Taking its starting point and title from the Gothic novel, this book investigates the full-blown revival of a Gothic sensibility in contemporary art; in American and British fiction labeled the "New Gothic"; in film with its long tradition of horror; and in video, music, fashion, design, and underground culture. Gothic accompanies an exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, of twenty-three artists who produce horror as well as amazement through often ugly, fragmented, and contorted forms. Some employ a detached and reductive formal language to transmute images of excessive and gruesome violence, nevertheless achieving an equally disconcerting impact. The old Gothic themes of the fantastic and pathological are infused with new potency as they address concerns about the body, disease, voyeurism, and power.
Essays by John Gianvito, Christoph Grunenberg, James Hannaham, Patrick McGrath, Joyce Carol Oates, Shawn Rosenheim, Csaba Toth, and Anne Williams, and a short story by Dennis Cooper, explore the Gothic in history and in contemporary art and culture.
Artists: Julie Becker, Monica Carocci, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Gregory Crewdson, Keith Edmier, James Elaine, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Wolfgang Amadeus Hansbauer, Jim Hodges, Cameron Jamie, Mike Kelley, Abigail Lane, Zoe Leonard, Tony Oursler, Sheila Pepe, Alexis Rockman, Aura Rosenberg, Pieter Schoolwerth, Cindy Sherman, Jeanne Silverthorne, Gary Simmons.
Copublished with The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
| Director's Foreword | ||
| Acknowledgments | ||
| Unsolved Mysteries: Gothic Tales from Frankenstein to the Hair Eating Doll | ||
| Transgression and Decay | ||
| Edifying Narratives: The Gothic Novel, 1764-1997 | ||
| Bela Lugosi's Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Either: Goth and the Glorification of Suffering in Rock Music | ||
| "Like Cancer in the System": Industrial Gothic, Nine Inch Nails, and Videotape | ||
| Curtains | ||
| Shivers | ||
| An Inconsolable Darkness: The Reappearance and Redefinition of Gothic in Contemporary Cinema | ||
| Reflections on the Grotesque | ||
| Notes | ||
| Film and Video Series | ||
| Selected Bibliography | ||
| Selected Biographies of the Artists | ||
| Biographies of the Authors | ||
| Checklist of the Exhibition | ||
| ICA Staff | ||
| ICA Board of Trustees | ||
| ICA Honorary Trustees | ||
| Photo Credits |
Overview
Taking its starting point and title from the Gothic novel, this book investigates the full-blown revival of a Gothic sensibility in contemporary art; in American and British ...