Robert] Storr's is one of the sharpest minds in American art museums. --The New York Review of Books, [Gerhard Richter is] Europe's most challenging modern painter. --Michael KimmelmanGerhard Richter is widely recognized as one of the most significant painters working today, and he is certainly among the most influential. He has worked in a wide range of manners since the early 1960s, producing abstractions, landscapes, images derived from the mass media and photographs, and more. Seen together, these works call into question such widely held assumptions as the importance of stylistic consistency, individual artistic sensibility, and spontaneous creativity. They also explore the impact of technology and media imagery on the traditional methods and formats of painting. The Museum of Modern Art has published two important books on Richter, both written by Robert Storr: one covering 40 years of his painting, and published to accompany the museumis large Richter retrospective in spring 2002, and one focusing on a single crucial series, October 18, 1977, which Richter painted in 1988. This new publication brings together the essays, an interview and bibliography from both of those books in a single volume--an ideal service for the student who wants both texts at hand at a relatively low price.