Author(s): Kevin Grady

ARTS, DARKLY

Appropriately conceived during a global plague, Wednesday is the new Bible of Dark Culture. Dark culture? It's not just for goths. It's been lurking around the corner for as long as people have feared ghosts. You can hear it boldly knocking on the door in the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in the pervasive melancholy of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" and, of course, in Ian Curtis' tortured moan. It creeps all Frankenstein-like down Rick Owens' runways, and makes its presence known physically in Brutalist concrete.  It vacations in Berlin, where it sounds like dark techno and smells like leather, sage and marble dust. It's a lovesick vampire in a David Bowie film, a black tourmalinestone set purposefully on a bedside table, a cult of (no) color, a black celebration. It fills the desperate pages of The Bell Jar and it's in the melting faces of Nicola Samori paintings. It's Edward Gorey. In a long, fur coat. With his cat. It's coming to get you, Barbara. And, believe it or not, it makes some of us feel really alive.