The most unusual paintings by famous artists. The most unusual paintings by famous artists: photos and descriptions

Painting, if you do not take into account the realists, has always been, is and will be strange. Metaphorical, looking for new forms and means of expression. But some strange paintings are stranger than others.

Some works of art seem to hit the viewer over the head, stunning and amazing. Some draw you into thought and in search of layers of meaning, secret symbolism. Some paintings are shrouded in mystery and mystical riddles, and some surprise you with an exorbitant price.

It is clear that “strangeness” is a rather subjective concept, and everyone has their own amazing paintings that stand out from other works of art. For example, the works of Salvador Dali, which completely fall within the format of this material and are the first to come to mind, are deliberately not included in this selection.

Salvador Dali

"A young virgin indulging in the sin of Sodom with the horns of her own chastity"

1954

Edvard Munch "The Scream"
1893, cardboard, oil, tempera, pastel. 91x73.5 cm
National Gallery, Oslo

"Scream" counts significant event expressionism and one of the most famous paintings in the world.

“I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red, I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned against the fence - I looked at the blood and flames over the bluish-black fiord and the city - my friends moved on, and I stood trembling with excitement, feeling the endless scream piercing nature,” Edvard Munch said about the history of the painting.

There are two interpretations of what is depicted: it is the hero himself who is gripped by horror and silently screams, pressing his hands to his ears; or the hero closes his ears from the cry of the world and nature sounding around him. Munch wrote 4 versions of “The Scream”, and there is a version that this painting is the fruit of manic-depressive psychosis from which the artist suffered. After a course of treatment at the clinic, Munch did not return to work on the canvas.

Paul Gauguin "Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?"
1897-1898, oil on canvas. 139.1x374.6 cm
Museum fine arts, Boston

The deeply philosophical painting of the post-impressionist Paul Gauguin was painted by him in Tahiti, where he fled from Paris. Upon completion of the work, he even wanted to commit suicide, because “I believe that this painting not only surpasses all my previous ones, and that I will never create something better or even similar.” He lived another 5 years, and that’s what happened.

According to Gauguin himself, the painting should be read from right to left - three main groups of figures illustrate the questions posed in the title. Three women with a child represent the beginning of life; middle group symbolizes the daily existence of maturity; in the final group, according to the artist’s plan, “the old woman, approaching death, seems reconciled and indulged in her thoughts,” at her feet “a strange White bird...represents the futility of words."

Pablo Picasso "Guernica"
1937, oil on canvas. 349x776 cm
Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

The huge fresco painting “Guernica,” painted by Picasso in 1937, tells the story of a raid by a Luftwaffe volunteer unit on the city of Guernica, as a result of which the city of six thousand was completely destroyed. The painting was painted literally in a month - the first days of work on the painting, Picasso worked for 10-12 hours and already in the first sketches one could see main idea. This is one of best illustrations the nightmare of fascism, as well as human cruelty and grief.

"Guernica" presents scenes of death, violence, brutality, suffering and helplessness, without specifying their immediate causes, but they are obvious. It is said that in 1940, Pablo Picasso was summoned to the Gestapo in Paris. The conversation immediately turned to the painting. "Did you do this?" - “No, you did it.”

Jan van Eyck "Portrait of the Arnolfini couple"
1434, wood, oil. 81.8x59.7 cm
London National Gallery, London

The portrait supposedly of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife is one of the most complex works Western school of painting of the Northern Renaissance.

The famous painting is completely filled with symbols, allegories and various references - right down to the signature “Jan van Eyck was here”, which turned it not just into a work of art, but into historical document, confirming a real event at which the artist was present.

In Russia recent years The picture gained great popularity thanks to portrait resemblance Arnolfini with Vladimir Putin

Mikhail Vrubel "The Seated Demon"
1890, oil on canvas. 114x211 cm
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The painting by Mikhail Vrubel surprises with the image of a demon. The sad, long-haired guy does not at all resemble the common human idea of what an evil spirit should look like. The artist himself spoke about his most famous painting: “The demon is not so much an evil spirit as a suffering and sorrowful one, at the same time a powerful, majestic spirit.”

This is an image of the strength of the human spirit, internal struggle, doubt. Tragically clasping his hands, the Demon sits with sad, huge eyes directed into the distance, surrounded by flowers. The composition emphasizes the constraint of the demon’s figure, as if squeezed between the upper and lower crossbars of the frame.

Vasily Vereshchagin "Apotheosis of War"
1871, oil on canvas. 127x197 cm
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Vereshchagin is one of the main Russian battle painters, but he painted wars and battles not because he loved them. On the contrary, he tried to convey to people his negative attitude towards the war. One day Vereshchagin, in the heat of emotion, exclaimed: “More battle paintings I won’t write - that’s it! I take what I write too close to my heart, I cry (literally) for the grief of every wounded and killed." Probably the result of this cry was the terrible and bewitching painting "The Apotheosis of War", which depicts a field, crows and a mountain of human skulls.

The picture is written so deeply and emotionally that behind each skull lying in this pile, you begin to see people, their destinies and the destinies of those who will never see these people again. Vereshchagin himself, with sad sarcasm, called the canvas a “still life” - it depicts “dead nature.”

