Gothic Modern illuminates the pivotal discovery of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Kathe Kollwitz and their artist contemporaries. It explores their deep attraction to the Gothic art of Europe’s north and German lands via paintings, prints and in other artistic media to imagine a new ‘Gothic modernity’, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories. Gothic Modern sheds light on the profound importance of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch; Kathe Kollwitz and their contemporaries. It explores their re-imagining of Gothic art between 1870s and 1920s to create new visions of the artist, ‘belonging’, modern society, sexuality, spirituality and identity. In these ways, a distant Gothic age is recreated as tantalizing close to ‘modernity’, in short, to making modern art. Dark or radiant, enchanted or uncanny, these sites of ‘Gothic modernity’ inspired Munch’s and Kollwitz’s generation with urgent imaginaries for creating worlds.
