What Fright Looks Like

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch lived from 1864 to 1944. Walking in Oslo one evening as the sun was setting he was struck by a vision. He wrote, "looking out across flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the deep blue fjord and city [ … ] I felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature."


The Scream, 1893, oil on cardboard, 36 x 29 inches, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

The Scream was Munch's record of his experience that evening. Now the painting has become an icon of anxiety. This is largely down to the powerful simplicity of the face. The face is framed by the palms pressed to its hallow cheeks and contains almost nothing but mouth and eyes, wide-open and aghast. Here is a primary image of fear. It was a primary image of fear before Munch even painted it.

The Scream is world famous image and has gone on to be reproduced, copied, messed-with and recast in countless ways. The pop artist Andy Warhol had a go, as did The Simpsons. The murderous lunatic in the Wes Craven’s Scream movies wears a mask based on the face in the painting. The same mask is always a big seller at this time of year, Halloween. So, independently of the original painting, The Scream lives.

The painting also had a pre-life. Munch heard an “infinite scream pass through nature” but how did he find a face for it? He went to the museum. During his time in Paris an Inca mummy went on display there, Munch went to see it. The body had come from Peru. It had been bound and buried in a jar.


The mummy is still in Paris, in the Musée de l'Homme.

It can be imagined that, when Munch looked upon the mummy, he had found what fright might look like. He painted its portrait and he sent it out into the world. It is still with us today.

The Girl With Many Eyes

Tim Burton is the director of Ed Wood, Planet of the Apes and the 1989 version of Batman. My favourite of his movies is probably Edward Scissorhands. It’s the standard 'boy meets girl' kind of story, but instead of hands this boy has scissors on the end of each arm. These unusual appendages come between him and his beloved.

Edward Scissorhands is typical of Burton’s work, he is interested in outcasts, oddballs and teenage freaks. Apart from making movies he has also written and illustrated a book of poems featuring a wide range of strange youths, all struggling to belong. It is called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories and it is a very funny collection of rhythms. Here’s an example:

The Girl With Many Eyes

One day in the park
I had quite a surprise
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
her poetry classes
and the problems she’d have
if she ever wore glasses.

It’s great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories is published by Faber and Faber.

You can watch the trailer for Edward Scissorhands here.

Goya's Witches

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter who lived between 1746 and 1828. He knew about monsters and witches.


Section of The Spell 1797-98. Oil on canvas, 44 x 32cm. Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.

In The Spell a coven are ganging up a terrified man. What a line-up of witchy wickedness they are! One is sticking a pin into a voodoo doll. Another is carrying a basket of dead babies. In this painting, from around 1798, you can see how old the typical image of a witch is. They could be trick-or-treaters dressed in today’s Halloween masks and costumes. All they lack are pointed hats and broomsticks.

That is the problem with the painting. These are nasty witches certainly, but are they really scary? Don’t they look like they are trying too hard? I think this painting has lost its power because it is now an old-fashioned idea of what witches look like.

Goya could do better witches than them …


Witches in the Air 1797-98. Oil on canvas, 43.5 x 30.5 cm. Musea Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Witches in the Air still rates high on the fright-o-meter. These witches wear pointed hats but are unusual in most other ways. They fly but need no broomsticks, they are young and, most importantly, they are male. I don’t know where the idea of witching being a purely female pursuit came from, it is by now the common idea, but it was not accepted in Goya’s time that only girls could grow to be witches.

In the painting a few witches have flown down and have scooped a man away from his friends. One survivor is making a run for it with a sheet over his head. He has his thumbs stuck out between the index and second fingers of each hand. This gesture is called the figa and it is to ward away evil.

This painting is not only scary because it features different kinds of witches from those we are used to. It is the way it is painted. It seems the victim has been picked-on at random. The picture feels like the snapshoot of a crime-in-progress. The witnesses and the inclusion of a commonplace donkey make it seem like a rural scene that has gone suddenly wrong. The witches are not frail wispy things cackling in the shadows. They are painted brightly. They are healthy, they look like they work-out. This coven is solidly real. The have man-handled their victim into the air. He is kicking and screaming. The witches are leaning in and —the horror— they are eating him.