Reflections on Haunting the Canon: The Super-phenomena in Art
Abstract
In December 2020, the Vatican unveiled its annual nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Headlines across conservative Catholic newspapers quickly latched on to what many observers described as “shockingly unconventional”: nineteen monumental ceramic figures, including an astronaut, a cyborg, and a turkey-dinosaur chimera, surrounding a covered sculpture of the infant Christ. The sensationalized convergence of otherworldly and religious subjects was a means to reflect on the 2020 Art History Graduate Student Association’s 45th Annual Symposium Haunting the Canon: The Super-phenomena in Art, which likewise examined manifestations of the supernatural. The paranormal is important for the study of art and culture not simply because they elicit new and diverse aesthetic categories, but also because as a strategy, they offer insight into major socio-political and environmental problems shaping the present. This paper traces the development of the symposium’s theme and showcases some of the ways artists and art historians are engaging new perspectives and strategies of alternate world-making.