Happy Valentine's Day from All of Us at Morbid Anatomy!

Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at Morbid Anatomy!

Top image: Sacred Heart of Jesus with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga, José de Páez, Mexico, 1727-179

Bottom image: Husband and Wife Nobles, from Cycle of Scenes of Living Skeletons, Paolo Vincenzo Bonomini, (1757 – 1839)

Merry Christmas from Krampus and Morbid Anatomy

Merry Christmas from Krampus--St Nicolas' Eastern European, cloven hooved, birch-switch bearing sidekick--and all of us at Morbid Anatomy. The Museum is closed today, but will be open regular hours tomorrow, December 26.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Image found here.

Happy Valentine's Day From your Friends at Morbid Anatomy

Happy Almost Valentine's Day! Hope to see you at February 14th's Love Cults, Drugs and the Hypnotic Arts with Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic and Grand Guiginol!

And, to celebrate the day, here is a wax heart as seen at the Josephinum Museum in Vienna, Austria.

Merry Christmas and Happy Krampusnacht From Your Friends at Morbid Anatomy!

Merry Christmas from Morbid Anatomy with St. Nicholas and Krampus, his Eastern European, birch-switch-beating, lolling-tongued, cloven-hoofed, child-punishing side kick. In places such as Germany and Hungary, Krampus continues to be a beloved part—and to our mind, the highlight of!—the Christmas season, joining St. Nicholas for all his public appearances,
even at local Burger Kings.
 

Each year, we at Morbid Anatomy honor Krampus in the form of gifts, apparel and parties. To see photos from last Saturday's annual Morbid Anatomy Krampus costume party, click here and here. To purchase special Morbid Anatomy Krampus gifts, click here.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Image found here.

Happy Birthday to Jesus and a Merry Christmas to All!

Wishing a Happy Birthday to Jesus and a Merry Christmas to all with this figure of Jesus seen in Aguascalientes, Mexico on our recent Death in Mexico: A Special Field Trip to Mexico for Day of the Dead.

You can see a full set of photos from this trip by clicking here.

The Morbid Anatomy Holiday Fair Save the Date and Call for Vendors, December 14th and 15th, Brooklyn, New York!

Lacking original holiday ideas for your loved ones? Come to our annual Morbid Anatomy Holiday Fair for a merry weekend sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery, where you will find taxidermy, curiosities and other unique artifacts to thrill and delight. 

The Fair will take place in Brooklyn, New York on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of December from noon to 6 PM. If you are interested in selling your creations or collections at the Morbid Anatomy Holiday Fair, please send an email to morbidanatomylibrary [at] gmail.com.

Image above from last year's Morbid Anatomy Holiday Fair, featuring regulars Daisy Tainton and Elizabeth New.

"Krampusfest": Guest Post for Morbid Anatomy by Al Ridenour of Art of Bleeding

Krampus Group in Munich. Photo: Al Ridenour.

Krampus Los Angeles Troupe. Photo: Phil Glau.

Postcard from Monte Beauchamp’s collection.

Following is a guest post about about friend of Morbid Anatomy Al Ridenour's attempts to revive the art of "Krampusfest" in his hometown of Sunny Los Angeles. Al is part of a group of medical art-themed provocateurs called Art of Bleeding; more on them here. Maybe we can persuade Al to stage Krampus fest here in NYC next year?

For more on Krampus and his history, click here; to find out about the Morbid Anatomy Krampus costume party (!) on December 14th, click here. To order Krampus holiday cards of your very own, click here.

As the Morbid Anatomy’s annual Krampus celebration approaches, I’ve been invited to share a bit about how we here in the relentlessly sunny city of Los Angeles are now also falling under the shadow of an ancient Alpine devil.

About a year ago, several friends and I resolved to create Krampus suits and stage California’s first Krampuslauf, (“Krampus run” though “shamble” might be more accurate). This  plan expanded into a frighteningly ambitious series of activities dubbed “Krampusfest.”

While perhaps the most overweening, we are not the first American Krampus troupe.  That credit goes to Philadelphia Krampuslauf, now in its third year. Groups in Portland, OR, Detroit, Athens, GA, Bloomington, IN, and New Orleans are also now part of this burgeoning movement.

Much of this began in 2004 when collector Monte Beauchamp began baiting us with his lovely series of books documenting the popular Krampus cards that circulated in earlier centuries. What pushed me over the edge, however, was the discovery of European videos that presented the Krampus not as a antiquated ephemera, but a tradition still very much alive and ready to chase you down the street. Pouring over online footage, I concluded that the scenes shot in the Gasteiner Valley near Salzburg seemed the most unrestrained and boisterous, so that is where I convinced my wife we needed to go.

