The author of numerous books and essays on artists ranging from Michelangelo to Mark Rothko and Wolfgang Laib presents a postmodern reevaluation of genius. Ottmann's thoughts presented in this study be considered as fragments that form a horizon of conceptual events across the aesthetical and ethical discourses of six of Western philosophy's most influential thinkers: Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Peirce, Wittgenstein, Heidegger.The book suggests that while there is no essentialist quality of genius, the postmodern artist can reach the extraordinary by way of an active-passive Genius Decision, which is engaged in an activity of failure in its desire to represent the nonrepresentable. This revised and expanded second edition includes a new chapter entitled "What Is Art?" and as well as a series of recent essays on various artists, including Yves Klein, James Lee Byars, Wolfgang Laib, Carl Andre, Lawrence Weiner, and Chantal Akerman.