All the details of the picture, including the yellow color, symbolize death and devastation. The clear blue sky emphasizes the deadness of the picture. The idea of the “Apotheosis of War” is also expressed by scars from sabers and bullet holes on skulls.

Grant Wood" American Gothic"
1930, oil. 74x62 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

“American Gothic” is one of the most recognizable images in American art of the 20th century, the most famous artistic meme of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The picture with the gloomy father and daughter is filled with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrograde nature of the people depicted. Angry faces, a pitchfork right in the middle of the picture, old-fashioned clothes even by the standards of 1930, an exposed elbow, seams on a farmer’s clothes that repeat the shape of a pitchfork, and therefore a threat that is addressed to everyone who encroaches. You can look at all these details endlessly and cringe from discomfort.

Interestingly, the judges of the competition at the Art Institute of Chicago perceived "Gothic" as a "humorous valentine", and the residents of Iowa were terribly offended by Wood for portraying them in such an unpleasant light.

Rene Magritte "Lovers"
1928, oil on canvas

The painting "Lovers" ("Lovers") exists in two versions. In one, a man and a woman, whose heads are wrapped in a white cloth, are kissing, and in the other, they are “looking” at the viewer. The picture surprises and fascinates. With two figures without faces, Magritte conveyed the idea of the blindness of love. About blindness in every sense: lovers do not see anyone, we do not see them true faces and we, and besides, lovers, are a mystery even to each other. But despite this apparent clarity, we still continue to look at Magritte’s lovers and think about them.

Almost all of Magritte’s paintings are puzzles that cannot be completely solved, since they raise questions about the very essence of existence. Magritte always talks about the deceptiveness of the visible, about its hidden mystery, which we usually do not notice.

Marc Chagall "Walk"
1917, oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery

Usually extremely serious in his painting, Marc Chagall wrote a delightful manifesto of his own happiness, filled with allegories and love.

"Walk" is a self-portrait with his wife Bella. His beloved is soaring in the sky and will soon drag Chagall, who is standing on the ground precariously, into flight, as if touching her only with the toes of his shoes. Chagall has a tit in his other hand - he is happy, he has both a tit in his hands (probably his painting) and a pie in the sky.

Hieronymus Bosch "Garden" earthly pleasures"
1500-1510, wood, oil. 389x220 cm
Prado, Spain

“The Garden of Earthly Delights” is the most famous triptych of Hieronymus Bosch, which got its name from the theme of the central part, dedicated to the sin of voluptuousness. To date, none of the available interpretations of the painting has been recognized as the only correct one.

The enduring charm and at the same time strangeness of the triptych lies in the way the artist expresses the main idea through many details. The picture is filled with transparent figures, fantastic structures, monsters, hallucinations that have taken on flesh, hellish caricatures of reality, which he looks at with a searching, extremely sharp gaze.

Some scientists wanted to see in the triptych an image of human life through the prism of its futility and images of earthly love, others - a triumph of voluptuousness. However, the simplicity and certain detachment with which individual figures are interpreted, as well as the favorable attitude towards this work on the part of the church authorities, make one doubt that its content could be the glorification of bodily pleasures.

Gustav Klimt "The Three Ages of Woman"
1905, oil on canvas. 180x180 cm
National Gallery contemporary art, Rome

“The Three Ages of a Woman” is both joyful and sad. In it, the story of a woman’s life is written in three figures: carelessness, peace and despair. A young woman is organically woven into the pattern of life, an old woman stands out from it. The contrast between the stylized image of a young woman and the naturalistic image of an old woman takes on a symbolic meaning: the first phase of life brings with it endless possibilities and metamorphoses, the last - unchanging constancy and conflict with reality.

The canvas doesn’t let go, it gets into the soul and makes you think about the depth of the artist’s message, as well as the depth and inevitability of life.

Egon Schiele "Family"
1918, oil on canvas. 152.5x162.5 cm
Belvedere Gallery, Vienna

Schiele was a student of Klimt, but, like any excellent student, he did not copy his teacher, but looked for something new. Schiele is much more tragic, strange and frightening than Gustav Klimt. In his works there is a lot of what could be called pornography, various perversions, naturalism and at the same time aching despair.

"Family" - his last work, in which despair is taken to the extreme, despite the fact that it is his least strange-looking picture. He painted it just before his death, after his pregnant wife Edith died of Spanish flu. He died at 28, just three days after Edith, having painted her, himself, and their unborn child.

Frida Kahlo "Two Fridas"
1939

The story of the difficult life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo became widely known after the release of the film "Frida" starring Salma Hayek. Kahlo painted mostly self-portraits and explained it simply: “I paint myself because I spend a lot of time alone and because I am the subject that I know best.”

In not a single self-portrait does Frida Kahlo smile: a serious, even mournful face, fused thick eyebrows, a barely noticeable mustache above tightly compressed lips. The ideas of her paintings are encrypted in the details, background, figures appearing next to Frida. Kahlo's symbolism is based on national traditions and is closely related to the Indian mythology of the pre-Hispanic period.

