This article considers the presence of Latin in art from the beginning of the twentieth century until today. It analyses works by Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joseph Kosuth, Giulio Paolini, Rosemarie Trockel, Ian Hamilton Finlay and William Kentridge, and compares their engagement with the Latin language. The article is structured according to the different ways in which these artists unsettle the status of Latin, be it through semantic confusion, material recontextualisation or textual destabilising.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.