This book is the first to explore major painters of the 1980s in depth and to analyze the factors that shaped art from the period. Accessible to both novice and specialist, Painting in the 1980s details where and how painting embodied the zeitgeist in original fusions of style and content. Gallerists, curators, and art historians assigned labels such as New Image Painting, Neo-Expressionism, Italian Transavanguardia, Neo-Geo, and the blanket designation of Postmodernism to categorize painting in this era, yet these classifications denote a false sense of homogeneity. This book's narrative aims to excavate and analyze the art and ideas that shaped each artist's style and their diverse and often ambiguous content.