In one of best paintings- “Two Fridas” - she expressed the masculine and feminine principles, connected in her by a single circulatory system, demonstrating her integrity. For more information about Frida, see HERE beautiful interesting post

Claude Monet "Waterloo Bridge. The effect of fog"
1899, oil on canvas
State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

When viewing the painting from a close distance, the viewer sees nothing but the canvas on which frequent thick oil strokes are applied. The whole magic of the work is revealed when we gradually begin to move further away from the canvas.

First, incomprehensible semicircles begin to appear in front of us, passing through the middle of the picture, then we see the clear outlines of boats and, having moved away to a distance of approximately two meters, they are sharply drawn in front of us and line up in logical chain all connecting works.

Jackson Pollock "Number 5, 1948"
1948, fiberboard, oil. 240x120 cm

The strangeness of this picture is that the canvas of the American leader of abstract expressionism, which he painted by spilling paint on a piece of fiberboard laid out on the floor, is the most expensive painting in the world. In 2006, at Sotheby's auction they paid $140 million for it. David Giffen, a film producer and collector, sold it to Mexican financier David Martinez.

"I continue to move away from the usual tools of the artist, such as an easel, palette and brushes. I prefer sticks, scoops, knives and pouring paint or a mixture of paint and sand, broken glass or something else. When I'm inside a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. Understanding comes later. I have no fear of changes or destruction of the image, since the picture lives its own own life. I'm just helping her out. But if I lose contact with the painting, it becomes dirty and messy. If not, then it’s pure harmony, the ease of how you take and give.”

Joan Miró "Man and woman in front of a pile of excrement"
1935, copper, oil, 23x32 cm
Joan Miró Foundation, Spain

Good name. And who would have thought that this picture tells us about the horrors of civil wars. The painting was made on copper sheet during the week between October 15 and October 22, 1935.

According to Miro, this is the result of an attempt to depict the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. Miro said that this is a picture about a period of anxiety.

The painting shows a man and a woman reaching out to embrace each other, but not moving. The enlarged genitals and sinister colors were described as "full of disgust and disgusting sexuality."

Jacek Yerka "Erosion"

The Polish neo-surrealist is known throughout the world for his amazing paintings in which realities combine to create new ones.

Bill Stoneham "Hands Resist Him"
1972

This work, of course, can hardly be considered a masterpiece of world painting, but the fact that it is strange is a fact.

There are legends surrounding the painting with a boy, a doll and his hands pressed against the glass. From “people are dying because of this picture” to “the children in it are alive.” The picture looks really creepy, which gives rise to a lot of fears and speculation among people with weak psyches.

The artist insisted that the painting depicted himself at the age of five, that the door represented the dividing line between the real world and the world of dreams, and the doll was a guide who could guide the boy through this world. The hands represent alternative lives or possibilities.

The painting gained notoriety in February 2000 when it was listed for sale on eBay with a backstory saying that the painting was "haunted."

"Hands Resist Him" was bought for $1,025 by Kim Smith, who was then simply inundated with letters from creepy stories about how hallucinations appeared, people really went crazy looking at the work, and demands to burn the painting

) in her expressive, sweeping works was able to preserve the transparency of the fog, the lightness of the sail, and the smooth rocking of the ship on the waves.

Her paintings amaze with their depth, volume, richness, and the texture is such that it is impossible to take your eyes off them.

Warm simplicity of Valentin Gubarev

Primitivist artist from Minsk Valentin Gubarev doesn't chase fame and just does what he loves. His work is incredibly popular abroad, but almost unknown to his compatriots. In the mid-90s, the French fell in love with his everyday sketches and signed a contract with the artist for 16 years. The paintings, which, it would seem, should only be understandable to us, bearers of the “modest charm of undeveloped socialism,” appealed to the European public, and exhibitions began in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and other countries.

Sensual realism of Sergei Marshennikov

Sergei Marshennikov is 41 years old. He lives in St. Petersburg and works in best traditions classical Russian school realistic portrait painting. The heroines of his canvases are women who are tender and defenseless in their half-nakedness. Many of the most famous paintings depict the artist's muse and wife, Natalya.

The Myopic World of Philip Barlow

In the modern age of pictures high resolution and the rise of hyperrealism creativity Philip Barlow(Philip Barlow) immediately attracts attention. However, a certain effort is required from the viewer in order to force himself to look at the blurry silhouettes and bright spots on the author’s canvases. This is probably how they see the world without glasses and contact lenses people suffering from myopia.

Sunny bunnies by Laurent Parselier

The painting of Laurent Parcelier is an amazing world in which there is neither sadness nor despondency. You won’t find gloomy and rainy pictures from him. His canvases contain a lot of light, air and bright colors, which the artist applies with characteristic, recognizable strokes. This creates the feeling that the paintings are woven from a thousand sunbeams.

Urban dynamics in the works of Jeremy Mann

Oil on wood panels American artist Jeremy Mann paints dynamic portraits of the modern metropolis. “Abstract shapes, lines, the contrast of light and dark spots - all create a picture that evokes the feeling that a person experiences in the crowd and bustle of the city, but can also express the calm that is found when contemplating quiet beauty,” says the artist.

The Illusory World of Neil Simon

In the paintings British artist Neil Simone (Neil Simone) everything is not as it seems at first glance. “For me, the world around me is a series of fragile and ever-changing shapes, shadows and boundaries,” says Simon. And in his paintings everything is truly illusory and interconnected. Boundaries are blurred, and stories flow into each other.

