In the 20th Century, the German Expressionists captured a distinct blend of horror and beauty. The movement inspired the rise of Gothic cinema and, later, Burton. Themes of insanity, chaos and death rage in these paintings, many of which were influenced by the growing world of psychoanalysis, reflecting psychology through external markers such as setting, clothing and lighting. Edvard Munch’s paintings often captured outsider figures. His 1895 Love and Pain (later nicknamed Vampire) depicts an embracing couple; the woman, with pale skin and flowing locks of bright red hair, is draped across a man, dressed in black, with green-tinged skin. Munch’s paintings were drenched in shadow and carried titles such as Jealousy, Anxiety and Despair. His 1893 painting The Scream famously revels in a scene of guttural angst.
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Léon Spilliaert captured a similarly cathartic sense of dread in his paintings. His Self-Portrait (1907) depicts the artist in vampiric stiff white collar and large black coat haunted by a gathering of figures, which could be read as dark clothing hanging up or ghostly apparitions. Spilliaert’s Absinthe Drinker (1907) is inherently Burtonesque, with deep rings around her intense round eyes, long dark blue hair, and neck bound with a black scarf and strings of beads.
Moody and romantic
Many of the Surrealists featured moody, romantic fashion in their paintings, especially in connection with occult figures. Leonor Fini’s powerful women are often dressed in flourishes of white lace, thick black feathers, or exuberant silks. Her 1944 depiction of a witch-like Princess Francesca Ruspoli sees the aristocrat dressed head to toe in black, her top covered in long fur and floor-length skirt glimmering in the light. She holds a thin dagger as her jet-black hair swirls into the inky sky. In 1949’s The Angel of Anatomy, Fini does away with clothes, making gothic magic of the human form; the central figure has only flesh on her face, with sinewy muscle and bone exposed on her body. Leonora Carrington likewise embraced the dark magic of Surrealism, with costumes reflecting the bird-like masks of plague doctors; women embellished with black feathers and silk; and ghostly animal-human hybrids.