Liquid Antiquity

Neither an academic textbook nor a conventional art book, Liquid Antiquity explores the intersection between contemporary art and antiquity in a fluid stream of images, ideas and voices.

This visual essay spans more than 2,500 years of art history in an open-ended dialogue with a series of critical texts and interviews with contemporary artists, exploring the possibility of reinventing classicism and arguing for its enduring influence on contemporary art. It includes a critical essay by Brooke Holmes investigating the concept of “liquid antiquity”; a series of 27 lexemes that critically rethink the traditional language of classicism, written by prominent critics and scholars; and ten interviews with contemporary artists (Matthew Barney, Paul Chan, Haris Epaminonda, Urs Fischer, Jeff Koons, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Charles Ray, Asad Raza, Kaari Upson and Adrián Villar Rojas).