Woodcuts and Witches - The Public Domain Review

The Public Domain Review is an excellent source of obscure illustrations and related esoteric essays.  Where else can you learn about Pre-Raphaelite wombat obsessions?  Wombats aside, collections and essays include much for aficionados of horror and fantasy.  The "Ghosts and Occult" collection ranges from this 17th century engraving to 19th century magician's manuals to some very strange Persian demons from the 1920s.

The Sorceress by Jan van de Velde II (1626)

 

 

16th century occultist Edward Kelley raises the dead.

 

Neither demon face seems to be enjoying this...

Whether horror or not, there are some incredible and very unusual collections here.

Spooky Ukiyo-e

Hitsune sees the skull beneath the skin (and everywhere else)

I recently came across this article in the Japan Times about an exhibit of ukiyo-e horror art, with lurid, grotesque illustrations from ghost stories and folklore.  Pictured above is a triptych from "The Dream of Hitsune", a kabuki drama, in which the villain is prevented from further mischief by a vision of the bones of his previous victims.

The Art of Zdzisław Beksiński: “Photographing Dreams”

Polish artist Beksinski(1929-2005) created abstract and surreal art in a variety of media, but he’s best known for the fantastic, sometimes disturbing paintings he produced in the 1970s and 1980s.  

Skeletons, corpses, sinister shadowy figures, dark landscapes, and looming cliffs and buildings abound. 

 

Speaking of these paintings in particular, Beksiński said, “I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams.”  In some cases, he seems to have succeeded.    

Beksiński moved on to digital art in the 1990s, and was murdered in 2005.  There are a few online galleries of his work here and here.

James Lewicki: He made American Folklore Creepy

James Lewicki (1917-1979) illustrated many magazine covers and books for LIFE and others, mostly in the 50’s and 60’s.  I encountered him as a small child reading the The Life Treasury Of American Folklore (1961).  The Treasury stemmed from a series in LIFE Magazine, “The Folklore of America”, conceived and illustrated by Lewicki, which appeared in 1959-1960.

From the first full-page illustration of the “Sea of Darkness”, with gigantic sea monsters and blood-red waves, I was hooked.

The Sea of Darkness

 Some of the other illustrations were nice too…

A well-endowed mermaid lures Pascagoula Indians away from Jesus

 

…but I was fascinated by the lurid, scary images Lewicki produced.  Many of the people (and animals) seemed to be crazed and bloodthirsty, with staring eyes and overly-red mouths.  Even many of the illustrations for non-spooky tales were themselves spooky. 

The (Zombie?) Angel of Hadley

The images burned into my brain, and for a while there were some pages I had to skip past, but I kept going back to the Treasury again and again.  I recently flipped through the book 20-some years later, and there they were.  They’d been lurking there all those years…   

Bras Coupé

  

Sedna's amputated fingers become marine mammals

Ghost Pirates of Manhattan

  

Loup-Garou Attack!

The one illustration that really gave me the willies was the witch woman on pages 172-173, spinning off her skin.  Good story, too:  “As he watched, she spun her entire skin off her body as easy as the shucks off an ear of corn.  When it was all off, she was revealed as an enormous, tawny-yellow cat.  She took the skin and chucked it under the bed.  “Lay there, skin,” she told it, “with that fool husband of mine snoring in the bed until I come back.  I’m goin to have me some fun.””

The Witch Woman

Someone else, probably scarred for life by these images like me, even went about creating a life-size model of the witch woman.

The Treasury itself has a wide range of stories from 1492 to World War II, including a number of unusual ones.  But, needless to say, the illustrations were the most memorable part for me.