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The Gothic is a collection of essays, articles
and excerpts exploring the many permutations
of ‘Gothic’ and its periodic resurrection in art.
Gothic, a seemingly indestructible cultural
into sections titled ‘This Year’s Goth’ and ‘Modern
expression, tends to emerge from its never-
Gothic’. But it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when
quite-shut coffin at crucial moments of either
Gothic began to resurge, both in the twentieth
progress or crisis or both. But though it is easy
century and more recently. Dates of publication
to isolate the socio-political situations that might
of the various assembled texts are helpful markers
be driving the current spate of Gothic-inspired
but provide only a partial framework. Ultimately
work, it is harder to find a contemporaneous one
this reflects Gothic’s problematic relationship
within art practice itself.
to time, for even at its inception as a literary
The Gothic’s editor, Williams points
movement in the mid-eighteenth century it was
out that more and more contemporary artists
mired in a fictional and fetishised medieval past.
(including Charles Ray, Damien Hirst, Banks
The Gothic is nicely structured as an archive
Violette, Robert Gober and Jake & Dinos
and Williams is mindful of Gothic’s dependence
Chapman, among others) are mining Gothic’s
on back-history. Because its narratives usually
numerous meanings in their work, a fact she
involve the tracing of a situation to its root,
attributes to its outsider status. Sidelined by
much of the contemporary art discussed in
Minimalism for the last 30 years, she argues, it
The Gothic is narrative heavy. Louise Bourgeois’s
is due a reappraisal. Douglas Crimp’s essay ‘On
The Destruction of the Father (1974; on view for
the Museum’s Ruins’ (1993), meanwhile, suggests
the first time in the UK this autumn, at Tate) is
that the resurgence of Gothic in art comes
undeniably autobiographical and ties into ‘classic’
as a result of Modernism’s failures. Gothic’s
Gothic themes of troubled domesticity and
tendency to cut and paste different elements
corporal partibility. Such narratives are unable
from different epochs could be construed as
to break free of the past and so remain stuck
proto-postmodernist; Frankenstein’s monster,
in a temporal loop, a situation mirrored in Stan
for instance, is composed of found parts, not all
Douglas’s video installation Nu*tk*a (2004),
of them from the same body or period. Crimp’s
also discussed, which is composed of continually
essay is positioned towards the end of the book
looping footage and which explores colonialism
in a kind of explanatory pay-off, but though
as a returning curse.
illuminating, it is nonetheless more than a decade
Happily interspersed with useful essays
old. Does his theory ring true for art right now?
from psychoanalysis and cultural theory, The
There is a disparity between contemporary
Gothic certainly gives its reader a lot to chew on.
Gothic and Gothic ‘now’, which Williams
But it is interesting that no one touches on what
ostensibly addresses by organising her material
ought to be the most obvious reason for Gothic’s
sporadic reemergence in the cultural arena: that
death, while easy to ignore for a time, inevitably
comes back to collect. Laura Allsop
The GoThic
Edited by Gilda Williams
MIT Press, $22.95 (paperback)
Artreview 206
Nov_books_.indd 206 26/9/07 12:46:09
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