Art History Halloween Costume Ideas: From Hugo Ball to Matthew Barney

DailyArt Magazine has assembled a costume guide drawn from art history for Halloween, opening with Hugo Ball, the author and poet who founded Dada in Zurich, Switzerland. A 1916 photograph shows Ball reading Karawane at the Club Voltaire in a ready-made-style outfit that can be recreated with scissors and paper. Oskar Schlemmer, a German artist linked to the Bauhaus, developed the Triadic Ballet (Triadisches Ballett) in 1922, an avant-garde dance piece he called "artistic metaphysical mathematics." A circa 1909 photograph by Pauline Hamilton captures Austrian painter Gustav Klimt in his characteristic painting robe, described as simple but classy. Maurice Guibert's photograph from the 1890s shows French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec dressed as a clown. René Magritte's iconic hat, seen in a 1965 image, offers a minimalist option: a suit plus an upside-down hat. Marina Abramović appears in Portrait with Scorpion (Closed Eyes) from 2005, a look the magazine says only seasoned fans would recognize. American visual artist Matthew Barney's Cremaster 4, a 1994 still from The Cremaster Cycle, inspires a costume based on the cremaster muscle; the cycle comprises five feature-length films touching on human biology and procreation. The selection is framed as inspiration for readers who want to express a passion for art beyond the usual Frida Kahlo unibrow.