Returning to my hotel giddy from my first night of live Krampus tussling, and with snow still wet in my hair, I opened the fateful email message announcing the creation of an LA Krampuslauf.  It came from Al Guerrero, a fellow organizer and co-conspirator of the Los Angeles lodge of The Cacophony Society, a national group dedicated to eccentric mischief which flustered journalists of the 1990s came to define as “culture jamming” and “flash mobs.”  We’d never sported horns or wielded switches, but had honed some guerilla theater fly-by-the-seat-of your pants spectacle-making skills.  Krampus didn’t seem like a big jump.

Each of our suits did end up consuming sizable investments of time and money.  Many of the costumes were sewn weft-by-weft, and the masks sculpted from scratch and topped by real animal horns. Right now there are about 15 of us, and we’re looking forward to meeting more recruits at our public Krampus run.

The troupe will also storm in on some less traditional indoor events, including our Krampus Ball and Krampus Rumpus, themed shows juxtaposing performances of traditional Schuhplattler dances and alpenhorn solos by a local Bavarian cultural group with acts like Santa Claus Nomi (the band Timur and The Dime Museum working with former Nomi composer Kristian Hoffman) as well as horned and pelt-wearing parody bands including The Kramps, Krampwerk, and Krammpstein.

And there is a group exhibition at Santa Monica’s Copro Gallery displaying Krampus-inspired artwork by a horde of artists including Chet Zar, Bob Dob, Luke Cheu, Travis Louie, and even Tim Burton. For this event, Krampus LA will contribute a performance and outdoor “Krampus Habitat” installation omplete with cages, screaming children and hellish photo-ops a-plenty.

One of our purposes in creating this crazy patchwork of events was to offer an unfamiliar public different ways to dip their toes into a new tradition. Not everyone can dedicate the resources to creating traditional costumes, but we’re hoping that some uncostumed attendees at this year’s events will be inspired to return to us next fall for workshops geared toward making traditional costumes.

Maintaining the core traditions under the camouflage of Californian kookery is important to us. Toward that end, we’re also reaching out to European groups, and have befriended a couple participants from different communities around Salzburg. Having previously planned trips to California, we met with each of them for informal Q and As. They were both surprised and initially perhaps a bit baffled at our enthusiasm and efforts toward creating costumes imitating their homegrown traditions. Usually things run differently.  For many Europeans the obliteration of local holiday customs by the ever-expanding presences of the American Santa Claus, (“Weihnachtsmann,” i.e., “Christmas Man” in German) is a hot-button issue, so amid all our chaotic street devilry, we hope our group and other American Krampus enthusiasts might be tipping the scales a bit toward a happier equilibrium.

Happy Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos, Mexico City Style!

Happy Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos! Above are some photos of the decorations and festivities we saw in Mexico City ramping up to the big day. To see a full collection of photos, click here. More soon!

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

I wish you all anatomical sacred hearts galore this lovely Valentine's Day!

Image: "Ofrecimiento de Corazones de la Segunda Orden Franciscana al Corazón de Jesús, Colección Particular" (or, "Hearts Offering Second Franciscan Order to the Heart of Jesus, Private Collection," via Google Translate).

Found here. Click on image to see larger, more detailed image.

A True Tale of Krampus Youth from Bad Goisern, Austria

To extend the holiday cheer, I am very excited to share with you this tale of growing up with the Krampus tradition, just in from Austrian Morbid Anatomy reader Julia Atzmanstorfer:

Hello from Austria, 

I recently noted that you post much about Krampus - which is a very vivid tradition in the region where I live. Here in Bad Goisern/Upper Austria we have one of the biggest Krampus events in the country; hundreds of Krampusses come there to meet and run every December.

I just asked myself if you know that this old tradition has nothing to do with Christmas itself - as a important part of Advent and takes place on the 5th of December, the evening of St. Nikolaus. Krampus is the companion of St. Nikolaus (an old, rather kindhearted, but also rigorous man who visits the children), and he has the role of punishing those, who have been bad through the year, by hitting them with his birch (in former times children were also told that the Krampus would take them with him). 

These guys are really, really scary when you are a child... Their shaggy skins, their wooden masks (which are often handed down from generation to generation and nowadays also more and more orientated in modern splatter movies) and their cow bells around the ankles... the very sound of them is really threatening when they are coming nearer! 

Behind the Krampus mask there is always a young man, never a girl or a woman - and the whole custom of course also has a certain archaic sexual connotation, because the Krampusses hidden behind their masks also catch girls to hit them. When I was around 16, 17, it was always very exciting to participate in the Krampuslauf as a spectator - when you are a teenager, you hope that one of them gets you... 

Anyway. Perhaps you know all this. Just in case you did not yet, I thought you might find it interesting. 

Merry Christmas!
Julia

Thanks so much, Julia, for sending this along!

