By Truffle Talent’s Adrian Larkin…
Some people might say the self-portrait I did for my GCSE art project was the scariest thing they’ve ever seen, it was certainly a horror show from start to finish. But taking a deeper delve into art and the dark-side of Instagram we’ve uncovered pieces that are equally if not more terrifying…brace yourselves art lovers.
01
Jamie Betts is a photographer from Virginia, USA who posts some quite spine-chilling photos on his Instagram. Many of the shots from abandoned buildings look like they belong in the upside-down world of Stranger Things. But all hail his brilliance for creating shots that ooze horror, leave the lights on when you leave.
02
Salvador Dali doesn’t need much of an introduction. This painting; “The Face of War”, was painted in California in 194o, between the end of the Spanish Civil War and beginning of WW2. Interestingly, Dali has stressed that it was the only work where one could see the true imprint of his hand on the canvas (at the lower right). Now we really are spooked.
03
Make sure the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder when you explore the work of @Mothmeister on Instagram. This pair of artists craft what they describe as scenes from a “Wounderland” where grotesque, emotionally distraught and anonymous characters are accompanied by taxidermy animals. It might surprise you that they’ve actually amassed a huge following on the platform. They’ve even launched a book called Weird and Wonderful Post-Mortem Fairy Tales. It’s not exactly bedtime reading for us parents.
04
You thought we’d pick “The Scream of Nature”, didn’t you? Well, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had a few foreboding paintings. Renowned for his expressionism and symbolism, in this painting, “Death of Marat I” he shows the stoic murder of famous French Revolution thinker Jean-Paul Marat – confined nearly all day to a bath due to a skin disease. Not pretty.
05
Dariusz Zawadzki is a modern artist from Poland. His paintings and drawings are right out of the top drawer of a horror flick. From the surreal to the completely grotesque, the great thing about Dariusz is he is a self-taught talent and claims his work springs from dreams and visions. We recommend he takes a natural sleep remedy for that.
06
We don’t know much about this next Instagram artist, Dusty Ray aka SloppJockey but that’s probably a good thing. What we do know is, he is from Colorado, makes a living selling his art on Etsy and describes his work as “gouache and oil paint debris”. We call it macabre but clever!
07
Lastly, when we say “Andy Warhol”, you probably think pop art paintings and a gold Marilyn Monroe, but he had a dark side. The piece below is called, “The Big Electric Chair” and is based on a press photograph from 13 January 1953 of the death chamber at Sing Sing Prison in New York. It’s where American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for giving information about the atomic bomb to Russia during the WW2. Warhol also played around with police photos of suicides and car fatalities. Right, we’re getting the jitters and need to sit in a comfy chair that looks nothing like this one.
