Contemporary Gothic

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The Gothic sensibility in art predates any subculture. Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781), with a demon crouched on a sleeping woman, and Francisco Goya's etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799) share their imagery with the haunted castles of Horace Walpole's fiction and, later, Mary Shelley's made creature. Horror film and the goth scene that grew from late 1970s post-punk added new images and a dress code.

Artists since the 1990s draw on all of these. Gottfried Helnwein photographs and paints children with bandages and wounds. Banks Violette makes stark sculptures in black, white and salt that recall the stage sets and legends of heavy metal. Kembra Pfahler, with her band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, performs in body paint and wigs, mixing shock rock and feminism. Alexander McQueen's catwalk collections used skulls, feathers and mourning black. Look for black palettes, ritual objects, skulls, blood and theatrical menace.