Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late TwentiethCentury Art

As the millennium draws to a close, a Gothic spirit once again penetrates much of todays art and culture. Over the past decade, American and European artists have grown increasingly fascinated with the dark and uncanny side of the human psychethe theatrical and grotesque, the violent and destructive.Taking its starting point and title from the Gothic novel, this book investigates the fullblown 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 accompanied an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, of twentythree artists who produce horror as well as amazement through often ugly, fragmented, and contorted forms. 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.Copublished with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.