As the millennium draws to a close, a Gothic spirit once again penetrates much of today's art and culture. Over the past decade, American and European artists have grown increasingly fascinated with the dark and uncanny side of the human psyche—the theatrical and grotesque, the violent and destructive.

Taking its starting point and title from the Gothic novel, this book investigates the full-blown revival of a Gothic sensibility in contemporary art; in American and British fiction labeled the "New Gothic"; in film with its long tradition of horror; and in video, music, fashion, design, and underground culture. Gothic accompanies an exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, of twenty-three artists who produce horror as well as amazement through often ugly, fragmented, and contorted forms. Some employ a detached and reductive formal language to transmute images of excessive and gruesome violence, nevertheless achieving an equally disconcerting impact. The old Gothic themes of the fantastic and pathological are infused with new potency as they address concerns about the body, disease, voyeurism, and power.

Essays by John Gianvito, Christoph Grunenberg, James Hannaham, Patrick McGrath, Joyce Carol Oates, Shawn Rosenheim, Csaba Toth, and Anne Williams, and a short story by Dennis Cooper, explore the Gothic in history and in contemporary art and culture.

Artists: Julie Becker, Monica Carocci, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Gregory Crewdson, Keith Edmier, James Elaine, Robert Gober, Douglas Gordon, Wolfgang Amadeus Hansbauer, Jim Hodges, Cameron Jamie, Mike Kelley, Abigail Lane, Zoe Leonard, Tony Oursler, Sheila Pepe, Alexis Rockman, Aura Rosenberg, Pieter Schoolwerth, Cindy Sherman, Jeanne Silverthorne, Gary Simmons.

Though born and raised in Germany, Christoph Grunenberg views his appointment at Tate Modern as something of a homecoming. After serving for nearly half a decade as acting director of the ICA in Boston, Grunenberg is returning to the city where he spent seven years studying at the Courtauld Institute of Art. As such he is part of the Tate mini-invasion; long resolutely British, the institution has appointed a pair of non-Brits (the other is an American, Donna De Salvo) to senior posts. "The Tate wants to become a great international museum," Grunenberg says, "and the arrival of me and the others is a small part of that."

At the ICA, Grunenberg's crowning achievement was "Gothic: Transmutations of Horror in Late-Twentieth-Century Art," a show that brought together work in a variety of media and included elements of the Goth subculture. The 200-page catalogue was interdisciplinary as well, gathering essays by novelists Patrick McGrath and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. It's an approach that garners favor at the Tate. "We're making a real commitment to taking a more open approach, looking at art that goes beyond the traditional and exploring media and parallel tendencies in film, architecture, design, etc. and the culture in which they're found."

In his role at Tate Modern, Grunenberg is in charge of acquisitions and will be looking "beyond the classical 'geocratical' limits of Western Europe," especially to South America. He is also responsible for various gallery rooms, both monographic (Rothko, Warhol) and synthetic in focus (the Subversive Object room, for example, includes works by Dali, Manzoni, Samaras, Broodthaers, and Sarah Lucas). Additionally, Grunenberg will work with the Patrons of New Art, a group of 300 backers who buy art for the museum and sponsor the Turner Prize.

All of this makes Grunenberg nothing if not excited. "I'm coming back to my original interests in art. It's great to work with a permanent collection, having concentrated only on cutting edge for the past several years." He adds, "We're redefining the collection, the whole history of twentieth-century art. We're starting with a clean state."