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Phantasmagoria

The Ghosts, the Art, the Fashion, the Text and the Sex

Look close and Kate Moss will be with you

Phantasmagoria - a gothic inspired art movement with spectral sex appeal. From its 18th Century Parisian incarnation to the cutting-edge catwalk theatrics of Kate Moss, Phantasmagoria has inspired every cultural sect from the pen of Lewis Carroll to shadow-play with SHOWstudio. Here, SUPERSWEET endeavours brings you the best in fashion, art, literature and music.

THE ORIGIN - PROJECTED PHANTOM SHOW

In 18th Century France, a man called Paul Philipsthal canonized projected phantom shows into the spectral vogue. The trickster utilized innovative ‘pyrotechnics’ such as light, smoke, projections and mirror effects creating the perfect mise-en-scène for goulish theatrics. It became a travelling spook show in dialogue with a public’s lust for macabre romanticism and gothic fiction. Popularity died with the progression of cameras and post-production in 20th century film with layering, zooming and dissolving techniques. It opened a series of interpretive veins for the five discipled medias to leech off, notably art, literature, film, fashion and music.

THE AUTHOR – LEWIS CARROLL (1832- 1898)

Post Wonderland in1869, Lewis Carroll penned his name into a collection of poems called Phantasmagoria. The title-centric poem is a narrative chit-chat between a phantom and a human as they bitch about what’s best: being human or the perks of haunting. Carroll contrives his perfect imaginary ‘Underland’ consisting of a hierarchy of ghosts: The King, addressed as Your Royal Whiteness and the Knight Mare. Both are answerable to the ‘Maxims of Behavior”, mirroring life on earth and our socio-political society. “Being a ghost is a job like any other job… little pay and hard work.” We’re unsure whether the yet-to-be-funded film adaption with Marilyn Manson will bastardise or revolutionise the original, but whatever happens, the poster art looks like sex. 

THE ARTIST - Alma Thomas (1891-1978)

African-American artist Alma Thomas used phantasmagoria as a method of abstraction in her art. Pointilism, irregular brightly colored patterns and ‘shifting’ cellular mosaics generated the energies of the past, yet inflected her paintings with a Seurat-style futurism. “Phantasmagoria is not one of color, but rather of shape and movement. There is an intense interior movement that never comes to rest.” The dark rhomboids, arcs and triangles of Phantasmagoria, 1973, seem to capture the electricity of a spirit world under the slide of a clairvoyant microscope. She interprets Cherry Blossom Symphony with equal abstraction, producing emotionally vibrant art. Mark this woman in your memory.

THE MUSIC  – SPIDER AND THE FLIES

New project from The Horror’s Tom Furse and Spider Webb is one to ear-ball with its toxic and radically beautiful web of electro experimental music. While influences are listed as Space Waltz and Simeon, the atmosphere Furse and Webb create does well to mimic the trance inducing shadow play of original master Paul Philipsthal. Dissolving, shifting, zooming audios exploit the senses with such effect you could turn your Nana’s living room into a spirit inducing funk hole. No album yet, but listen to these sound-bites 

THE FASHION DESIGNER - ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

L'enfant terrrrrible Alexander McQueen stuns to perfection his lavishly creative collections and runway theatrics. His often sartorial celebration of neo-gothic romance and macabre themes are a mere side show to his Fall 2006 show, the Widows of Culloden, which featured an awe-inspiring hologram of supermodel Kate Moss dressed in yards of rippling fabric. The phantasmagoric illusion unfurls as a smoky spirit – a fabric and fabricated narrative encapsulating the principles of illusion: mirror effects, light and film trickery in its sleekest technological form – top marks for McQueen busting out of tradition with a perfect marriage of old-world romanticism and catwalk futurism. And who could refuse a tumble with Kate Moss’s ghost? 

THE FILM MAKER - RUTH HOGBEN FOR GARETH PUGH

Ruth Hogben has been a directorial collaborator of Nick Knight for half a decade, producing SHOWstudio fashion films for Gareth Pugh, Mathew Stone and KT Shillingford. Hogben’s swirling liquid unites with Pugh’s spiky tailoring in chaotic mirrored symmetry. Fluid kinetic-like forms shape shifting across our visual plain, altering our perceptions as human forms emerge birth-like from fabric. Films like Hogben’s incorporate paired down mythology, theatre and other-worldly shape-play using spectral effects and combing real material with immaterial mediums like ink and shadows.

Ruth is represented by Gainsbury and Whiting and her work was reverently screened at the ICA for part of the Birds Eye View film festival, 2009

Words: Tiffany Tondut
Illustrations: (c) the artists