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Modern Halloween Art and 5 Artists: From ‘The Haunted Chair’ to the Moving Fonts
- Sutithi
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Every year, some nameless murals crop up on the walls during October, showing some spooky art, adding to the feel of something lurking in the shadows. This has been a ritual.
Yes, it’s once again Halloween time. While it’s time to celebrate the ancient Celtic festival with strange symbols, Halloween costumes, edgy designs, and playful creepiness, the month unfolds many stories. Since antiquity, artists and creators have explored these dark themes with awe and wonder, trying to dig deeper into the world of the unknown. And they can give you goosebumps! The modern times have replaced those blood-sucking demons with some urban myths.
While October gears up for the perfect Halloween décor or pumpkin-spiced lattes, let’s follow the trail to modern art genres like pop art, graffiti, webcomic series, and street art. We’ll venture into some ominous creations by artists of the 20th century — from Banksy’s dark art, Andy Warhol’s infamous cultural icons, Shawn Coss’s mental illness artworks to more appalling urban legends — to unleash the modern Halloween art!
Let’s explore popular myths and muses that belong to the mysterious domain of dark art to see how they get promoted to the city walls, porticos, and urban canvases, celebrating the spirit of the unknown.
Halloween and Dark Art Revealed through Mental Disorder
When we speak of the realm of the unknown, it includes psychological trauma, and the spectrum of mental illnesses as well. Web artist from Ohio, Shawn Cross created his series of such mental disorder portraits for the famous online art contest — Inktober 2016, where he has projected some humanized aliens. They were almost as frightening as they look on the surface, masking the horrid manifestations of the actual illnesses.
Warhol’s Dark Legacy: The Electric Chair and The Witch 261
Warhol's obsession with mass media, popular archetypes, celebrity culture, and fascination for the morbid ventured beyond Marilyn Monroe or Mao Tse Tung posters, while it was the time for macabre.
In this myth and legends series, he added the iconic ‘Wizard of Oz’ reference, while actress Margaret Hamilton posed for him, to create some spooky prints, like ‘The Witch 261.’ This Polaroid portrait captured Margaret in stark green skin, donning a pitch-black dress. He played with color contrasts using purple as the background and diamond dust to elevate the mystery and awe of the villainous reference of witches. The witch’s lips are twisted with a deep cynical laugh!
Warhol believed that though myths and archetypes live in our dreams and imaginations, they have immense influence on our psyche. While the history of entertainment celebrates these immortal legends, we grow with these manufactured symbols whom we relate to in some ways.
In ‘The Electric Chair,’ Warhol’s morbid fascination takes a unique course; unlike depicting popular media personalities, he had chosen an electric chair, waiting alone in a desolate room, with a sinister warning ‘Silence’ hanging at the back wall of the chair — a disturbing portrayal indeed to think of the fate of the human, who would be sitting there. It almost echoes the death of humanity, sharing a gripping feel of modern Halloween art.
Narratives of Nightmare: Banksy’s Street Art and Halloween
Banksy, the name famous for controversial graffiti, also reminds us of some ghastly modern Halloween art but in a different way. He portrayed the haunted aesthetics of urban culture, which do not realistically or explicitly relate to Halloween pieces, but the ghostly figures or the eerie motifs can be related to the spirit of the event.
The Bristol streets hold his signature style with late October murals like pumpkins placed beside black and white figures, or figures drawn with masks. This typical anonymity triggers an unknown and mysterious feeling. Maybe it’s like integrating the age-old festival into the city streets to show the social anxiety in the urban world.
It is a contrast of what is seen and what is hidden behind the shadows the way he does his street art, to say a premonition.
Retna’s Cryptic Fonts and the Halloween Codes
The American artist RETNA, originally Marquis Lewis, is known for his cryptic-style works, blending the Egyptian hieroglyphic, Hebrew, and Arabic scripts. This Los Angeles-based street artist has not produced any specific Halloween-themed work, but some of his works relate to the spirit of the festival, which celebrates the macabre energy.
He calls these letters kinetic, having the power to move, because he thinks symbols also change; they don’t remain static, so he gives a feeling of moving mystery. It’s a scary and obscure language of his own that subtly aligns with Halloween’s ancient incantations or magic spells.
His large-scale murals and street art go deeper into the urban myths while tapping the world of the uncanny through his dense calligraphic fonts. Lighting plays an important role in creating a powerful contrast — a show of sinister warning.
Miss Van and Her Ghostly Lady Gang on the Walls
It’s fascinating to see how some leading feminine talents dominated the street art scene in the 1980s, like Miss Van aka Vanessa Alice’s figurines on the walls. Miss Van was obsessed with dolls, which she called ‘poupées’ in French. Her figurines were hauntingly beautiful, wearing animal masks, corsets, and bizarre headdresses, blending a sensuous and eerie style. They had a masked, mysterious, and uncanny resonance with Halloween’s theme of disguise and duality.
How Modern Artists Retain the Aura of Halloween Drawings and Décor
Halloween’s enduring legacy retains its evil charm even today, in this fast-paced and volatile world of memories. The ancient Celtic festival has survived in varied forms, adapted to myriad cultures and expressions.
In spite of the growing craze for Halloween-themed prints, online sales of masks and Halloween costumes in this globalized and commercialized world, one thing remains constant — the fear of the unknown! Modern-day artists try to tap into this duality of life to merge nostalgia and escapism through their layered works.
Maybe this way they can make critical commentary on societal changes, working with the festival's shifting identity through public billboard art and urban rawness, capturing the evil and awe.
So, embrace darkness, with pumpkins and potions!
Happy Halloween forever!
