The fold between the two sides of artistic sources met and closed into one lapidary clause: nature and technology are both spiritually inspirational and endlessly complex: a rich and challenging source for the artist. We now live, therefore, with an aesthetic sensibility that sources equally from nature and technological progress. It is a matter of purpose to then ?nd the individuals whose work or lives emulate this sensibility. This is not done by prettifying and highlighting the paltry scars of this antiquated schism. The comprehension of this sensibility is discovered no longer in their explanation but is displayed, absolutely, through their very formation.

Enter now:  a possible manifestation of this contemporary aesthetic sensibility. “All the Pretty Corpses,” the current exhibit at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago features projects by eight living and working artists. The tagline of this exhibit as well as the hearsay qualifier is: “Neo-Gothic.” In a stringent art historian’s mind, Neo-Gothic could rightfully conjure an image of an edifice with cascading glass flying-buttresses, gleaming metallic surfaces ornamented by glowing light, buzzing antennae, coiled wires, piling and protruding from bulbous pods, swirling and swelling from seemingly technological, or possibly, bio-technological necessity: a massive totem pulsating with human or human induced activity. One would replace the spires so familiar of our famous Gothic cathedrals with blasting beams of light. Our magni?cent stained-glass rose windows could be refitted with enormous plasma screens, displaying continually mutating images. This window would  be a monitor of progress, a panoramic surveillance of construction and expansion. This portal, which once served as the delicate filter between the harsh earthly existence of the preRenaissance subject and enormously beautiful prospect of heaven, would be in its “neo” incarnate, no longer a filter between squalor and opulence but between the now and the metallic and digital future.

However, as of yet we do not have any edifices which resemble my description. We certainly do have veritable representations of this futuristic reincarnate: films and animated/comic literature offer us a glimmer of this stylized state.

Neo-gothic is mainstream as a concept but its creative fervor is still relegated to the basement hallways of high schools, the midnight salons in diners and in fringe music venues and clubs, and overwhelmingly, on the internet, prosaically qualified as a sub-culture. The Renaissance Society, as an institution, has continuously framed exhibits and featured individuals whose purpose and work could be quali?ed as experimental, counter-cultural or curious. So here, we find the Renaissance Society reaching deep inside the bowels of society, touching a group, a style and an ideal which has held dominion over the nether-creatures of the counter-culture for nearly three decades.

What appeared most blatantly curious about the exhibit during its opening was the complete lack of gothic personalities. In their clothing, accessories and manner of speaking one found nothing reminiscent of the markedly (i.e. stereotypically) gothic individual. No high-contrast makeup, no black, no leather and no occult paraphernalia. How then, we may ask, is this art neo-gothic if not created by gothic individuals? Perusing web-sites devoted to displaying artwork of gothic sensibility one comes across delicately rendered images of princesses, dragons and satanic creatures. There are Giacometti-like scribbles of suffering lonesome individuals cowered in the corner of vast, cold cemented rooms. One finds pouting young girls with slick, long, black hair staring, plainly forward. One can only imagine that the source of these images, created by persons across the world, is their very selves. The imagined accessories of the gothic regalia rendered in ink and pencil drawings or actually fashioned from materials seem only to make sense if they come from an individual who appreciated and understood the aesthetics of this sub-culture: someone who would desire to share their creation amongst the like-minded.

So this synthesis of which I write, that cohesive perspective that does not highlight the opposition between nature and technology, but rather, highlights the in?nity of creation over the explanation of purpose is achieved through the presentation of the “neo-gothic” style by the curators at the Renaissance Society. In codifying several disparate artistic sensibilities in varying mediums of visual arts, the exhibit posits a counter-point to an increasingly insincere period of popularized artistic representation. Most conventionally executed are the ink drawings of Kacy Maddux. This artist, in utilizing gothic or occult symbolism—aspects of religious, mythic and the corporeal—has enveloped the urge (or angst) towards the infinity of creation in a series of sizeable pieces which covered an ample portion of the gallery walls. When studying the dynamism of these images, an almost inexhaustible source of inquisition towards a definition of a “what” materializes itself. The drawings are immaculately executed in clean, steady lines and curves and framed for the viewer to stand squarely and study their content. This inexhaustible source of inquisition is not a secondary inquiry into the drawings but is the very content of the drawings themselves.

