While German painting of the postwar period essentially concerned itself with coming to terms with the past and presenting it in gestures ranging from the heroic to the ironic, Daniel Richter focuses on positioning himself in the present. Time and again he devises new ways of being "modern" in a medium that has long been labeled old-fashioned and anachronistic. His pictures constantly challenge the spectator by their painterly and contextually excessive demands, but they do not lecture on moral issues. In five chapters featuring more than 200 examples of his works, the author Eva Meyer-Hermann traces the chronological development of Richter's artistic output for the first time. The turns from abstraction to figuration and back again that until now have been described as abrupt, prove on closer examination to be a logical consequence and a sign of conscious artistic action.

Featuring beautiful color reproductions and enlightening descriptions, this is the definitive guide to one of the largest, and most beloved, collections of art in the world More than a simple souvenir book, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide provides a comprehensive view of art history spanning five millennia and the entire globe, beginning with the ancient world and ending in contemporary times. It includes media as varied as painting, photography, costume, sculpture, decorative arts, musical instruments, arms and armor, works on paper, and many more. Presenting works ranging from the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur to Canova's Perseus with the Head of Medusa to Sargent's Madame X, this revised edition is an indispensable volume for lovers of art and art history, and for anyone who has ever dreamed of lingering over the most iconic works in the Metropolitan's unparalleled collection. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Henri Matisse created some of his most exquisite works by cutting shapes out of paper. Delightfully entertaining and playfully inventive, his "drawings with scissors" are also a superb introduction to the most basic artistic concepts: color, line, and form. This engaging and accessible look at Matisse's cut-outs, arguably the highlight of his magnificent career, follows the artist as he goes in search of pure forms of expression. Illustrated with beautiful reproductions of Matisse's most famous works, the book relates an imaginary tale about how the colors and shapes created by Matisse come to life, carrying the reader off into the artist's fantasy world. It reflects Matisse's spontaneity, his love of bold colors, and his seemingly effortless ability to capture movement on paper, which make him an artist of great appeal to children. Fun and easy-to-follow, this exploration of Matisse's cut-outs invites children of all ages to draw with scissors just like the artist, using the sheets of paper printed in Matisse-inspired colors included in the book.

In 1965/66 Georg Baselitz created the monumental series "The Heroes" and "New Types", which he presented in wild colour and with defiant style. By turning his attention towards the tradition of representational painting his work formed a striking contrast to the trends towards abstraction and Expressionism prevailing during the 1960s, thereby embarking on his own unique path. In his sceptical basic attitude towards post-war Germany Baselitz (* 1938) emphasised in his works the ambivalent aspects of the present in which he lived. His "Heroes" appear correspondingly contradictory with their military fatigues in tatters, their failure as deeply engraved as their resignation. The contrast to the success story of Western Germany's economic miracle could hardly be more sharply defined, but there is more at stake: with this group of works the artist reflected his own position in relation to society. It was the artist's self-assertion and determination of identity that were at stake and that Baselitz formulated so forcefully.

Few artists have combined conceptual ingenuity with devastating critique as deftly and wittily as Piero Manzoni (1933-1963). Fifty years after his death at the tender age of 29, Manzoni remains unsurpassed as a provocateur: his "Artist's Breath" and "Artist's Shit" editions, which now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, are unanswerable satirical attacks on art-world economics and values, and his designations of various persons (such as Umberto Eco and Marcel Broodthaers) as "living artworks" prefigure many strains in performance art. Manzoni thus effected some of the most decisive paradigm shifts in postwar art, something for which he is only rarely given full credit. This comprehensive survey accompanies a major retrospective at the Stadel in Frankfurt (the first major Manzoni retrospective outside Italy in more than two decades), and is published on the occasion of what would have been his eightieth birthday. It reproduces more than 100 works from all phases of the artist's brief but massively influential career, from his early Klein-influenced monochromes (or "Achromes") and the Art Informel years to his role as a leading member of the Zero group (alongside Mack, Piene, Tinguely, Klein, Fontana) and beyond.