Includes bibliographical references and index.

This title examines the motivations for the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and argues that theorists and artists now hunger for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. The book shows how, for decades, aesthetic

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. The Turn from Truth -- Chapter 1. Machine: Conceptual Photography -- Chapter 2. Matter: Art in the Desert -- Chapter 3. Surface: Photorealist Painting -- Chapter 4. System: Gerhard Richter -- Conclusion. The Lasting

Over the past half-century, Gerhard Richter (born 1932) has built up a stylistically heterogeneous and conceptually complex body of painting, photography, sculpture and artist's books that firmly establishes his status as the most important living artist of our time: today, this diverse oeuvre totals in excess of 3,000 individual works.

What is a woman? What is a man? How do they—and how should they—relate to each other? Does our yearning for "wholeness" refer to something real, and if there is a Whole, what is it, and why do we feel so estranged from it? For centuries now, art and literature