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The first comprehensive survey of the Gothic in contemporary visual culture explores the work of artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Cindy Sherman to Matthew Barney, with texts by Julia Kristeva, Marina Warner, Jeff Wall, and many others.
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
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
- GenresArtNonfictionPhilosophy
239 pages, Paperback
Published August 24, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 17, 2010
So far, Serenity's review is pretty accurate. Even if you have a pretty broad base in art history and contemporary art, some of this is meaningless without pictures. There's an excerpt on very specific Cindy Sherman photographs analyzed in full psychoanalytic/semiotic detail, for example, which is totally lost without having the work right there.
The second shortcoming of this book (and the whole series I suspect) is that even though the authors and texts included are amazing, the excerpts are so short you just barely get a sense of one main thesis. They're hard to read at all critically because there's just a lack of material, so you largely have to accept each author's claims.
The graphic/physical design of this book series is pretty seductive, though, so that has to count for something, right? And if nothing else, its a very digestible survey of a huge range of important writings. Makes you want to read a whole shelf of other books.
The second shortcoming of this book (and the whole series I suspect) is that even though the authors and texts included are amazing, the excerpts are so short you just barely get a sense of one main thesis. They're hard to read at all critically because there's just a lack of material, so you largely have to accept each author's claims.
The graphic/physical design of this book series is pretty seductive, though, so that has to count for something, right? And if nothing else, its a very digestible survey of a huge range of important writings. Makes you want to read a whole shelf of other books.
December 31, 2017
It eventually got better, althought I felt the inclusion of some pieces of commonplace authors as stephen king or anne rice, somehow made me felt the book was written for tourists on the subject.
the last 100 pages or so are much better curated and I will definetively check some of the authors.
the last 100 pages or so are much better curated and I will definetively check some of the authors.
January 20, 2016
The introduction -- which should anchor or loosely chain together such a diverse collection of excerpts which are all taken out of their contexts -- lacks focus. This is not a useful research source.
October 17, 2022
Overall a pretty good compilation, discovered some interesting artists previously unknown to me. The annoying part was having to Google the mentioned works as there were no illustrations in the book
February 15, 2022
Contains fragments from Edmund Burke, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jean Baudrillard, Anne Rice, Bret Easton Ellis, Damien Hirst, Michel Foucault, William Gibson, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Stephen King, Slavoj Zizek, Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva and many, many more I am less familiar with. Despite my list here, the general idea of the book is specifically how themes of the gothic speak to contemporary visual arts (almost entirely fine arts, though there is some interesting commentary on Michael Jackson and a few other popular arts here and there).
Honestly, it's a bit too fragmentary to work. Almost all of the fictional excerpts are a single page long. Though they are often expertly chosen, what does one page of Frankenstein, or one page of American Psycho, or one page of Interview With a Vampire really tell us. Also, much of the non-fiction is equally fragmentary but in different ways. They are often only three to six pages from book length pieces, excerpting a paragraph or two from one section, a paragraph from something later in the book and them more from a later section. Even when quoting from shorter pieces, it may be take several bits and pieces from various sections of that work. Also, this is meant to be a commentary on themes of the gothic in contemporary art but many of the works directly relating to contemporary art seem very far removed from the thematic works surrounding them. It just generally doesn't feel entirely coherent thematically and the second chapter, which only discusses some specific contemporary art, definitely needs to be pushed way back in the book after the themes and ideas have been established.
I also can't stand a book which has so much commentary on specific works of art which does not reproduce at least some small portion of the pieces being discussed.
Honestly, it's a bit too fragmentary to work. Almost all of the fictional excerpts are a single page long. Though they are often expertly chosen, what does one page of Frankenstein, or one page of American Psycho, or one page of Interview With a Vampire really tell us. Also, much of the non-fiction is equally fragmentary but in different ways. They are often only three to six pages from book length pieces, excerpting a paragraph or two from one section, a paragraph from something later in the book and them more from a later section. Even when quoting from shorter pieces, it may be take several bits and pieces from various sections of that work. Also, this is meant to be a commentary on themes of the gothic in contemporary art but many of the works directly relating to contemporary art seem very far removed from the thematic works surrounding them. It just generally doesn't feel entirely coherent thematically and the second chapter, which only discusses some specific contemporary art, definitely needs to be pushed way back in the book after the themes and ideas have been established.
I also can't stand a book which has so much commentary on specific works of art which does not reproduce at least some small portion of the pieces being discussed.
October 24, 2024
Fragments of various pieces which were less helpful than I was hoping, despite how fun it was to read. It was hard to get a sense of where each piece slotted in, or even to get a sense of a broader argument sometimes, which makes it hard to recommend.
October 6, 2011
I love the Documents on Contemporary Art series. I think they did a decent job in distilling trends in contemporary art down to a few categories, The Gothic being one of them. The Gothic is a good intro, to how this concept (the gothic), which has its roots in psychology and is mostly used in film and literature, meets contemporary art. I use these as spring boards for further reading. The Gothic has opened me up to Freud and Ernst's notion of the Uncanny, Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva's notion of the Abject.
May 31, 2010
Really good collection of essays, fiction by artists, authors and critics on the gothic.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews