The Grotesque and the Modern Grotesque

Abstract

The source of the grotesque in art and literature is man’s capacity for finding a unique and powerful fascination in the monstrous. The psychic reasons for this proclivity are far from clear, but the proclivity itself has left its mark on a wide variety of cultures, from prehistory to the present, from the most primitive societies to the most sophisticated. From ice-age cave paintings to modern films, from shaman costumes and devil masks to the paintings of Dali and Picasso, from folk stories and fairy tales to the writings of Kafka, the transmutations of men, beasts, devils, and chimeras have made their bizarre progress, constantly changing with the world-views of the cultures which produced them, yet still retaining the essential qualities by which we may attempt to designate them as grotesques. In few ages has this proclivity been more pronounced than in our own.