In the early 1900s, artists felt suffocated by the rigid, hyper-realistic standards of the time. To break free, they didn’t look for something “new”; they looked for something “old”. Very old. They became obsessed with some of humanity’s earliest artistic attempts, such as the minimalist marble figurines of the Bronze Age Cycladic culture in Greece from the 4th and 3rd millennium BCE. By adopting these sharp lines and abstract shapes, the modernists were reconnecting with a primal artistic language that had been dormant for millennia, thereby sparking a revolution in the arts. Such is the sculpture ‘Head’ (1911–1912) by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, inspired by Cycladic art as well as African art.

This cycle is the engine of human culture. Every generation believes it is standing on a precipice of total novelty, yet we inevitably reach back into the junk drawer of history to find the tools we need to move forward and innovate. The Renaissance (15th-16th century) obsessed over Classical Greece; the Romantics (19th century) yearned for the Middle Ages; Hip Hop looked back to Jazz, Soul and Funk, and Jazz pioneers could have never invented their own revolution without going back to African rhythm. We are a species that moves forward by looking over our shoulder.

Now, we face a new frontier with Artificial Intelligence. As algorithms begin to churn out “original” art and literature, some fear that the human chain of continuity has finally been broken. But even AI is a retrospective ‘artist’. It creates by scouring the entirety of our collective history – from cave paintings to digital art, from ancient poetry to spoken word – and remixing it. In art as in life, there is nothing new under the sun; there is only the eternal, human habit of remembering.