god i can never stop thinking about certain sculptures used in modern art and how they can be used to elicit the beautiful and terrible feeling of true and genuine horror in ways that a lot of horror movies can never do
like when you ask peopleย โwhat is horror?โ theyโll tend to give examples of monsters, of killers, of dark places, of sharp teeth and too many legs and lots and lots of blood. which is true, that can be used as horror! but iโd like to call that โthe horror of being eaten/hurt/killedโ or more succinctly โthe horror of vulnerabilityโ. itโs a horror that something, whether itโs a killer or a monster or some phenomenon, has the ability to cause us harm. we see large amounts of teeth and we thinkย โthat thing is going to tear us to pieces with those teethโ or we see spilled blood and we thinkย โsomeone has been hurt, thereโs a chance we can be hurt too by whatever spilled this bloodโ.
but what certain modern sculptures can do is elicit a very physical visceral reaction of a completely different kind of horror.ย
itโs โthe horror that something is a thing that SHOULD not exist, and you are absolutely powerless to understand what it is, but it is existing in your space, right now, it is real and you cannot make it unreal no matter what you doโ
or perhaps, in a shorter fashion, itโsย โthe horror of wrongnessโ
like one of the sculptures that made me feel this way is this sculpture here, named โMonekanaโ located in the American Art Museum in Washington D.C:
โokay,โ you say, with a shrug.ย โitโs a horse made of wood? whatโs so scary about that?โ. but this is the lie of the photograph! a photograph of a sculpture rarely grasps the experience of standing next to a sculpture. you have to picture yourself walking into this room, practically devoid of people, and coming face to face with this sculpture that is very large and very real.
and your brain screams thatย โTHIS IS WRONG. MAKE IT GO AWAY. THIS IS WRONGโ, like at any moment you expect it to move, to twist its head, to follow you with eyes that arenโt simply there. it looks like a horse but it is no horse. you could almost argue that maybe it isnโt even an art piece at all, but it wandered in from god knows what kind of world and itโs blending in with everything else. maybe itโs fooling you. maybe it isnโt.
anyways, iโm not trying to say that this sculpture in particular is SUPPOSED to be scary, it may make other people feel nothing at all (or even positive feelings!), but what iโm trying to say is that feeling i had that day, when i saw this thing, when i felt this fearful instinct to stay away and not stare, itโs THAT feeling that i feel so many writers and makers of horror donโt completely understand. you donโt need teeth. you donโt need blood. you donโt need to make Spooky Scary Skeletons or chainsaw-wielding villains. all you need is to create something wrong in its existence, something to make parts of us fear the fact that we canโt entirely rationalize what weโre seeing.
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