Love drama by Joseph Lorasso

An Italian by birth, contemporary American artist Joseph Lorusso transfers onto canvas subjects he observed in everyday life. ordinary people. Hugs and kisses, passionate outbursts, moments of tenderness and desire fill his emotional pictures.

Country life of Dmitry Levin

Dmitry Levin is a recognized master of Russian landscape, who has established himself as a talented representative of the Russian realistic school. The most important source of his art is his attachment to nature, which he loves tenderly and passionately and of which he feels himself a part.

Bright East by Valery Blokhin

In the East everything is different: different colors, different air, different life values and reality is stranger than fiction - this is what a modern artist believes

Painting, if you do not take into account the realists, has always been, is and will be strange. But some paintings are stranger than others.

There are works of art that seem to hit the viewer over the head, stunning and amazing.

Others draw you into thought and a search for layers of meaning and secret symbolism. Some paintings are shrouded in secrets and mystical mysteries, while others surprise with exorbitant prices.

Bright Side carefully reviewed all the main achievements in world painting and selected from them two dozen of the most strange paintings. We deliberately did not include Salvador Dali in this collection, whose works completely fall within the format of this material and are the first to come to mind.

It is clear that “strangeness” is a rather subjective concept and everyone has their own amazing paintings that stand out from other works of art. We will be glad if you share them in the comments and tell us a little about them.

"Scream"

Edvard Munch. 1893, cardboard, oil, tempera, pastel.

National Gallery, Oslo.

The famous painting is completely filled with symbols, allegories and various references - right down to the signature “Jan van Eyck was here”, which turned the painting not just into a work of art, but into a historical document confirming the reality of the event at which the artist was present.

The portrait, supposedly of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife, is one of the most complex works of the Western school of Northern Renaissance painting.

In Russia, over the past few years, the painting has gained great popularity due to Arnolfini’s portrait resemblance to Vladimir Putin.

"Demon Seated"

Mikhail Vrubel. 1890, oil on canvas.

The painting by Mikhail Vrubel surprises with the image of a demon. His sad appearance is not at all similar to the universal human idea of what an evil spirit should look like.

This is an image of the strength of the human spirit, internal struggle, doubt. Tragically clasping his hands, the Demon sits surrounded by flowers, looking into the distance. The composition emphasizes the tightness of his figure, as if squeezed between the upper and lower crossbars of the frame.

The artist himself spoke about his most famous painting: “The demon is not so much an evil spirit as a suffering and sorrowful one, at the same time a powerful, majestic spirit.”

"Apotheosis of War"

Vasily Vereshchagin. 1871, oil on canvas.
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

The metaphor of war in the film is conveyed by the author so accurately and deeply that behind each skull lying in this pile, you begin to see people, their fates and the fates of those who will never see these people again. Vereshchagin himself sarcastically called the canvas a “still life” - it depicts “dead nature.” All the details of the picture, including the yellow color, symbolize death and devastation. The clear blue sky emphasizes the deadness of the picture. The idea of the “Apotheosis of War” is also expressed by scars from sabers and bullet holes on skulls.

Vereshchagin is one of the main Russian battle painters, but he painted wars and battles not because he saw beauty and greatness in them. On the contrary, the artist tried to convey to people his negative attitude towards the war.

One day, Vereshchagin, in the heat of emotion, exclaimed: “I won’t paint any more battle paintings - that’s it! I take what I write too close to my heart, I cry (literally) for the grief of every wounded and killed.” Probably the result of this exclamation was the terrible and bewitching picture “The Apotheosis of War”.

"American Gothic"

Grant Wood. 1930, oil. 74 x 62 cm.

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

The picture with gloomy images of father and daughter is filled with details that indicate the severity, puritanism and retrograde nature of the people depicted. Angry faces, pitchforks right in the middle of the picture, old-fashioned clothes even by the standards of 1930, seams on the farmer’s clothes, repeating the shape of a pitchfork, as a symbol of the threat that is addressed to everyone who encroaches. The canvas is full of gloomy details that make you cringe with discomfort.

“American Gothic” is one of the most recognizable images in American art of the 20th century, the most famous artistic meme of the 20th and 21st centuries.

"Lovers"

Rene Magritte. 1928, oil on canvas.

The painting "Lovers" ("Lovers") exists in two versions. On one canvas, a man and a woman, whose heads are wrapped in a white cloth, kiss, and on the other they “look” at the viewer. The picture surprises and fascinates.

With two figures without faces, Magritte conveyed the idea of the blindness of love. About blindness in every sense: lovers do not see anyone, we do not see their true faces, and besides, lovers are a mystery even to each other. But despite this apparent clarity, we still continue to look at Magritte’s lovers and think about them.

"Walk"

Marc Chagall. 1917, oil on canvas.
State Tretyakov Gallery.

In not a single self-portrait does Frida Kahlo smile: a serious, even mournful face, fused thick eyebrows, a barely noticeable mustache above tightly compressed lips. The artist’s ideas are encrypted in the details, background, and figures that appear next to the author’s image on the canvases. Kahlo's symbolism is based on national traditions and is closely connected with Indian mythology of the pre-Hispanic period.