Maddux explained during a question and answer session at the opening, the drawings are the representation of a folding and unfolding of a repetitive sentiment. This sentiment, impossible to represent directly, is achieved through meticulous and scrupulous expansion and retraction of an iconography of the artist’s invention. An iconography, as Maddux explains, could be conceived as a transitory language. The series of drawings display an extract from a personal catalogue of icons that form the grammar by which this language is constructed. As a reading of Maddux’s drawings carries itself towards a form of representation which expresses in its material and its consistent imagery the actuality of a sentiment or an occasion, her inclusion in the neo-gothic style further substantiates the polarity between a sub-culture and the respected “culture” as such. The images that are found in the wake of Maddux’s pen, working against conventional contemporary culture and its incestuous purveyors of representation, are exaltations of sincerity. This art does not parody a sentiment to the point of a hollow echo. There is no mark of the deathblow called kitsch to banish this project to the realm of instituted product. The mistake of miscomprehension through blundered abstraction was performed by certain artists of the early years of abstract expressionism, but we may now have found seriousness through excavating sub-cultures from their quasinarcissistic catacombs.

This sincerity is even more apparent in the installation/ sculpture of Chicago-area artist Tony Tasset. His Grotto (2005), amassing blood-colored candles in the mouth of a life-size stone-and-mortar-looking plaster shrine conjures images of occult ritual and miserable onerous devotion. At first the “neo-gothic” imagery seems apparent, almost to the point of triteness. On the aesthetic note: the grotto looks solid. As the candles melt while some still burning, the red languid wax scores trails down the appreciably stone-gray plaster walls and sprawls onto the floor: the overall effect is quite beautiful. To conjure further the feeling of devotion, reverence, or grief in the wake of tragedy, the Grotto was placed in the corner of the gallery. One has to step aside from the main course of the galler y and stand alone, facing the glaring mouth of the edifice, which larger than us, blocks our view of anything else.

However, Tasset’s commentary on the piece was the more poignant of appreciable elements. Tasset explained his disappointment in the contemporary monument or memorial. Placing his grotto in the same context as a contemporary memorial one immediately thinks of recent events which were later marked by objects. The shootings in Columbine served as the artist’s example. His apparent distaste for the minimalist monuments that serve as the perpetual reminders of unarguably horri?c events posited his artwork within the dynamic style of representation here termed neo-gothic. Why not conjure the blood and misery of the event in its respective memorial? In explaining the allure and bene?ts of this sentiment and noting his child’s attraction to goth and/or metal music, he described our current state of affairs as pretty awful. In a society where everyone professes his or her anger and couples society with shit, why not sing about that? Why not show the shit and the society together, in glowering directness? Tasset’s Grotto serves as the memorial for a fictionalized tragedy. His memorial addresses the materiality of the event: the darkness, the blood and the inevitable isolation, which follows human tragedy.

“All the Pretty Corpses” offers its audience a tour through a world which is nothing short of stimulus and engaging imagery. This exhibit also incorporates artists whose agendas extend beyond those possessed by their source, the youth sub-culture of “goth.” However, it would be quite contentious to write that the works of art and the position taken by the artists or the curators of the exhibit were refreshing. Refreshing would assume a reconstitution of a state of freshness of which is presently difficult to conceive. However, if the cathartic properties of art were ever to be as present as they are in the exhaustive performance of head banging, ritual and incantation-based lyricism and a frightfully accurate representation of anger and fear as are found in the music and musings of the goth milieu, the art that this state of mind inspired is certainly a step towards a moment of respite from suffocation. This sensibility could be an antidote to the choking insincerity so symptomatic of befuddled parody and the lurking and lascivious kitsch of mainstream culture.

La Rocco, himself a Black Metal guitarist in an Indiana Jones tribute band called Sallah, sat with me in the Pub to hoarsely talk over the sound of The Cranberries and the Allman Brothers Band and make sense of the often confused subcultures of goth and metal. I want to know: I saw art made by people aren’t self-proclaimed goths, so how can theirs be gothic art? At the heart of this dilemma is a particular piece in the gallery—a poster alphabetically listing metal albums from around the world: is that goth, too? Which genre encompasses the other?

We begin by considering the two subcultures, historically concurrent and close on the sociological family tree, as a Venn diagram. “The overlap isn’t as great as you might think,” La Rocco tells me, and at the heart of that is an inter-group hostility. “Goth people are inherently sissies,” he continues, “when you were in high school, that’s why those kids were Goths.” While goth culture is an offshoot that developed from the post-punk movement across the late 1970s and 1980s, it is now defined by appearance and lifestyle or attitude rather than by musical devotion. Metal, on the other hand, is not necessarily something you can see—La Rocco, for example, is wearing a nice black shirt and a blazer that is borderline hip—but you cannot be metal if you’re not a fan of the hornsand- headbanging music genre. Black Metal is a culture-inclusive exception that will be addressed later.

The genetic links between metal and goth, however, are as undeniable as a widow’s peak. Good old rebellious rock is the “missing link” that made possible the evolution of both other genres, though goth had to pass through the punk generation, and they have even intermingled in the Gothic Metal subgenre. And why shouldn’t they? They are both explicitly preoccupied with life’s darker colors. Each subculture’s monochromatic fashion and creation of self-selecting society stem from a strong impulse to break free of and oppose mainstream society.

