Disturbing pieces of art from history

Disturbing Pieces of Art from History

Overviews The media is often criticized for showing violent and disturbing imagery. Movies, TV, video games, tabletop RPGs, comic books, and various other things have all gone through periods where they're blamed for exposing children to dark and unsettling things. But as these fine art examples prove, violent and disturbing imagery is nothing new.

Andy Warhol - Big Electric Chair

Andy Warhol is most famous for his pop art pictures of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, but he also dabbled in some darker works, including his chilling piece, Big Electric Chair. The painting is based on a photograph of the former execution chamber at Sing Sing prison in New York.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Triumph of Death

An army of skeletons attacks peasants and royalty alike in Bruegel's The Triumph of Death.

Odilon Redon - Smiling Spider

If you're arachnophobic or just generally not a fan of small, many-legged critters, you might want to avoid some of Odilon Redon's works. This is just one of a couple of paintings displaying the emotions of a weirdly human-faced spider.

Hieronymous Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights

This is but a detailed view of just one part of Bosch's famous Garden of Earthly Delights. The original is a triptych--a single work split among three panels--and the section here is merely from the bottom-right of the right-hand panel.

Henry Fuseli - The Nightmare

Fuseli's most famous painting, The Nightmare, may not seem creepy in the traditional sense. The incubus, by today's standards, looks a little like a cartoonish gremlin, for example.