In one of her best paintings, “The Two Fridas,” she expressed the masculine and feminine principles, united in her by a single circulatory system and demonstrating her integrity.

"Waterloo Bridge. Fog effect"

Claude Monet. 1899, oil on canvas.
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Good name. And who would have thought that this work tells us about the horrors of civil wars.

The painting was made on copper sheet during the week between October 15 and October 22, 1935. According to Miro, this is the result of an attempt to depict the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, a picture of a period of unrest. The canvas depicts the figures of a man and a woman reaching out to embrace each other, but not moving. The enlarged genitals and sinister colors were described by the author as "full of disgust and disgusting sexuality."

"Erosion"

The Polish neo-surrealist is known throughout the world for his amazing paintings in which realities come together to create new ones. It is difficult to consider his extremely detailed and to some extent touching works one by one, but this is the format of our material. We recommend that you read it.

"The hands resist him"

Bill Stoneham. 1972.

This work, of course, cannot be ranked among the masterpieces of world painting, but the fact that it is strange is a fact.

The painting gained notoriety in February 2000 when it was put up for sale on eBay with a backstory saying that the painting was "haunted." “Hands Resist Him” was bought for $1,025 by Kim Smith, who was then simply inundated with letters with creepy stories and demands to burn the painting.

Art can be anything. Some people see the beauty of nature and convey it with a brush or a chisel, some take stunning photographs of the human body, and some find beauty in the terrible - this is the style Caravaggio and Edvard Munch worked in. Contemporary artists they do not lag behind the founding fathers.

1. Dado

Yugoslavian Dado was born in 1933 and died in 2010. At first glance, his work may seem completely ordinary or even pleasant - this is due to the choice color range: Many horror artists choose black or red, but Dado loved pastel shades.

But take a closer look at paintings like The Big Farm from 1963 or The Football Player from 1964, and you will see grotesque creatures in them. Their faces are full of pain or suffering, tumors or extra organs are visible on their bodies, or their bodies are simply irregular shape. In fact, pictures like “The Big Farm” are much more frightening than the sheer horror - precisely because at first glance you don’t notice anything terrible in them.

2. Keith Thompson

Keith Thompson is more of a commercial artist than an artist. He created the monsters for Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim and Scott Westerfield's Leviathan. His work is done in a technique that you'd expect to see on Magic: The Gathering cards rather than in a museum.

Look at his painting “The Creature from Pripyat”: the monster is made from several animals and is terribly ugly, but it gives an excellent idea of Thompson’s technique. The monster even has a story - it is supposedly a product of the Chernobyl disaster. Of course, the monster is somewhat contrived, as if it came straight out of the 1950s, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy.

The SCP Foundation adopted this creature as its mascot, calling it SCP-682. But Thompson still has many similar monsters in his arsenal, and there are worse ones.

3. Junji Ito

On the subject of commercial artists: some of them draw comics. When it comes to horror comics, Junji Ito is a champion. His monsters are not just grotesque: the artist carefully draws every wrinkle, every fold on the creatures’ bodies. This is what scares people, and not the irrationality of monsters.

For example, in his comic "The Riddle of Amigara Folt", he strips people and sends them into a human-shaped hole in solid rock - the closer we see this hole, the scarier it is, but even "from a distance" it seems frightening.

In his comic book series Uzumaki (Spiral), there is a guy obsessed with spirals. At first his obsession seems funny, and then it’s scary. Moreover, it becomes scary even before the hero’s obsession becomes magic, with the help of which he turns a person into something inhuman, but at the same time alive.

Ito's work stands out among all Japanese manga- his “normal” characters look unusually realistic and even cute, and the monsters seem even more creepy against their background.

4. Zdzislaw Beksinski

If an artist says, “I can’t imagine what rationality means in painting,” he’s probably not painting kittens.

Polish painter Zdzislaw Beksinski was born in 1929. For decades, he created nightmarish images in the genre fantastic realism until his terrible death in 2005 (he was stabbed 17 times). Most fruitful period his work spanned the years 1960 - 1980: then he created highly detailed images, which he himself called “photographs of his dreams.”

According to Beksiński, he did not care about the meaning of a particular painting, but some of his works clearly symbolize something. For example, in 1985 he created the painting “Trollforgatok”. The artist grew up in a country devastated by the Second World War, so the black figures in the picture can represent Polish citizens, and the head is a kind of ruthless authority.

The artist himself claimed that he had nothing of the kind in mind. In fact, Beksinski said about this picture that it should be taken as a joke - that’s what truly black humor means.

5. Wayne Barlow

Thousands of artists have tried to depict Hell, but Wayne Barlow clearly succeeded. Even if you haven’t heard his name, you’ve probably seen his work. He took part in the work on such films as James Cameron's Avatar (the director personally praised him), Pacific Rim, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But one of his most outstanding works can be called a book published in 1998 called “Inferno”.

His hell is not just dungeons with demonic lords and armies. Barlow said: “Hell is complete indifference to human suffering.” His demons often show interest in human bodies and souls and behave more like experimenters - they ignore the pain of others. For his demons, people are not objects of hatred at all, but simply a means for idle entertainment, nothing more.

