen this ghost himself.
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Simberg Hugo "The Garden of Death", 1896
In the Finnish artist's ĸpainting, human souls are depicted as plants in need of constant care, and the garden itself is represented as a place where death can express its feelings.
According to one interpretation, death is the face of love, and the flowers are so fragile that they cannot withstand the effects of this feeling.
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1․"Letterᴏ to Mother"
2. 1․ "The letterᴏ has been interrupted"
3. 1․ "The letterᴏ left unfinished"
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"A Study of Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X."
Francis Bacon, 1953.
The work is a reinterpretation of Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Francis Bacon, a classic of English Expressionism, painted about 40 similar canvases, included in the "Screaming Popes" series. The artist changed the color of the pope's clothes from red to purple and wrote the entire canvas in dark tones. Thanks to the master's technique, the work does not evoke associations with the original portrait by Velázquez, but makes a frightening and oppressive impression.
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"Failure of Mind to Matter" Otto Rapp, 1973
There is a piece of flesh in the birdcage. A human head, which is already half decomposed, is placed on the cage. This painting is an allegory of the victory of the material world over the spiritual.
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"Inferno"
Hans Memling, 1485.
Memling is one of the brightest representatives of the northern religious school. His vision of hell is executed in ominous red-black and black-yellow colors. The demon with a triumphant expression tramples with his feet the souls of sinners, drawn very naturalistically, and they suffer, anticipating eternal torment.
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Pink calves with wings, rabbits having picnics - rather strange but impressive illustrations by Chilean artist María Jesús Contreras.
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Untitled
Zdzislaw Beksiński, 1954
The only contemporary Polish artist to have exhibited at the Museum of Art. Being very optimistic and good-natured in life, Zdzislaw created mostly gloomy and eerie images on his canvases. He never titled his paintings and despised those who looked for meaning in them
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"Skull with a burning cigarette" - Van Gogh
It is known that the famous Dutch artist suffered from schizophrenia. Blood-chilling canvas was written exactly at the time of exacerbation of the disease. All his life Van Gogh smoked a lot, and the depicted skull is probably partly his self-portrait.
1885-1886
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