Adam Norwood

The Power of Horror

I just finished reading through The Gothic, a recent essay collection from the Documents of Contemporary Art series published by MIT Press. The book stitches together a variety of short essays centered on discussion of classic gothic literature and contemporary art, tapping into the thoughts of well-established artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Wall while also reflecting on younger members of the field like Banks Violette, David Altmejd, Aïda Ruilova, and Sue de Beer. Crammed within its scant 230, large-typeset pages you’ll find writing on Edgar Allen Poe (any book on gothic literature and modernity needs to have lots of Poe!), Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Freud and Lacan’s theories of the uncanny (unheimliche), deconstructions of 1980s slasher movies, psychoanalytic musings on duality and transgression, bits of cyberpunk from William Gibson, and more! When I was younger, I was thrilled reading Poe, Shelley, Baudelaire, et al., without realizing until recently how much of an impact their writings had on art and literature, continuing even today as the art world emerges slowly out of post-modernism and back towards theatricality and the sublime. Highly recommended.