This new publication traces the history of artists and their engagement with materials in late twentieth-century by closely analysing more than sixty key works from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection, Athens.

Marcel Duchamp's notorious Fountain 1917-64 serves as starting point for probing the relationship between art and reality. Act 1: The Corporeal pays particular attention to re-emergence of sculpture, the invented ready-made and installation in the work of artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Robert Gober, David Hammons and Sherrie Levine who examine issues of identity, sexuality, love, loss and desire. Act 2: Subversive Abstraction examines works by artists including Lynda Benglis, Mike Kelley and Dieter Roth which combine the formal language of abstraction with the use of abject materials. A single large-scale installation by Mona Hatoum referencing both the body and the minimalist grid forms the focus of Act 3: Current Disturbance, whereas Act 4: Material Intelligence looks at the role of image as material and the increasingly prevalent engagement with the everyday as artistic source material.

Written and edited by Achim Borchardt-Hume, this book is essential reading for anybody interested in the influence of Duchamp's revolutionary invention of the ready-made on late twentieth century art.