Comment comprendre l'art des années 1980 et 1990 ? Cet ouvrage bilingue anglais/français offre une vaste vue d'ensemble de la scène artistique internationale (principalement occidentale) en cette fin de siècle. L'objectif des auteurs est de souligner les dernières tendances de l'art à l'aube du troisième millénaire et de donner une idée de ce que sera l'art du XXIe siècle. L'oeuvre de chacun des 137 artistes retenus couvre ainsi une période inférieure à vingt ans et se trouve donc encore en pleine évolution. Art at the Turn of the Millennium is a mega-exhibition--a Documenta or Venice Biennale in book form. There are 137 artists on view here in 1,200 illustrations, a nearly dizzying array of work chosen by a team of seven experts on contemporary art. Each artist gets four pages within which readers will find high-quality color illustrations, a concise commentary about the art maker, and a one- or two-sentence artist's statement. An amusing and helpful glossary, full of tricky terms from the contemporary art world like "body art," "gender surfing," and "structuralism," is thoughtfully placed at the end of the book. Arranged alphabetically, the book functions as an artifact of this particular moment in time--the very late 20th century. In its scope it identifies the transcontinental nature of the art world today. And by selecting artists who are still hard at work, Art at the Turn of the Millennium hopes to indicate some of the discipline's future directions. Since the book functions like a dictionary of contemporary art, it is impossible to give a representative list of the artists in it. However, a ruffle of the pages turns up Tony Oursler, an L.A. artist whose video installations feature passionately articulate faces projected onto various head-shaped objects. Italian artist Pipilotti Rist makes hilarious and charming video work that is something like metamusic video. Two German photographers are included, Andreas Gursky, eminently capable of capturing the bigness of the world today, and Thomas Demand, who subjects photography to a rigorous reality check by constructing alarmingly realistic miniature sets, often architectural, which he then photographs. This is a smart and fun book that will endure on the shelves and in the hands of art enthusiasts for years to come. --Loren E. Baldwin A number of recent books have attempted to sum up the contemporary art scene, but none has been as successful as Taschen's latest. As with most such efforts, the emphasis here is on individual artists rather than themes or schools. Quibbles aside, the selection of artists is particularly good, but most of all the boundaries for inclusion were wisely set. Entry was open to those artists who have made their most significant impact in the 1980s and 1990s but limited to those who have exhibited and been written about in Europe and North America. Thus, the compilers have avoided both the perils of being taken in by who is trendy this season and of attempting a kind of superficial multiculturalism, selecting representative artists from unrelated traditions. More than 135 individuals and collectives are each given four pages. Biographical data, select exhibition and publication histories, and 250-word critical career summaries accompany six to 12 photos of single pieces and installation views on each pair of spreads. The clear and concise content, handsomely designed and packaged within sturdy "flexi-bound" covers, makes for a survey that will serve especially small and medium public libraries for years to come.AEric Bryant, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Used Book in Good Condition