Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture

The six essays which comprise Endgame provide the first comprehensive discussion of reference in contemporary art and the commodification of the art object. The interrrelated concerns of painters Sherry Levine, Ross Bleckner, Peter Halley, and Philip Taaffe--who ironically adapt the visual strategies of earlier modern artists--and those of sculptors Jon Kessler, General Idea, Jeff Koons, Joel Otterson, and Haim Steinbach--who use consumer objects and their mode of representation as the raw material of their sculpture--are the sources of the authors' varied and acute arguments on this theme of the political and social economy of the image.