Jeff Wall’s large-scale Cibachrome transparencies mounted onlight-boxes have exerted a profound influence over little short of the past three decades. His work also spans a time in which the way inwhich the relationship between art and history has been conceived hasundergone a profound change. He is one of the last artists to work out his "moves" on the basis of a linear view of history and then to have to rethink the relationship of his work with art history in a worldin which such a view of history was no longer tenable.His compositions in both color and black-and-white maintain a constant dialogue with nineteenth-century genre painting and truly make him,in Charles Baudelaire's expression,"a painter of modern life." Inaddition to an in-depth essay by Michael Newman, this book reproducesthe complete work of Jeff Wall to date and includes his main writingson the creative experience of other key contemporary artists.
