



Modern Gothic as a term fits a lot of artwork around right now. Young critics are keen on it, magazines are featuring it, and galleries are showing it. When certain things become visible they become visible all at once. It was that way with Magic realism, Visionary, Neo-surrealism painting, and Neo-romanticism art. The contemporary Gothic revival is less a movement than a trend. Many dark landscapes of Goth, Black Metal, Cyber Punk, and Surrealism deal with gothic art attributes such as mystery, horror, ghostly shadows, unease, and religious-themed terror. They might be described as "gloomy," "grotesque," "sinister," "mysterious," "unnatural creatures," "ancient fears," "underground rituals," "esthetic death," "the imminent terror".

You may ask why Gothic now? First, we have to remember that the Gothic has never really left, another replaced one hell, but the artistic imagination has been filling the void. In the art gallery's world, fear and confusion have brought a return of the metaphysical. There's been a shift from the big picture to the little one, from the cultural to sub cultural, the outer world to the inner one. Cults are more absorbing to artists than society; optimism has turned into skepticism. Artists are using images and symbols in ways that attempt to short-circuit the sense that things are controlled from outside or underworld.

The Goth art has always had a conflicting relationship to authority. In the Gothic, the hero and the villain resemble one another; the evil can be redeemed. Therefore, fluid definitions of sexuality, self and subject matter are typical. This keeps the Gothic art pictures more elusive, deluded and stylish. Punk and Goth culture in here too, although it was mostly amateur. Still, we're talking about Dungeons and Dragons, Doom and Gloom, teenage angst, masculine overdrive and the Cure. Modern Gothic is many things, some of them extremely promising. However, most art pictures that are primarily Gothic have been dilettante. Many of them are prosaic, banal, nostalgic, and openly shallow. Without a doubt, any art that is essentially one thing is in danger of becoming repetitive. Forms stagnate; discounted thrills and cliché prevail; compelling symbols and ridicule horror are readily embraced. The best Modern Gothic art is way more than historical Gothic itself, and that's what makes it worth looking at right now.







































































by Georg Grie

