{"id":16708,"date":"2021-11-12T19:46:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T19:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/?p=16708"},"modified":"2023-01-03T13:25:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T13:25:06","slug":"ars-gratia-sanguis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/archive\/ars-gratia-sanguis\/","title":{"rendered":"[Review] Ars Gratia Sanguis"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Ars Gratia Sanguis<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Great British Horror Volume 6<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Dan Carpenter enjoys Great British Horror<\/i> volume 6, Ars Gratia Sanguis,<\/i> \u2018a fascinating exploration of the links between horror and visual art.\u2019<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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What is our relationship with art? How do each of us perceive and understand a painting or a sculpture, and how does it affect us? For the authors contributing to this latest \u2013 and best \u2013 edition of Great British Horror,<\/em> art affects them and their characters in a number of different ways. For some, it inspires awful acts; some are hypnotised and ruined by them; some trapped. Others find a kind of salvation or an answer within a particular piece. With each story taking inspiration from a work of art, sometimes explicitly including them in the piece, and sometimes using them as a jumping off point, Ars Gratia Sanguis<\/em> makes for a fascinating exploration of the links between horror and visual art.<\/p>

\"\"\u2018It had been as if the structure of the world had suddenly inverted itself,\u2019 says a character in Steve Duffy\u2019s \u2018The Acolyte\u2019s Triptych\u2019<\/em>. He\u2019s referring to the titular series of paintings, which supposedly depict the devil, the antichrist, and the false prophet; when brought together in a bunker in WW2 as Britain scrambles to keep its art safe during the Blitz, they may in fact begin a terrible ritual. It\u2019s a brilliant concept, and Duffy makes the most of it. Here, though the paintings are fictional, the story is rooted in history, and its setting is brilliantly realised.<\/p>

Fictional paintings are at the core of several other stories in the anthology. In Muriel Gray\u2019s excellent \u2018From Life\u2019<\/em>, a mother\u2019s autistic son, who has an uncanny knack for reproducing images perfectly in paintings, is hired at no small fee to paint something indescribable. Gray\u2019s story touches on the lengths people would go to for a better life, and has one of the best endings in the collection.<\/p>

In Brian Evenson\u2019s \u2018Untitled (Cloud of Blood)\u2019<\/em>, which opens the anthology, the titular painting resembles \u2018nothing so much as a great cloud of blood\u2019. Our main character decides to sell it after his father\u2019s suicide, discovering strange tally marks on its reverse. But each seller winds up dying, and the tally marks increase one by one as the deaths pile up. It\u2019s a neat, unnerving story, and though the painting again is fictional, it lives on the page as a fully realised piece.<\/p>

A painting can be found haunting the pages of Lucie McKnight Hardy\u2019s unsettling \u2018Blind Man\u2019s Bluff\u2019<\/em>, and elsewhere, a real life painting sits at the heart of Sarah Lotz\u2019s frankly bonkers \u2018Having a Benny\u2019<\/em>. Robbie has \u2018imaginings\u2019 that mean people \u2018give him a wide berth\u2019: on an outing to a Birmingham art gallery he comes across a piece by Cold War Steve, the satirical collage artist. At the centre of the piece is a picture of the Crossroads <\/em>character Benny Hawkins, and he overhears a relative talk about how important to Birmingham Hawkins was. Times are tough, politics is messy, and Robbie decides to use his \u2018imaginings\u2019 to bring Benny Hawkins back to Birmingham, with strange and often hilarious consequences. It\u2019s one of the highlights of the anthology, a complex and witty story about someone trying to do the right thing, but never being able to please everyone, about the power and interpretation of art. Safe to say I have definitely never read anything quite like it.<\/p>

Modern life is ever-present, too, in Lisa Tuttle\u2019s \u2018Sibyl\u2019<\/em>. Escaping lockdown to go on holiday, Sibyl is trying to find something out about an artist with whom she shares a name. The artist is responsible for a painting of a stone circle which fascinated her as a child. It\u2019s a great folk horror story filled with pagan stone circles, misty islands, and superstition. Elsewhere, Helen Grant\u2019s \u2018The Field has Eyes, the Wood has Ears\u2019<\/em> finds a character on a flight in which the passengers are wearing masks and gloves, real life bleeding into the horror of the piece in the same way that the main character loses himself inside a painting.<\/p>

Real life, of a different sort, can be found in Stephen Volk\u2019s fascinating \u2018The Waiting Room\u2019<\/em>. Here, a man confronts Charles Dickens after a reading of \u2018The Portrait Painter\u2019s Story\u2019<\/em>. Somehow Dickens has plagiarised the man\u2019s real-life experience \u2013 or has he? The man\u2019s story matches Dickens\u2019 tale exactly. He is travelling by train for a commission when he meets a woman who asks him, \u2018do you think you could [paint] me from recollection?\u2019<\/p>

When he reaches his commission, he finds that the subject is a dead woman of whom no portraits exist. He has to produce a painting from his imagination. Volk\u2019s story is, as you would expect, an excellent and poignant piece. \u2018We tread on memories every day,\u2019 someone says towards the end of the story: an apt feeling to leave the anthology on.<\/p>

Click on the image below to buy a copy of Great British Horror Volume 6…<\/em><\/p>

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDan Carpenter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Writer. Books for @bookmunch and Black Static. Stories in Black Static, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, and more.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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More To Explore<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTales From The Crypt (1972)\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Tales From The Crypt 1972 \/ Freddie Francis Where does one start with examining arguably Amicus\u2019 greatest portmanteau film? Well, for me, wiping away the<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t20\/09\/2023\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/article>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tThe People That Time Forgot (1977)\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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The People That Time Forgot 1977 \/ Kevin Connor The success of Amicus\u2019 first two Edgar Rice Burroughs-based fantasy adventures in 1975 and 1976 led<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tAt The Earth’s Core (1976)\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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AT THE EARTH’S CORE 1976 \/ Kevin Connor Amicus\u2019 first foray into the science fiction adventure, The Land That Time Forgot (UK, Kevin Connor, 1974)<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dan Carpenter enjoys Great British Horror volume 6, Ars Gratia Sanguis, \u2018a fascinating exploration of the links between horror and visual art.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":16740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2030],"tags":[1737,1939],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/ars-gratia-sanguis-feat-4-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C2560&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16708"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16820,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708\/revisions\/16820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}