Happy New Years Everybody!

Image found here.

A Very Merry Christmas Indeed: 18th Century Italian Pathological Nativity Scene Crèches!

Towards my sincere wish that each of you has a very merry Christmas today, please accept this virtual gift: two intriguing and lovely pathologically-detailed 18th century Italian nativity scene crèche figures from the collection of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University.

An excerpt from the article on Atlas Obscura:

Holiday Creche Figures With Goiters

...The lovely ladies seen above were made to be part of a classic nativity scene, welcoming the infant Christ into the world. They are shown suffering from what was once a relatively common malady: goiters. These enlarged thyroids caused painful swellings in the throat usually due to iodine deficiency in the diet, and were particularly prevalent in Alpine regions of Europe where the soil was naturally low in iodine.

These two dolls are known as Crèche (or Presepio) figures, and are found in Nativity scenes. The country women, garbed in handmade peasant dress, have unusual features that led to their inclusion in the Yale’s Medical Historical Library. Both have prominent goiters on their necks. Goiters are swelling of the thyroid gland.

Creche figures often depicted “realistic” features, and in the 18th century, peasant and country folk were thought to be a great addition, often in the background of the scene. Figures with goiters attending the birth of Baby Jesus is an entire level of realism never expected in a Nativity scene...

We often think of the beauty associated with the Nativity, but in reality, people in earlier centuries had a variety of ailments that manifested on the outside, and weren’t removed. Skin diseases, tumors, and goiters, which we don’t often see in people with the help of modern medicine, were not unusual.

--Melissa Grafe is the John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History at Yale University.  

You can read the whole article--from which this is excerpted--on Atlas Obscura by clicking here. And thanks, Dylan Thuras, for sending this along!

And Merry Christmas, y'all!

Images of creche figures courtesy of the Yale University, used with permission.

Gruß vom Krampus and Happy Holidays Everyone!

Gruß vom Krampus and Happy Holidays, everyone!

The images you see above are all vintage Krampus postcards except for the bottom image, a photo of the special (and delicious!) Krampus cake provided by the fellas of Ghoul a Go Go for Saturday night's Morbid Anatomy and Ghoul a Go Go Krampus Party; You can see a full selection of photos from this epic evening by clicking here.

Postcards pictured above found here, here, here, here, here and here.

Happy Saint Victoria Day!

Happy Saint Victoria Day, Morbid Anatomy Readers!

More about this lovely saint--whose remains were discussed at length in yesterday's post--from Wikipedia:

Saints Victoria, Anatolia, and Audax (Italian: Sante Vittoria, Anatolia, e Audace) are venerated as martyrs and saints by the Catholic Church...

Their legend... recounts that, in the time of the Emperor Decius, Anatolia and Victoria were sisters whose marriage was arranged to two noble, non-Christian Roman men. They resisted matrimony and their prospective grooms denounced them as Christians. They received permission to imprison the women on their estates and convince them to renounce their faith.

Anatolia's suitor, Titus Aurelius, gave up, and handed her back to the authorities. Victoria’s suitor, Eugenius, was more persistent, but also ended up returning her to the authorities.

Victoria’s legend states that she was stabbed through the heart in 250 AD at Trebula Mutuesca (today Monteleone Sabino). An elaboration on her legend states that her murderer was immediately struck with leprosy, and died six days later....

Due to the translation of their relics, their cult spread across Italy. The body of Saint Victoria was transferred in 827 by Abbot Peter of Farfa to Mount Matenano from the Piceno because of the Moorish invasions. The town of Santa Vittoria in Matenano is named after her. Ratfredus, subsequent Abbot of Farfa, brought the body to Farfa on 20 June 931... Saint Victoria's preserved remains are currently on display at the Santa Maria della Vittoria church in Rome.

Image found here.

"Santa Muerte, Posada’s Mexico and the End of Times" Guest Post by Salvador Olguín, Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence

 

For this non-end-of-days end-of-days, a word on Death in Mayan and Mexican culture from new Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence Salvador Olguín:

I’ve been following the Morbid Anatomy blog for quite some time. This is my second guest post in the blog (the first can be found here); this time I am officially writing as Morbid Anatomy’s new Scholar in Residence. I told Joanna Ebenstein I wanted to write a few lines to commemorate such major occasion as the end of the 13th baktun of the Mayan calendar –that is, the 13th cycle of 144,000 days since the world began, otherwise known as The End of Times. Posting this text after the announcement of the Morbid Anatomy Library’s recent acquisition of a lot of Santa Muerte artifacts, also celebrated in this article by David Metcalf, is a happy coincidence. Finally, being able to use this post to introduce Posada’s Mexico, a book about José Guadalupe Posada recently acquired by the MA library, is a real treat.