6. Tetsuya Ishida

In Isis's acrylic paintings, people are often transformed into objects such as packaging, conveyor belts, urinals, or even hemorrhoid pillows. He also has visually pleasing paintings of people merging with nature or escaping into magical land your imagination. But such works are much dimmer than paintings in which restaurant workers turn into mannequins pumping food into customers as if they were servicing cars at a gas station.

Regardless of one's opinion of the artist's precision and insight or the vividness of his metaphors, there is no denying that the style of his work is eerie. Any humor in Isis goes hand in hand with disgust and fear. His career came to an end in 2005 when 31-year-old Ishida was hit by a train in what was almost certainly a suicide. The works he left behind are valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

7. Dariusz Zawadzki

Zavadsky was born in 1958. Like Beksinski, he works in the style of eerie fantastic realism. His teachers in art school They told Zavadsky that he did not have very good eyesight and a poor eye, so he would not become an artist. Well, they clearly jumped to conclusions.

Zavadsky's works contain elements of steampunk: he often draws robot-like creatures with working mechanisms visible under their artificial skin. For example, take a look at the 2007 oil painting “Nest.” The poses of the birds are the same as those of living birds, but the frame is clearly metal, barely covered with scraps of skin. The picture may cause disgust, but at the same time it attracts the eye - you want to look at all the details.

8. Joshua Hoffin

Joshua Hoffin was born in 1973 in Emporia, Kansas. He takes terrifying photographs in which fairy tales familiar from childhood take on terrible features - the story, of course, can be recognized, but at the same time its meaning is greatly distorted.

Many of his works look too staged and unnatural to be truly frightening. But there are also series of photographs like “Pickman’s Masterpieces” - this is a tribute to one of Lovecraft’s characters, the artist Pickman.

In the photographs from 2008, which you can see here, is his daughter Chloe. The girl's face shows almost no emotion, and she hardly looks towards the audience. The contrast is scary: family photo on the bedside table, a girl in pink pajamas - and huge cockroaches.

9. Patrizia Piccinini

Piccinini's sculptures are sometimes very different from each other: some sculptures are irregularly shaped motorcycles, others are strange balloons of hot air. But mostly she creates sculptures that are very, very uncomfortable to stand in the same room with. They even look creepy in photographs.

In the 2004 work “Indivisible,” a humanoid is pressed against the back of a normal human child. What is most disturbing is the element of trust and affection - as if the child's innocence was cruelly used to his detriment.

Of course, Piccinini's work is criticized. They even said about “Indivisible” that it was not a sculpture, but some kind of real animal. But no - it’s just a figment of her imagination, and the artist continues to create her works from fiberglass, silicone, and hair.

10. Mark Powell

The works of Australian Mark Powell are truly shocking. His 2012 show features a series of compositions in which fantastic creatures evolve, devour and separate each other from own bodies, multiply and decay. Creature textures and environment are extremely convincing, and the body language of the figures is precisely chosen to make the situations appear as ordinary - and therefore convincing - as possible.

Of course, the Internet could not help but give the artist his due. The aforementioned "SCP Foundation" took the disgusting monster from the image above and made it part of a story called "The Flesh That Hates." There are also many horror stories associated with his work.

2. Paul Gauguin “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?"

897-1898, oil on canvas. 139.1×374.6 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The deeply philosophical painting by the post-impressionist Paul Gauguin was painted in Tahiti, where he fled from Paris. Upon completion of the work, he even wanted to commit suicide, because he believed: “I believe that this painting not only surpasses all my previous ones, but that I will never create something better or even similar.”

In the summer of the late 80s of the last century, many French artists gathered in Pont-Aven (Brittany, France). They came together and almost immediately split into two hostile groups. One group included artists who embarked on the path of quest and were united by the common name “impressionists”. According to the second group, led by Paul Gauguin, this name was abusive. P. Gauguin was already under forty at that time. Surrounded by the mysterious aura of a traveler who had explored foreign lands, he had a great life experience both fans and imitators of his work.

Both camps were divided based on their position. If the Impressionists lived in attics or garrets, other artists occupied the best rooms of the Gloanek Hotel, dined in the large and most nice hall restaurant, where members of the first group were not allowed. However, clashes between factions not only did not prevent P. Gauguin from working, on the contrary, they to some extent helped him realize those features that caused him a violent protest. The rejection of the analytical method of the impressionists was a manifestation of his complete rethinking of the tasks of painting. The desire of the impressionists to capture everything they saw, their artistic principle- giving their paintings the appearance of something accidentally spotted - did not correspond to the imperious and energetic nature of P. Gauguin.

He was even less satisfied with the theoretical and artistic research of J. Seurat, who sought to reduce painting to the cold, rational use of scientific formulas and recipes. The pointillistic technique of J. Seurat, his methodical application of paint with cross strokes of the brush and dots irritated Paul Gauguin with its monotony.

The artist’s stay in Martinique among nature, which seemed to him a luxurious, fabulous carpet, finally convinced P. Gauguin to use only undecomposed color in his paintings. Together with him, the artists who shared his thoughts proclaimed “Synthesis” as their principle - that is, the synthetic simplification of lines, shapes and colors. The purpose of this simplification was to convey the impression of maximum color intensity and to omit everything that weakens such an impression. This technique formed the basis of the old decorative painting frescoes and stained glass.

