The Gothic

This collection of writings examines the pervasive and influential role
of "the Gothic" in contemporary visual culture. The contemporary Gothic in
art is informed as much by the stock themes of the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Gothic novel as it is by more recent permutations of the Gothic
in horror film theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Goth subcultures. This reader
from London's Whitechapel Gallery brings together artists as different as Matthew
Barney, Gregor Schneider, Louise Bourgeois, and Douglas Gordon; its intent is not to
use "the Gothic" to group together dissimilar artists but rather to shed
light on a particular understanding of their practice. Anthony Vidler looks at ideas
of the uncanny to explore Rachel Whiteread's House, and Jeff Wall uses the motif of
vampirism to analyze fellow artist Dan Graham's Kammerspell; Hal Foster considers
Robert Gober's recent work--laden with Christian symbolism, criticism of America as
a nexus of power, and fragmented bodies--as an updated American Gothic, and Kobena
Mercer examines the Gothic's depiction of the Other in relation to Michael Jackson's
pop video Thriller. Texts by artists including Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst, Tacita
Dean, Jonathan Meese, and Catherine Sullivan are complemented by extracts from
Walpole's genre-establishing gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, William Gibson,
Bret Easton Ellis, and Stephen King, among others, and theoretical writings by such
key thinkers as Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Julia Kristeva, Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick, Marina Warner, and Slavoj Zizek [haceks over z's]. The Gothic provides the
first comprehensive overview of the uses of Gothic in contemporary visual
culture.Gilda Williams is a critic of art and film and a lecturer on contemporary
art at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London. Her writing has appeared in Artforum,
Tate etc., Sight and Sound, and Parkett.Artists surveyed include Matthew Barney,
Louise Bourgeois, Janet Cardiff, Tacita Dean, Sue De Beer, Mark Dion, Stan Douglas,
Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Dan Graham, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy,
Teresa Margolles, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, Paul Pfeiffer, Gregor Schneider,
Cindy Sherman, Catherine Sullivan, Andy Warhol, Jane and Louise WilsonWriters
include Jean Baudrillard, Elizabeth Bronfen, Edmund Burke, Carol Clover, Beatriz
Colomina, Douglas Crimp, Jacques Derrida, Richard Dyer, Umberto Eco, Bret Easton
Ellis, Trevor Fairbrother, Alex Farquharson, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, Sigmund
Freud, William Gibson, Christoph Grunenberg, Bruce Hainley, Judith Halberstam,
Amelia Jones, Jonathan Jones, Mike Kelley, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Patrick
McGrath, Kobena Mercer, James Meyer, Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew Ross, Jerry Saltz, Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mary Shelley, Nancy Spector, Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony
Vidler, Jeff Wall, Horace Walpole, Marina Warner, Anne Williams, Slavoj
Zizek