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
Madeline Miller’s 2018 international number 1 bestseller, Circe, takes classical Greek literature, in turn based upon classical Greek mythology, as its subject. The title character is perhaps most famous for her appearance in Homer’s ancient epic poem, The Odyssey. This original text follows a war hero named Odysseus on his journey home after ten years… Read More Stone upon Stone: ‘Circe’ Readalong
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’
The sky is grey and filled with drizzle so British it could only be New England west of the Atlantic. The train slowly fills, stop by stop, with tourists, commuters, and the occasional resident in uniform black. The train pulls in and everyone piles out, following the locals into Salem Town. Leaving Washington Street for… Read More A Walk Through Salem: A Photo Essay
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
Let’s Talk about Death Last month, a shocking pink banner circulated Bristol. Adorned with a colourful moth and an unthreatening green skull, ‘Death: The Human Experience’, it read. Advertising Bristol Museum and Art Gallery’s most recent exhibition, the colourful design attempted to rebrand the morose subject of death. Outside, as tulips began to emerge in… Read More ‘Death: The Human Experience’ Exhibition
Neither Porridge nor Clog-Dancing: The Virago World of Angela Carter [Castle Sarah Woodfine, 2005. Photo credit: Hannah, Generally Gothic, 2017] The white walls of Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy art gallery are lined with mystical, dark, dream-like artwork. A giant snow-globe, twin baby heads in a gravy dish, and a sculpture of a girl sleeping… Read More ‘Strange Worlds: The Vision of Angela Carter’ Exhibition
Generally Gothic 