The sun is shining and out from the cracks I, creaking, coughing crawl. It is Easter bank holiday Monday here in the springtime April of southern England and I offer to you my first blog post of the year. If we observe the solar calendar, which by heritage I claim, I am actually not that… Read More In Surreal Life: ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’
As if by magic it is barely June any longer, but one witch flies, still, through the sky. The month may have turned long ago – whilst I was soaring through the night myself, as it happens – but I have one last tale to discuss before May’s Season of the Witch fades completely. Today’s… Read More Hawai’i, History, & the Unexpected Gothic: ‘The Hala Tree Walks in Darkness’
The Gothic has always been an inclusive space, with room for voices from all sorts of marginalised spaces. Deciding who to celebrate (belatedly) this World Pride Day, I was happily spoilt for choice. As founding father and author of the earliest Gothic novel, Horace Walpole (who is commonly believed to have been gay) paved the… Read More Paris Was a Woman, Bristol her Admirer
The Season of the Witch is half over and there is so much yet to explore. Soon I hope to take you on a literary journey of the witch as character, but in the meantime, I have enlisted some help. 𝕬𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝕳𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖊𝖉 I could think of no one better to dive deep into the canvas… Read More Aesthetically Hoarded Guest Post: Witches of Western Art
Today I am delighted to bring to your attention the incomparable creator of tiny cartoon tube socks, known around the internet as Devon is a Devon. Artist Devon Sherman brings colour and comedy to the black bile of Burton’s Melancholy, and explains why it is not as depressing an endeavour as it may sound! Robert… Read More Devon is a Devon is a Burton: The Anatomy of Melancholy and the Artist
Leaving the modern glass front on Evans Way, Boston, behind, a dimly lit tunnel transports its visitors deep into an inner-city oasis. An opulent garden blooms under a glass roof far above. Walls rise on every side with windows and archways beckoning to the inside beyond. Everything is lavish, palatial, and foreign to Massachusetts. This… Read More Deliriously Glorious: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Describing himself as “a fetishist for reflections, saturated colors, details and religious icons,” Seigar is a photographer, a high school teacher, and an English philologist. His ‘Plastic People’ series is “a study on anthropology and sociology that focuses on the humanisation of the mannequins he finds in the shop windows all over the world.” There… Read More The Uncanny as we Picture it: Freud and the Photographer
Have you ever been dazzled by the shining lights and daring feats performed beneath the big top? Have you ever, even just for a moment, wanted to run away with the circus? Having done just that, Alia Ripley, touring circus performer, actor, and aspiring director, joins Generally Gothic to discuss the role of social commentary… Read More Beneath the Big Top: Interview with a Circus Artist
The story begins “250 years ago, on an abandoned patch of land near London’s Waterloo, [when] showman, entrepreneur and equestrian rider Philip Astley drew out a circle in the ground and filled it with astounding physical acts. This spectacle was the world’s very first circus. […] Every circus, anywhere, began at this moment in 1768.”… Read More ‘Sawdust & Sequins: The Art of the Circus’
Forgotten in the Mitten is an online shop filled with “forgotten or discarded” items, based in Michigan, USA – nicknamed the ‘Mitten State’ after the shape created on mapping its outline. Everything, including found photographs, oddities, and antiques, is handpicked by treasure-collector and shop-owner, Erica, who joins Generally Gothic to discuss her obsession with the… Read More Found Circus Photographs: Forgotten in the Mitten Interview
Frida Kahlo was a painter.Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera. Divorced him. Married him again.Frida Kahlo was still a painter. The 1933 headline, below, hopefully shocks in its blatant sexism and denigration of a widely adored artist. It also serves as a stark reminder that, during her own lifetime, Kahlo was not the celebrated icon we… Read More Viva la Vida: the Endurance of Frida
Generally Gothic 