Gridlines: Happy Halloween

Gridlines is our recurring feature about the world of visual arts, performing arts, media arts, and beyond. We’re talking about the latest and greatest (and less-than-greatest) happenings—what’s grabbing our attention, bringing us joy, piquing our curiosity, and otherwise making us stop and take note. Today’s Gridlines come from Erik Pepple, Wex Media & Public Relations Manager.

It's getting spooky with today's Gridlines | Image from Halloween III: Season of the Witch

I’m a big fan of all things Halloween—the movie, the parties, the chance to creepy up the house and make the neighbors twitchy without fear of repercussion, even that dread feeling of running out of Twix bars when a small battalion of costumed kids approach, hands extended, treats expected. So it’s great to take the reigns for this (loosely) Halloween-themed Gridlines.

• ArtInfo is celebrating the holiday with a look at nine of the more unsettling and, as they say, “gruesome” works of contemporary art. Their list includes a classic/infamous Piero Manzoni piece (who had work on view here in Part Object Part Sculpture and Work Ethic), a David Lynch short, Paul McCarthy, and more. The NSFW designation is noted if you’re reading this at a workplace that worries about things not being S for W.
• More on the list front is the AV Club’s solid look at some of the best horror films from the last 16 years. It’s hard to argue with a list that includes such modern classics as past Wex visitor Claire Denis’s extraordinary Trouble Every Day, the feminist werewolf picture Ginger Snaps, and Ti West’s patient, creepy, masterfully atmospheric nod to low-budget 70s/80s horror The House of the Devil. Though I wish the list had room for Pontypool, a claustrophobic Canadian horror from Bruce MacDonald featuring a stellar star turn by Stephen McHattie and the terrific no-budget zombie chiller The Battery, a film that boasts a killer long-take climax and a modestly paced, hang-out vibe that makes it a true original among the current crop of zombie pics. Regardless, that’s what lists are for—disagreeing with and then envisioning your own perfect list and then arguing about it a Halloween party.
• Speaking of Halloween parties, the good folks at Dangerous Minds have posted the perfect playlist for yours: Il Suono Scuro is more than four hours of horror-prog mixes pulled together by mix genius Ryan Todd. Fans of Goblin, John Carpenter scores, and giving their house party that certain giallo mood should apply their ears immediately.
• A little Avant Garb from Hyperallergic. They've got a selection of vintage images of Expressionist costumes ranging from robots to knights to intriguin hybrids of human, machine, and insect. And the story behind the costumes is as fascinating as the costumes themselves.
• The Noisey staff at Vice have dipped their toes into the eternal Halloween debate about whether or not candy corn is a delicious candy sensation or a flaming, burning dumpster of waxy fang-shaped gutrot. Personally I go burning dumpster. Feel free to disagree, even though you will be wrong. I’ll be over here eating some gummi eyeballs or pumpkin-shaped peanut butter cups, all with the satisfied grin of someone sated by anything other than candy corn.
• On the non-Halloween front critic Glenn Kenny has just weighed in on Flicker Alley’s essential new box set Masterworks of the American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920–1970. Though I guess if I wanted to stretch the Halloween theme (and I’m going to, and I won’t apologize for the stretching): a collection of work by Owen Land, Bruce Baille, Maya Deren, and many others is so good it’s scary. (OK, I apologize for that stretching)
• And what better way to close out than with a Silver Shamrock earworm?