The Gothic genre is fascinated by the wildness of nature and an ominously empty countryside. Vampires live in lonely castles in the mountains and haunted houses are abandoned villas, far removed from the world of civilisation. Many people in today’s world are city dwellers, however, and so the modern Gothic phenomenon also presents a distinctive image of the city.
“Cities are the abyss of the human species.” — Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, 1762
The interplay between the romantic Gothic and the dark Goth tradition is also evident in the way the city is visualized. When the Gothic Revival spread from Britain to the continent in the 19th century, Flemish cities like Ghent and Bruges rediscovered their medieval past. This went hand in hand with the rise of tourism: visitors were presented with a picturesque, fairy-tale city in which they could lose themselves to their heart’s content.
During this same period, the Neo-Gothic movement also grew in popularity in the southern provinces of the Netherlands, due in part to the recent emancipation of Catholicism. Den Bosch, for instance, was celebrated as a medieval jewel. The city’s historic Cathedral of St John was thoroughly restored and an exhibition of early ecclesiastical art was held in 1913 to celebrate the Gothic handicrafts.
“A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It is a thing uncanny, spectral.” — Author and essayist Max Beerbohm, ‘Advertisements’, 1942
All the same, we can already identify a dark, menacing mood in certain 19th-century works of art depicting the city. Dark cityscapes of this kind took on a new and more intense charge in the early 20th century. The threatening, impersonal and all-consuming metropolis shaped the Gothic imagination of this uncertain period. In it we can identify a form of the Gothic that is oriented towards the future: fear of the future becomes entangled with the dread of the past.
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So Posthuman (3): Monstrous humans and human monsters
Afgerukte ledematen, ontbindende lijken en afstotelijke monsters. Net als in het posthumanisme staat in gothic het lichaam centraal. Toevallig? Volgens curator Tomas van den Heuvel niet.
Identity and community
From the exposition: goth is a battleground for the great issues of identity, individual and community. Now, and already in the nineteenth century.
The dark mirror of the soul
From the exhibition: a sublime nature in this sense features prominently in the Gothic tradition, not only as a setting for elusive mysteries or unspeakable secrets, but also as a protagonist in its own right.
An invented past
From the exhibition: in the Gothic tradition, historyis exaggerated, twisted or straightforwardly invented. The past on which Goth is based is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy and reality.
Atmosphere over form
From the exhibition: The Goth tradition allows you to mix imagery, symbols and styles to your heart’s content. The result is an emphatic atmosphere, which stimulates the imagination and creates darkness. Goth isn’t a style in the traditional sense but a feeling.
The theatre of authenticity
From the exhibition: Goth eagerly pursues a sense of authenticity and is not afraid to evoke it artificially.
Dark technology
From the exhibition: new technologies help to visualize the dark sense of life in constantly changing ways, although it is frequently the shortcomings of such technology – scratches on the film or fading of the photograph – that give a ‘Gothic feel’ to an image.
Alternatieve stereotypes
From the exhibition: the Goth subculture experiments like no other with gender, sexuality and style, finding new meanings for old stereotypes through endless combinations.
