Wednesday 5 May 2010

Norwegian – and Lovecraftian – art

As anyone who has read H.P. Lovecraft "The Call of Cthulhu" (or seen the film adaptation) knows, artists have always been particiularily sensitive to the messages of the Great Old Ones. They often end up painting Mythos motifs whether they realize it or not. And Norwegian artsts are not immune from this.

One particularily shining - and recent - example is Johannes Høie, while a restrospective of Norwegian surrealist art at Oslo's Stenersen Museum demonstrated that not only young artists like Mr. Høie have fallen under the spell of the Mythos. Lord Bassington-Bassington recently waddled through this exhibition, and was struck by the sheer number of clearly Lovecraftian themes being on display.

Some of these pictures are just snapped with an iPhone - we apologise for the poor quality, but thought it worthwhile to share them with our readers anyway.



Adolph Denis Horn's "Demon and Cathedral with light" from 1971 clearly depicts the multi-dimensional chaos that is Yog-Sothoth. While Horn's website also has some great depictions that can only be dream-sent images of R'Lyeh.



While Bjørn Bjarre's "Abstract feeling 61" is an obvious depiction of a shoggoth.



And this picture by Marianne Heske obviously shows the unnatural matings happening around a certain decrepit Massachusets fishing town, and the so-called "Innsmouth look" that results from it.



While Hege E. Nyborg's "Hearing Voices II" should require no comment for any Lovecraftian...

(In Sweden, of course, people with a hankering for Lovecraftian art have Mr. Kvant of Scania for guidance).

9 comments:

  1. And isn't that the colour out of space I see over there in a corner?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes. The Dunwich Horror was also represented. Or maybe I'm now so Lovecraftian that I see HPL references everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roots? Those are not bloody roots - they are the tentacles of the Universe!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The one with the octopus looks lika a traditional japanese woodcut.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Don B: I agree, and I suspect that's the point. She is a very talented artist as far as I can tell. But then I don't know much about art, I just know what I like - like droopy ears.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well... the Innsmouth look is rather common some remote places in Norway.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Indeed, my good Mullah. And we all know what that says about mating rituals there. http://www.na24.no/propaganda/article2868957.ece

    ReplyDelete
  8. Mmmm. Deep One pr0n...

    Uhm... did you say something?

    ReplyDelete
  9. http://www.benjaminlawson.co.uk/images1.html

    ReplyDelete