History as ghost and as fiction are present throughout José de Guimarães' work. Together with "Homeland", "Baghdad", and "The Battle of Carthage", the painting "2004" belongs to the cycle "Empires of the End", which revisits the theme of disasters of wars and great narratives. The monumental scale evokes the didactic sense of 19th century academic painting, and the shards of signs, colors and fragments confer a dissonant and almost apocalyptic sense.