The Horror, c. 1902

Evoking naked terror and pleasurable chills, Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) confidently uses archetypal primal fears and celebrates the fascination with the grotesque in his nightmarish vision of horror – hence the title of the work The Horror. From the funnel-shaped vortex of the raging sea, a head resembling a skull with a sinewy neck and a broad grin with a few missing teeth rises out of the floods to threaten a wrecked little boat rearing up diagonally from the lower left corner of the picture. Its mast is already broken and protrudes from the empty deck like the stump of a toothpick. Its keel bears the silhouette of a bird’s head – recalling the ornaments of Viking ships – which seems to communicate directly with the monstrous beast. Two tiny human figures at the railing appear ready to defy their horrific opponent: Disheveled by the storm, their coats billowed by the wind, they are facing the bare teeth of the monstrous vision. An inflated eyeball, swollen to incredible size, is bulging from the horrible monster’s left bony socket and seems to be staring with a fixed, pitted pupil at the tiny figures exposed to this horror. Using contrasts of light and dark and a shiny, curving belt of spray, set diagonally into the square format between the calm sea in the background and the torrents of water rising up obliquely in the vortex in the foreground, Kubin skillfully creates a boiling dynamic. The eerie scene executed in 1902 is an early work by the young draftsman and graphic artist, who was able to make a name for himself at an early age with his horrifying visions.

MH, 2021