Includes index.

Introduction: seeing as a contact sport / Jarrett Earnest. Part 1 Hot & cold : Hot : Andy Warhol -- Willem de Kooning -- "Women" by Willem de Kooning and Jean Dubuffet -- Arshile Gorky -- Two by Rembrandt -- Zurbarán's citrons -- Velázquez -- Courbet -- Jackson Pollock -- Jean-=Michel Basquiat -- Anselm Kiefer at MoMA -- Otto Dix -- Picasso and the weeping women -- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec -- Jane Dickson / Karen Finley -- Keith Haring, 1958-1990 -- Ree Morton -- Hélio Oiticica -- Elizabeth Murray -- Elizabeth Peyton -- Bronzino -- A Van Gogh portrait -- Kerry James Marshall -- Henri Matisse I -- Henri Matisse II. Cold : Andy Warhol's grave -- Baltic views -- Caspar David Friedrich -- Joseph Beuys -- Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian -- Sigmar Polke -- Martin Kippenberger -- Urs Fischer -- Shepard Fairey -- Frederic Remington -- Christopher Wool -- Weegee -- Adolescents -- Mark Morrisroe -- Louise Lawler and institutional critique -- Pictures -- Jenny Holzer -- A theft in Norway -- Judith Leyster -- Lucian Freud -- Francis Bacon -- Edgar Degas -- Luc Tuymans -- Peter Doig -- Laura Owens: a profile -- Goya. Part 2 Heavy & light : Heavy : Berlin, 1989 -- Removal of the "Tilted Arc" -- Concrete and Scott Burton -- Picasso sculpture -- Donatello -- Augustus Saint-Gaudens -- The Greeks -- Charles Ray -- Bruce Nauman -- Rachel Harrison: a profile -- Thomas Hirschhorn -- Jay Defeo -- Alice Neel -- Philip Guston -- Martin Luther -- The Ghent altarpiece -- Giorgio Morandi -- Piet Mondrian -- Mantegna -- Young Rembrandt -- Clement Greenberg, 1909-1994 -- Leo Castelli -- Cindy Sherman at Metro Pictures -- Cindy Sherman at MoMA -- Jeff Koons: sympathy for the devil. Light : Fireworks -- Felix González-Torres -- Piero Della Francesca -- Giovanni Bellini -- Agnes Martin -- Vermeer -- Peter Hujar -- Henri Cartier-Bresson -- Helen Levitt -- Thomas Struth -- Mother Love (Whistler) -- Karen Kilimnik -- David Hockney -- Frans Hals -- The auctions -- Market value -- Fakery -- Marcel Broodthaers -- Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray -- Mughal paintings and Andrew Wyeth -- Florine Stettheimer -- Albert Oehlen -- Bill Traylor -- Abstraction. Credo: the critic as artist -- Acknowledging -- Index.

Collects 100 key writings by Peter Schjeldahl spanning thirty years, his last twenty as the art critic of the "New Yorker." In this unfailingly lucid guide to an art world in constant, dramatic flux, Schjeldahl addresses new artists and Old Masters with the same pitch of acuity, empathy, and wit. No other writer enhances the reader's experience of art in precise, jargon-free prose as he does, with reviews that are as much essay a criticism. Implicit in Schjeldahl's role as a frontline critic is a focus on artists, issues, and events of urgent relevance to the culture at large. The book tells us why we still care about Rembrandt and Mantegna, Matisse and Picasso; takes the measure of contemporaries Basquiat and Holzer, Polke and Kiefer, Sherman and Koons; introduces us to newcomers Kerry James Marshall and Laura Owens; and salutes rediscoveries of Florine Stettheimer, Hélio Oiticica, and Peter Hujar. The book provides essential knowledge to anyone curious about the character, quality, and consequence of art today. The pieces in the book were compiled and arranged by the critic Jarrett Earnest, with an ear attuned to Schjeldahl's range of voices.