Alexis Rockman: Naples: Course of Empire

Alexis Rockman's painting cycle Naples as a defining statement on the Anthropocene and the fate of coastal civilizations.

With time itself as protagonist, this publication, dedicated exclusively to Alexis Rockman's Naples cycle, presents the entire development of the seven panoramic paintings in great detail. By connecting art history with pressing contemporary realities, climate science, and ecological collapse, the cycle paints a new picture of our civilization.

Rather than presenting history as linear progress, the cycle unfolds as recurrence: creation, eruption, collapse, and transformation repeating across vastly different scales of time. Alongside the paintings, the book presents Rockman's field drawings made with volcanic material gathered directly from Mount Vesuvius. These works function as both studies and relics: records of direct contact between image and geology.

Together, they form a contemporary Course of Empire--in this case, not a moral allegory but an ecological one--where civilization is revealed as a brief, combustible phase within a far larger planetary story.