Brain Food #376
Inside or outside?
Daily Brain Food.
Thoughts of the day
American painter Charles Burchfield spent much of his life painting landscapes and townscapes. He often depicted ominous moments, which uncannily represent much of what one can encounter today when turning on the news; houses burning down, gloomy dark forests, darkness.
We as viewers can experience the duality of feeling comfort for being outside what we fear, but simultaneously appreciating how tangible the threat is. It is how we experience horror films that contain shadows, spirits, something that is strangely familiar, yet, there is something you simply cannot put your finger on, that makes you feel uncomfortable.
This, of course, is the concept of the uncanny, coined by Freud who originally used the German word ‘Unheimlich’, literally meaning unhomely. The terror can lie as much inside as it does outside. Our fears can be sourced externally, but often they come from within. And if we see something out there we do not like, often it is inside us that we have to search for the source.
Two Houses painted by Burchfield in 1920, shows a grey, uninviting house, in an equally uninviting landscape. Where would you rather be?
