Shades of Fuseli

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on March 30, 2007

Going through stills from Neil Marshall’s UK horror film The Descent (2005) in preparation for a discussion of its merits in the most recent issue of Video Watchdog, I was struck by how this image…

The Descent

… of a subterranean ghoul crouched above a prone spelunker reminded me of Henry Fuseli’s classic Gothic painting “The Nightmare.”

The Nightmare

Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, Switzerland in 1741, the artist had been pointed toward the priesthood until a scandal compelled him to flee the country. Traveling Europe, Fuseli showed his drawings to British painter Joshua Reynolds, who suggested a pilgrimage to Italy (where Füssli became the more Italianate Fuseli). Fuseli is famous for his subtly grotesque paintings of supernatural subjects. Uninterested in the verisimiliitude of human anatomy, he is said to have sworn “Damn Nature! She always puts me out.”

Gothic "The Nightmare" remains Fuseli’s signature work, depicting a swooning woman on whose belly sits a demonic imp, a metaphor for sexual abandon. "The Nightmare" has become a touchstone in the horror genre, having been used to illustrate various editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus. (The Fuseli-Shelley axis goes back even further, as Shelley’s free-thinking mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, once floated the idea of a ménage-á-trois to Fuseli’s wife, Sophia.) Ken Russell’s Gothic (1990), which purported to tell how Shelley’s novel was born of a galvanic weekend in the company of husband Percy, Lord Byron, Dr. John Polidori and Claire Clairemont, used “The Nightmare” as part of its shock syllabus and in its poster art. The "Fuseli Monster” was played by 4’ 1” stuntman Kiran Shah, at one time (you should pardon the expression) short-listed to play R2D2 in Star Wars (1977).

You’ll also find the haunted spirit of Henry Fuseli in the ad art for William Castle’s The Night Walker (1964). Thanks go to my Video Watchdog editor/publisher Tim Lucas, who reminded me of the connection in yesterday's Video WatchBlog. (Tim suggests a link between The Night Walker and Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.) The set-bound and draggy Night Walker is not one of Castle’s finest hours but the poster is a beaut… all credit going to artist Reynold Brown. In the employ of American International Pictures, Brown made even AIP's most meager offerings seem positively mythic. Here, he changes up Fuseli's formula, substituting a gargoyle (and in so doing, anticipating the classic 1965 Jonny Quest episode "House of the Seven Gargoyles") for the incubus of old, but the assocation is unmistakable. Almost 200 years after his 1825 death, Fuseli is still giving us nightmares.

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7 Responses Shades of Fuseli

Posted By mary : March 31, 2007 6:22 am

Poet/artist William Blake, who quarrelled with other artists, had fairly nice things to say about Fuseli—if you think "the only man that e'er I knew/ Who did not make me almost spew…" is complimentary. Fuseli lives on in movie art–that's great!

Posted By mary : March 31, 2007 6:22 am

Posted By Tommy T. : March 31, 2007 7:01 pm

Hey, the poster for THE NIGHT WALKER made me want to see that William Castle movie so bad! Of course it couldn't live up to that poster! It also didn't have any of the typical Castle promotional gimmicks, did it? I guess that makes it an atypical Castle horror plus the fact that he managed to get formerly married couple Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor to star in it together.

Posted By Astrid#1 : November 8, 2007 12:33 am

can someone tell me what's the real meaning of the mary wollstonecraft piture at the top? because i think that it has anything to do with her, or how is THE POSTER WALKER relate it to her???…..

Posted By RHS : November 8, 2007 11:07 am

Astrid, locking down the meaning of a particular piece of art is always a tricky thing. The artist can intend one thing and the viewer see another… who's right? Who <i>should</i> be right? I think the story goes that Fuseli was inspired to paint "The Nightmare" by bad dreams he experienced after eating roast beef before bedtime. Certainly, the work (and its variations… he painted a couple different versions) draw a parallel between the sleeping woman and the imp crouched over her, watching/guarding/threatening her. Many have drawn from these elements the interpretation that the imp represents a kind of bestial, hairy and (for the time) deviant sexuality forbidden to the woman in her waking hours.As for how the poster to THE NIGHT WALKER is related to the Fuseli painting… purely as a visual reference. It's like the way the string music heard under the shower murder in PSYCHO has been endlessly sampled in horror movies since then… a really resonant horror trope (image, sound, sensation) lives forever. I refer you to Medusa's recent post about monsters carrying women in the accepted over-the-threshold fashion. Somebody did that once in film and it's become standard (monster) operating practice ever since.What comes around goes around.

Posted By cso : November 8, 2007 11:54 am

Hey, I never noticed before but is that a "demon" horse in the upper left hand corner of the painting. Talk about a being blungeoned metaphorically. A disturbing image all around which I am sure was the purpose. It must have shocked hell out the pre-Victorians.

Posted By RHS : November 8, 2007 5:45 pm

It must have shocked hell out the pre-Victorians. Well, that was like shooting fish in a barrel.

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