Scandinavia is the birthplace of black metal, and Norse bands, who have been especially important in metal music, take pride in their heritage and homeland. Their music manifests the fascination with the Nordic landscape’s cold, snowy darkness and their cultural pride—or rather their cultural indignation. The sentiment that Christianity overtook Norse culture and religion like an invasive species is forefront in the attitudes of Black Metal bands, “and they’re livid,” explains La Rocco. Thus the rash of church arson inspired, if not perpetrated, by Mayhem. Thus the themes and sense of mythology and folklore that ostensibly inform death—not black—metal lyrics and style. It is not quite clear if the corpse paint and swords-and-leather regalia are meant to faithfully represent their Viking ancestors or if we should interpret these musicians as risen-from-the-dead avengers of their epoch. Are the metalheads thrashing along to their songs as concerned with history and cultural preservation? Not that I can tell, and while black metal culture demands a lifestyle choice of adherence to “evil in its most pure state,” the descriptor Euronymous so boldly coined as the principle of his own label, Deathlike Silence Productions, metal in general is the sort of thing you can love in your car, on the weekends, and in your iPod without jeopardizing your day job. As long as you cut that headbanger’s hair. In that sense, being a metal fan is a lot like being a fan of 80s music, Ludacris, or Melissa Etheridge. But I digress.

Goth culture, like metal, has many permutations within its culture, and you can also hide your underworldly tendencies from the boss if you so choose, but it is inherently more about lifestyle and less about musical taste. What began as an offshoot of 70s/80s post-punk culture in Britain spread across the pond and around the world, and now has its own manifesto, written by Canadian artist Charles Moffat two decades later. Moffat describes the Neo-Gothic movement (neo-gothic and gothic tend to be used interchangeably) as counterculture, seeking rebellion against government, mainstream society, and existing norms of sexuality and religion. There it is, the neat intersection of goth and metal. Goth and metal have influenced each other, from fashion choices to music. While Goths no longer seem to be defined by their music, goth music and its several subgenres exist and overlap on occasion with metal.

Since the surface similarities may confuse us, we must delve deeper order to apply these labels adeptly to art galleries, concerts, or people walking down the street. The politics and personalities of these two groups appear to bisect at one crucial point, that strange ethos regarding women and sex that is the line in the sand that divides so many groups and institutions. My own perception of goth culture—and mind you, I grew up in Los Angeles—is that it is a very coed collective, with perhaps a slight surplus of females. La Rocco’s estimation is that the balance of the audience at metal concerts rests at 10% female, but he doesn’t think that metal is inherently anti-woman. “Mostly it’s pro-sex,” he says, “but there is some black metal that might advocate rape.” Mayhem’s lyrics (check out darklyrics.com) don’t explicitly recommend violence against women per se, but I could never sing along to them the way I could to even explicit cuts of rap and hip-hop. There are some women in the bands, though, like Arch Enemy which is also goth music and Lacuna Coil, an Italian metal band with a female singer. I ask La Rocco about Evanescence, but apparently Evanescense : metal :: Hillary Duff : rock&roll. A lot of goth sexual imagery overlaps with sadomasochism, and indeed there is a sub-subculture known as fetish goth, but also has strong tendencies toward androgyny and Victorian aesthetics. Goth music is also known for its ambient quality rather than aggressiveness. La Rocco and I ponder whether we might posit the relationship between metal and goth as a complementary pairing between dominants and submissives, respectively.

Extremism, however, is one problem that plagues metal culture, however, but does not seem to infiltrate the goth world. Often, metal lyrics glorify warfare and violence—because they lead to evilness and death?—and over time this aesthetic has spawned or been co-opted by xenophobic and racist groups. The potent blend of anti-establishment ideas with primal aggression creates a unique ambiguity surrounding the principles of the music. The metal icons are presumably against “the Man,” but are they against democracy? Against peace? One website, www.metalheadsagainstracism.org, has confronted the problem by asking labels, bands, and metalheads to disavow the racist ideologies that have sprouted under the umbrella of metal culture. La Rocco describes the situation this way: “Despite its extreme right-wing tendencies, it’s very left wing,” pointing to the British group Napalm Death as one political example. “The skinheads are only into shitty metal.”

La Rocco and I have finished our cheap beers. As we head out of the bar so that I can hear some choice metal singles off his iPod, we run into Ralph Patrello, another local keeper of metal lore. We pose the goth-metal relationship question to Patrello, who verifies La Rocco’s theories with the pat explanation, “Your average [high school] Joe is afraid of the goth kids, but you bought your weed from the metal guys.” At the end of the day, that is what all the leather paraphernalia, red eyeliner, necromancy, and mayhem boil down to. Satisfied that the boundaries of subculture identity are as fluid, contradictory, and airborne as any, I walk out into the night, and it is oh so cold and dark in Chicago.