Maxwell Rabb profiles nine contemporary artists who explore ghostly and spectral themes in their work, coinciding with two major museum exhibitions: Kunstmuseum Basel's "Ghosts: Visualizing the Supernatural" (through March 2026) and Tacoma Art Museum's "Haunted." The article traces the historical evolution of ghost imagery in art from Renaissance depictions to 19th-century psychological forms by Goya and Fuseli, through 20th-century surrealist and post-war treatments, and highlights living artists such as Xie Lei and Mariann Metsis who use haunting as a metaphor for memory, loss, and the unseen.
The article matters because it connects a perennial artistic motif—the ghost—to current exhibitions and a new generation of artists, demonstrating how contemporary art continues to engage with themes of absence, trauma, and the supernatural. By framing haunting as both subject and condition, it underscores the enduring power of art to visualize what cannot be easily expressed, linking historical precedents to present-day practices in galleries and museums.