Category: art

The Menaced Assassin

René Magritte, The Menaced Assassin (1927)

“In this eerie surrealist painting, a murderer nonchalantly haunts the scene of his crime, unaware that it is surrounded by detectives who wait to pounce on the perpetrator. How long have they been watching? It seems that the voyeurs at the window and the bowler-hatted men, one armed with a club and another with a net, who stand concealed in the room must have been there when the woman was killed. They are complicit. Magritte’s deadpan art unsettles by melting boundaries between reality and fantasy. Here he reveals that crime and punishment are mirrors of each other, that detectives and police officers are mysteriously dependent on the existence of crime.”

From The Guardian: The top 10 crime scenes in art

All Saints’ Day

In honor of All Saints’ Day, here are gruesome paintings of their trials. Visit Daydream Tourist’s Shocking Paintings of Martyred Saints for a full article and more paintings.

Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew
Giovanni Bellini – The Murder of St Peter the Martyr (detail), 1509, Courtauld Gallery, London
Following his decapitation in 258 C.E., St. Denis is said to have picked up his head, walked 6 miles, and given a sermon. St. Denis Picking up His Head, 19th century, Panthéon murals, Paris (Photo)

Seance

This 1920 “spirit photo” by William Hope claims to show a spirit hand moving the table. (Via the National Media Museum’s Flickr page)
In the 1910s, magician William S. Marriott demonstrates how he could make a table appear to levitate with his foot. (From the Mary Evans Picture Library/Harry Price)
An engraving from the April 2, 1887, edition of “Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper” shows a séance with a floating guitar and a spirit hand writing messages. (Courtesy of MysteriousPlanchette.com)
The sheet music for 1920’s “Weegee Weegee Tell Me Do” shows lovers playing with a talking board. (From the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University)
This 1865 broadsheet reads, “These Pictures are intended to show that Modern Spiritualism of A.D. 1865 … was described and practised thousands of years since under the names of Witchcraft.” (Via WikiCommons)

Images and captions from an interesting and detailed article on spiritualism from Collectors Weekly, Ghosts in the Machines: The Devices and Daring Mediums That Spoke for the Dead.