This volume selects 20 artists who emerged during the last 20 years and have made significant contributions in photography, painting, film, and sculpture. Representing the 1980s are Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, Eric Fischl, Julio Galan, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Charles Ray, David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, and Terry Winters. The 1990s are represented by Matthew Barney, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Juan Munoz, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, and Rachel Whiteread. Each artist is represented by one work of art -- seminal and iconographic images like Koons' Rabbit and Gober's Long Sink, which best exemplify their oeuvre.
The threads which link all of these artists together are the issues of identity -- with the self, mass culture, AIDS, mortality, gender, race, feminism, masculinity, adolescence, stereotypes, social behavior, and taboos.
