James gained international recognition in 2008 for his work Kalos Thanatos (KΘ), Greek for “beautiful death”, when he burned his Ferrari F335 Spyder in a birch forest, and then displayed it in a mirrored glass box with birch tree trunks. James was inspired by the ancient Greeks, who made sacrifices to Aphrodite in birch forests. Glenn O’Brien lauded James’ Kalos Thanatos by describing it as daring: “I miss art going out on a limb...Just a slim limb that looks like there’s at least some chance of it snapping...” Anthony James burned his Ferrari and put it in a box, amid, actually, a bunch of limbs. “That was going for it….this work is pretty gutsy...The car was a victim, a sacrifice old-school redux.”
"you can’t really escape yourself. you’re always on the same thing. the artwork may present differently, but there is always an underlying signature theme. for me, everything is life / death / birth / rebirth somehow. it’s not an intention, but it all comes back to one source. burning a ferrari and stuff — it’s all instinctual. now I look back at it and ‘beautiful death’ is more of a concept than a sentence. it’s bizarre. you can’t escape your own destiny which is what the Iliad is about."
"you can’t really escape yourself. you’re always on the same thing. the artwork may present differently, but there is always an underlying signature theme. for me, everything is life / death / birth / rebirth somehow. it’s not an intention, but it all comes back to one source. burning a ferrari and stuff — it’s all instinctual. now I look back at it and ‘beautiful death’ is more of a concept than a sentence. it’s bizarre. you can’t escape your own destiny which is what the Iliad is about."
