What is a freak, anyway?
After the release of Tod Browning’s smashing hit Dracula in 1931, the director decided to put vampires aside for a time and decided to create a movie about the ugly side of society. Based on his teenage experiences working in a traveling circus, the filmmaker reached out to various sideshow performers he had worked with during his early years. The cast was comprised mostly of people who were born with genetic anomalies, such as dwarfism, microcephaly, siamese-twins, and even Josephine Joseph, “the half-woman, half-man”, to play as members of a traveling troupe.
The film’s title was Freaks, and its purpose was to make the viewer question who were the real monsters. What makes a person monstrous? Is it their physical appearance? Or is it something that hides beyond the image we project?
As controversial as it was, the film wasn’t widely accepted when it was released. It reminded us that what we should really fear are not those who look different from us, but rather the ones that look exactly like us. It raised so much concern during the year of its release that the film was cut, reedited, and banned for decades in several countries, amongst them the UK.
Through art, we can look beyond the appearance. Portraying the human side of what appears to be strange leads us to understand our similarities with those we consider different. Like Freaks, these paintings reveal the real, perplexing face of “oddities” and “freaks”, as well as the monstrous side of what we blindly consider “normal”.
The Boy from Vallecas (c. 1635—1645), Diego Velázquez
Painted in a time when all the people who were considered different could only make a living out of entertaining the nobility, Velazquez portrayed one of the Spanish court’s youngest buffoons under the comforting shade of a tree. As he shuffles a pack of cards, his face rises in defiance towards the spectator. Why is he confronting us? Is it because we’re looking into his eyes at his height instead of looking down at him?
A Bearded Lady holding an Ostrich Feather Fan (1939), Hélène Detroyat
In Detroyat’s painting, the grey-eyed lady sits with her legs crossed in a flirty manner, gazing with a smirk at her viewers. Her body’s posture and the way she handles the feather show that, despite her beard, she is still able to convey a graceful and feminine demeanor. Did she grow a beard out of a genetical mutation? Or was she born male? It could be either. In this way, the painting itself speaks out against the boundaries of gender, as it shows that beyond the physical traits of a person, one is truly defined by their acts and identity.
Harlequin and Pierrot (c. 1924), André Derain
In Derain’s painting, Pierrot and the Harlequin play their instruments together, wearing their full costumes under the scorching desert sun. Both their faces are filled with melancholy, as if the two of them were really alone, playing and dancing music to no one but themselves. It’s almost as if they were lifeless puppets being controlled by a master. As their only purpose is to soothe his own loneliness.
Family of Saltimbanques (1905), Pablo Picasso
Often considered the masterpiece of his “Rosé” period, Picasso’s sad portrayal of a moving troupe of circus performers stranded in the desert captures the viewer in an atmosphere of confusion and hopelessness. It opens a window to a world of people who live like nomads, carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs. To them, the barren road is everything they have, but at least they walk it with dignity.
Intrigue (1890), James Ensor
Ensor’s painting feels like a psychedelic illusion where the faces of ordinary people distort to reveal their true nature. The mask-like faces of an agitated group of men and women dressed in flamboyant clothing are portrayed in a monstrously clownish manner. In this way, Ensor mocks the ludicrous habits of the bourgeoise, depicting how their superfluous obsession with beauty backfires at them by turning them into monsters.
Ghosts (1939), George Grosz
In Grosz’s portrayal of a bar scene, the difference between the world of the living and the dead disappears beneath a curtain of smoke and haze. Three grinning men drink together at a table, accompanied by a lady wearing vibrant make-up and a floating skeleton. Each of their faces is deformed in a particular manner. A man dressed in blue at the right side of the painting looks at his glass of beer in a sort of trance, as his face almost melts at its sight. At the opposite corner, a bald gray figure grins mischievously at nothing, as if he were consumed by madness. Next to him a large man, who has his body filled with the color red, loses his conscience to the power of alcohol. The freaks in Grosz’s painting are those who betray their conscious mind. That’s the kind of thing that turns us into monsters.
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If you want to know more about dreadful art, be sure to visit the list of the 10 paintings that portray the 10 most disturbing dead gazes. Afterwards, you can take a look at the list of the violent art that only the lovers of horror can understand.
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References
Museo del Prado
The Guardian
L’Orangerie