P. Gauguin was very interested in the question of the relationship between color and paints. In his painting, he tried to express not the accidental and not the superficial, but the abiding and essential. For him, only the creative will of the artist was the law, and he saw his artistic task in the expression of inner harmony, which he understood as a synthesis of the frankness of nature and the mood of the artist’s soul, alarmed by this frankness. P. Gauguin himself spoke about it this way: “I do not take into account the truth of nature, visible externally... Correct this false perspective, which distorts the subject due to its truthfulness... You should avoid dynamism. Let everything breathe with you peace and peace of mind , avoid moving poses... Each of the characters should be in a static position." And he shortened the perspective of his paintings, bringing it closer to the plane, deploying the figures in a frontal position and avoiding foreshortening. That is why the people depicted by P. Gauguin are motionless in the paintings: they are like statues sculpted with a large chisel without unnecessary details.

Period mature creativity Gauguin's work began in Tahiti, and it was here that the problem of artistic synthesis received its full development. In Tahiti, the artist abandoned much of what he knew: in the tropics, forms are clear and definite, shadows are heavy and hot, and contrasts are especially sharp. Here all the tasks he set in Pont-Aven were resolved by themselves. P. Gauguin's paints become pure, without brushstrokes. His Tahitian paintings give the impression of oriental carpets or frescoes, so harmoniously the colors in them are brought to a certain tone.

The work of P. Gauguin of this period (meaning the artist’s first visit to Tahiti) seems a wonderful fairy tale, which he experienced among the primitive, exotic nature of distant Polynesia. In the Mataye area, he finds a small village, buys himself a hut, on one side of which the ocean splashes, and on the other, a mountain with a huge crevice is visible. The Europeans had not yet reached here, and life seemed real to P. Gauguin earthly paradise. He submits to the slow rhythm of Tahitian life, absorbs bright colors blue sea, occasionally covered with green waves crashing noisily on the coral reefs.

From the first days, the artist established simple, human relations with the Tahitians. The work begins to captivate P. Gauguin more and more. He makes numerous sketches and sketches from life, in any case he tries to capture on canvas, paper or wood the characteristic faces of the Tahitians, their figures and poses - in the process of work or during rest. During this period he creates world-famous famous paintings "Spirit of the Dead is awake”, “Oh, are you jealous?”, “Conversation”, “Tahitian pastorals”.

But if in 1891 the path to Tahiti seemed radiant to him (he was traveling here after some artistic victories in France), then the second time he went to his beloved island as a sick man who had lost most of his illusions. Everything along the way irritated him: forced stops, useless expenses, road inconveniences, customs quibbles, intrusive fellow travelers...

He had not been to Tahiti for only two years, and so much had changed here. The European raid destroyed the original life of the natives, everything seems to P. Gauguin an unbearable jumble: electric lighting in Papeete - the capital of the island, and unbearable carousels near the royal castle, and the sounds of a phonograph disturbing the former silence.

This time the artist stops in the Punoauia area, on west coast Tahiti, on a rented plot of land, he is building a house overlooking the sea and mountains. Hoping to firmly establish himself on the island and create conditions for work, he spares no expense in organizing his home and soon, as is often the case, he is left without money. P. Gauguin counted on friends who, before the artist left France, borrowed a total of 4,000 francs from him, but they were in no hurry to return them. Despite the fact that he sent them numerous reminders of his duty, complained about his fate and extremely plight...

By the spring of 1896, the artist finds himself in the grip of the most severe need. Added to this is the pain in his broken leg, which becomes covered in ulcers and causes him unbearable suffering, depriving him of sleep and energy. The thought of the futility of efforts in the struggle for existence, of the failure of all artistic plans makes him think about suicide more and more often. But as soon as P. Gauguin feels the slightest relief, the artist’s nature takes over in him, and pessimism dissipates before the joy of life and creativity.

However, they were rare moments, and misfortunes followed one after another with catastrophic regularity. And the most terrible news for him was the news from France about the death of his beloved daughter Alina. Unable to survive the loss, P. Gauguin took a huge dose of arsenic and went into the mountains so that no one could stop him. The suicide attempt led to him spending the night in terrible agony, without any help and completely alone.

For a long time the artist was in complete prostration and could not hold a brush in his hands. His only consolation was a huge canvas (450 x 170 cm), painted by him before his suicide attempt. He called the painting "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?" and in one of his letters he wrote: “Before I died, I put into it all my energy, such a sorrowful passion in my terrible circumstances, and a vision so clear, without correction, that traces of haste disappeared and all life was visible in it.”

P. Gauguin worked on the painting in terrible tension, although he had been nurturing the idea for it in his imagination for a long time, he himself could not say exactly when the idea of this painting first arose. Individual fragments of this monumental work were written by him in different years and in other works. For example, the female figure from “Tahitian Pastorals” is repeated in this picture next to the idol, central figure fruit picker was encountered in the golden sketch “A Man Picking Fruit from a Tree”...

Dreaming of expanding the possibilities of painting, Paul Gauguin sought to give his painting the character of a fresco. To this end, he leaves the two upper corners (one with the title of the painting, the other with the artist’s signature) yellow and not filled with painting - “like a fresco damaged at the corners and superimposed on a wall of gold.”

