Recycling Beauty

Documenting the Salvatore Settis-curated exhibition on the legacy and reuse of Greek and Roman art from the Middle Ages to the Baroque

Fondazione Prada's exhibition Recycling Beauty, designed by Rem Koolhaas, is an unprecedented study of the reuse of Greek and Roman antiquities within post-antiquity--the Middle Ages to the Baroque. While themes such as seriality, reuse and recycling in art are closely linked to our conception of modernity, they also attest to the extraordinary persistence of certain classical values, categories and models. The catalog examines the role of recycling within art and architecture in the wake of antiquity, employing art historians and curators who analyze the subject from historical, artistic and philosophical perspectives. This ambitious aim is materialized through a visual essay on architecture, 16 critical texts, four in-depth studies and a comprehensive series of detailed profiles of the exhibited objects.