Avant-Garde Egypt

Abstract This article opens with a discussion of contemporary avant-garde art, which according to many critics distinguishes itself by a turn to history, that is by a (seemingly paradoxical) backward-looking stance. Relativizing the ‘newness’ of this turn to history and the past in early twenty-first-century avant-garde art, the article then unearths the early twentieth-century avant-garde’s often neglected fascination with cultures that historically predate that of Europe. Zooming in on the historical avant-garde’s widespread interest in ancient Egypt in particular, the article highlights the “anarcheological impulse” that may well characterize the treatment of the (long-gone) past in all avant-garde exploits, be they early twentieth or twenty-first-century.