Classic Beauty: 21st-Century Artists on Ancient [Greek] Form

About the Exhibition

Classic Beauty: 21st- Century Artists on Ancient [Greek] Form examines how ancient, antique and classical forms remain crucial to contemporary artists’ creative lexicon. Establishing the visual traditions of Ancient Greece—Archaic, Geometric, Hellenistic and Classical styles—as ever-evolving and fluid, this group exhibition presents artists who use art history, archaeology, materiality and wide-ranging research methods to repurpose particularly iconic elements of visual culture. With a broad range of artworks across a variety of mediums—including architectural objects, collage, ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture and installation—each artist demonstrates the continued relevance and complexity of the legacy of the so-called birthplace of Western Civilization.

The exhibition also examines how artists appropriate and manipulate antiquity. Multi-layered projects trace the ways Ancient Greece visually descends through Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-Classical, Art Deco and other Euro-centric artistic periods, while also emphasizing the influence of non-Western cultures of the ancient Near East, Northern Africa and East Asia. With the additional inclusion of references to contemporary phenomena, the artworks on view simultaneously homage and challenge the truthfulness of the visual legacy of Ancient Greece, especially as it is expressed in modern Western democratic societies.