The following websites exhibit some of the traditional gothic origins of the grotesque and the fantastic in Western art: medieval church carving, particularly gargoyles and misericords.
Characteristics of the Grotesque and Fantastic in the Visual Arts
Everyday objects in unusual locations or settings (Chagall's cows in the sky, Magritte's floating hats)
Everyday objects magnified immensely (Dali's giant ants, grasshoppers, crucifixions, etc.)
Everyday objects deformed, melted, or somehow misshapen (Dali's melted clocks, deflated bodies, etc.)
Parts of several (or many) everyday objects combined in impossible and unnatural ways (Bosch)
Painted Dreamscapes
Painted Hallucinations
Shocking Use of Color and Light
Distorted Perspective and Proportion
Visual Irony (pigs wearing nun's habits)
Visual Tricks or Optical Illusions (Escher)
The following group of images represent the grotesque and the fantastic in painting from the middle ages to the present. Click on the image to enlarge it, and follow paths to significant websites.
Hieronymous Bosch, The Garden of Early Delights, Hell (detail), ca.1500
Matthies Grunewald, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Panel from Isenheim Altarpiece), 1515
William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sin
Francisco Goya, The Colossus, 1808-12
Francisco Goya, The Great He-Goat (Witches Sabbath)
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1909
George Grosz, The Lovesick Man, 1916
Marc Chagall, I and the Village, 1911
Giorgi De Chirico, The Disturbing Muses, 1925
Joan Miro, Carnival of Harlequin, 1924-25
Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War, 1936
Yves Tanguy, Indefinite Divisibility, 1942
Salvador Dali, Raphaelesque Head Bursting, 1951
Salvador Dali, Hallucinogenous Bullfighter, 1969-70
Willem De Kooning, Woman, 1949
Willem De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52