José Guadalupe Posada was a Mexican engraver and illustrator who started working in the late 1800s as a cartoonist. He produced a vast number of etchings, most of which first appeared in the news papers and cheap periodicals published in Mexico City during the last decade of the 19th and the early 1900s. Posada’s was a time of social turmoil. The publications where he worked criticized the autocratic government of Porfirio Díaz for favoring Mexico’s Europeanized higher classes over the workers and the dispossessed. In this milieu, Posada used his art to satirize the rich and powerful, but also to illustrate current events and the news: murders, cases of cannibalism, floods, earthquakes and the End of the World, which people in Mexico believed was imminent 100 years ago.

Posada created a series of iconic characters like Don Chepito Marihuano (Mr. Chepito The Pothead), a gentleman who entertained the habit of smoking large amounts of weed. You can see him holding a skull, Hamlet-style, in the bottom illustration above. One of his most iconic illustrations was La Calavera Garbancera, later baptized as La Catrina by Diego Rivera. She came to represent Death personified for all Mexicans. Posada conceived her as a working class woman of mixed Native American and European blood, wearing a pretentious French hat. Later Rivera painted her in one of his murals (4th image down), but instead of using her as a vehicle of social commentary he dressed her up in a full fancy gown, making her a proud symbol of the unification of Mexico’s dual roots: Spanish and Native American. The fact that this symbol is embodied as a skeleton shows the importance of the personification of Death in Mexican iconography, and makes La Catrina a direct precursor of Santa Muerte.

Most Mesoamerican cultures had a cyclical notion of time. There were times of destruction and times of renewal. There had been other Worlds, and other versions of Humanity in their mythical pass, and there would be new worlds and a new humanity in the future. A Mayan wouldn’t be surprised that the world didn’t come to an end: today marks the beginning of the 14th baktun. Death remains the only certain thing in life; believing She’s a person, a being that watches over us, is certainly a soothing idea. Knowing She likes to smoke, drink, and feast like Santa Muerte does is simply the best. Take a look at these images from Posada’s Mexico, now available for researchers at the Morbid Anatomy Library.

You can find out more about Santa Muerte in these recent posts (1, 2); you can find out more about our upcoming Santa Muerte lecture and party by clicking here, and more about The Morbid Anatomy Library by clicking here. You can find out more about Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence Salvador Olguín by clicking here. All images are scans from Posada’s Mexico, a book about José Guadalupe Posada recently acquired by the Morbid Anatomy library.

TONIGHT: Morbid Anatomy and Ghoul A Go-Go Holiday Krampus Party with "DEVILS" Show Premiere!

Tonight--Saturday December 22--please join Morbid Anatomy, Ghoul a Go Go and the cloven hooved Krampus himself for a booze-addled celebration of the darker side of Christmas!

You can read the Brooklyn Paper's writeup here; Full details follow; Hope very much to see you there!

Morbid Anatomy and Ghoul A Go-Go Holiday Krampus Party with "DEVILS" Show Premiere!
Date: Saturday, December 22
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $13
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

* Premiere of Ghoul A Go-Go's "DEVILS" show with Vlad and Creighton appearing LIVE!!
* A screening of the bizarro Mexican holiday classic feature film Santa Claus (1959)! The devil Pitch is on the loose! Can Christmas be saved?
* "Beelzebab "Siren of Sodom" performs live burlesque!
* Mistress Dominae Drakonis beats the naughty!
* Mulled Wine! Krampus cake! Piñata! More fun than you can beat with a stick!

Ghoul A Go-Go and Morbid Anatomy are throwing a Krampus holiday party to celebrate the world premiere of Ghoul A Go-Go's new "DEVILS" show! The ghost of Sammy Davis Jr. will not be there, but Vlad and Creighton will pour on more entertainment than a naughty child can handle. Beelzebabe, Siren of Sodom, will perform her scorching "Bad Girls Go To Hell" burlesque--an act one archbishop cited as the cause of his fall from grace! To add to the Krampus festivities, Mistress Dominae Drakonis, in all her satanic majesty, will deal out beatings to the naughty. There will be mulled wine to spice things up even further, as well as a Krampus cake. For your visual entertainment, there will be a screening of the 1959 Mexican classic film, Santa Claus, featuring the the devil Pitch. A piñata will be beaten. You will also have the privilege of being the first to see the brand new Ghoul A Go-Go episode on the big screen in all its devilish glory! To grind things to halt, there will be an Observatory styled lecture on Christmas. And then back to the party! It'll be more fun than a sack full of children so wear your best Krampus costume!

More here.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Image found here.

Happy Halloween Everybody!

Happy very, very strange Halloween, everyone.

Image: "From the Collection of Clive Parkinson, Director, Arts for Health, Manchester, England" from the photo series "Private Cabinets." More here.