In the spring of 1898, he sent the painting to Paris, and in a letter to the critic A. Fontaine said that his goal was “not to create a complex chain of ingenious allegories that would need to be solved. On the contrary, the allegorical content of the painting is extremely simple - but not in the sense of an answer to the questions posed, but in the sense of the very formulation of these questions.” Paul Gauguin was not going to answer the questions he put in the title of the picture, because he believed that they were and would be a terrible and the sweetest mystery for human consciousness. Therefore, the essence of the allegories depicted on this canvas lies in the purely pictorial embodiment of this mystery hidden in nature, the sacred horror of immortality and the mystery of existence.

On his first visit to Tahiti, P. Gauguin looked at the world with the enthusiastic eyes of a big child-people, for whom the world had not yet lost its novelty and lush originality. To his childishly exalted gaze, colors invisible to others were revealed in nature: emerald grass, sapphire sky, amethyst sun shadow, ruby flowers and red gold of Maori skin. Tahitian paintings by P. Gauguin of this period glow with a noble golden glow, like the stained glass windows of Gothic cathedrals, and shimmer with regal splendor Byzantine mosaics, are fragrant with rich spills of colors.

The loneliness and deep despair that possessed him on his second visit to Tahiti forced P. Gauguin to see everything only in black. However, the master’s natural flair and his colorist’s eye did not allow the artist to completely lose his taste for life and its colors, although he created a gloomy canvas, painting it in a state of mystical horror.

So what does this picture actually contain? Like oriental manuscripts, which should be read from right to left, the content of the picture unfolds in the same direction: step by step the flow is revealed human life- from its origin to death, which carries the fear of non-existence.

In front of the viewer, on a large, horizontally elongated canvas, is depicted the bank of a forest stream, in dark waters which reflects mysterious, indefinite shadows. On the other bank there is dense, lush tropical vegetation, emerald grasses, dense green bushes, strange blue trees, “growing as if not on earth, but in paradise.”

The tree trunks strangely twist and intertwine, forming a lacy network, through which in the distance one can see the sea with the white crests of coastal waves, a dark purple mountain on a neighboring island, blue sky- "a spectacle of virgin nature that could be paradise."

In the near shot of the picture, on the ground, free of any plants, a group of people is located around a stone statue of a deity. The characters are not united by any one event or common action, each is busy with his own and immersed in himself. The peace of the sleeping baby is guarded by a large black dog; "three women squatting, as if listening to themselves, frozen in anticipation of some unexpected joy. A young man standing in the center plucks a fruit from a tree with both hands... One figure, deliberately huge, contrary to the laws of perspective... raises his hand, looking in surprise at the two characters who dare to think about their fate."

Next to the statue, a lonely woman, as if mechanically, walks to the side, immersed in a state of intense, concentrated reflection. A bird is moving towards her on the ground. On the left side of the canvas, a child sitting on the ground brings a fruit to his mouth, a cat laps from a bowl... And the viewer asks himself: “What does all this mean?”

At first glance, it seems everyday life, but besides direct meaning, each image carries a poetic allegory, a hint of the possibility of figurative interpretation. For example, the motif of a forest stream or spring water gushing out of the ground is Gauguin’s favorite metaphor for the source of life, the mysterious beginning of existence. The sleeping baby represents the chastity of the dawn of human life. A young man picking a fruit from a tree and women sitting on the ground to the right embody the idea of the organic unity of man with nature, the naturalness of his existence in it.

A man with a raised hand, looking at his friends in surprise, is the first glimmer of concern, the initial impulse to comprehend the secrets of the world and existence. Others reveal insolence and misery human mind, the mystery and tragedy of the spirit, which are contained in the inevitability of man’s knowledge of his mortal destiny, the brevity of earthly existence and the inevitability of the end.

Paul Gauguin himself gave many explanations, but he warned against the desire to see in his painting common symbols, it’s too straightforward to decipher images, much less look for answers. Some art historians believe that the artist’s depressed state, which led him to attempt suicide, was expressed in a strict, laconic artistic language. They note that the picture is overloaded small details, which do not clarify the general concept, but only confuse the viewer. Even the explanations in the master’s letters cannot dispel the mystical fog that he put into these details.

P. Gauguin himself regarded his work as a spiritual testament, perhaps that is why the painting became a pictorial poem, in which specific images were transformed into a sublime idea, and matter into spirit. The plot of the canvas is dominated by a poetic mood, rich in subtle shades and inner meaning. However, the mood of peace and grace is already shrouded in a vague anxiety of contact with the mysterious world, giving rise to a feeling of hidden anxiety, the painful unsolvability of the hidden mysteries of existence, the mystery of a person’s coming into the world and the mystery of his disappearance. In the picture, happiness is darkened by suffering, spiritual torment is washed by the sweetness of physical existence - “golden horror, covered with joy.” Everything is inseparable, just like in life.

P. Gauguin deliberately does not correct incorrect proportions, striving at all costs to preserve his sketch style. He valued this sketchiness and unfinishedness especially highly, believing that it is precisely this that brings a living stream into the canvas and imparts to the picture a special poetry that is not characteristic of things that are finished and overly finished.