About the Book
Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies.
This collection of writings examines the pervasive and influential role of the Gothic in contemporary art, providing the first comprehensive overview of its uses within contemporary visual culture. The Gothic includes artists' writings by Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst, Tacita Dean, Jonathan Meese and Catherine Sullivan, complemented by literary extracts from Horace Walpole, William Gibson, Bret Easton Ellis and Stephen King, and theoretical writings by such key thinkers as Carol Clover, Beatriz Colomina, Julia Kristeva, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Marina Warner and Slavoj Žižek.
Artists surveyed include Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Tacita Dean, Sue de Beer, Janet Cardiff, 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, and Jane and Louise Wilson.
Writers 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 and Slavoj Žižek.
Table of Contents:
Introduction; A Thematic Framework; This Year's Goth: A Short History of the Gothic in Contemporary Art; Modern Gothic: Death, Excess and Terror; 'The Creature': Alien Beings and Alien Bodies; Transgressing Females and the Name of the Father; The Uncanny: Doubles and Other Ghosts; Castles, Ruins and Labyrinths; Biographical Notes; Bibliography; Index; Acknowledgements.
About the Author :
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
Review :
"The Gothic is alive and kicking. As a subcultural tendency it has displayed surprising staying power, is spectre reappearing periodically since the eighteenth century. This anthology explores the manifold facets of the Gothic- from Frankenstein to its manifestations in contemporary art, architecture, film, music and style- as well as situating the Gothic in its theoretical, philosophical and psychoanalytic contexts." - Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool
