Calvin Tomkins' Lives of the Artists profiles ten major contemporary artists: Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, James Turrell, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, and John Currin. (Each profile was originally published in The New Yorker during the last decade, compiled, and, if necessary, updated here.) Each of these ten has made a significant impact on the art world in the last 40 years, some not even by way of the art they've created.

Tomkins, from the preface:

[Contemporary] art, it seemed, could be whatever artists decided it was, and there were no restrictions on the new methods and materials -- from video and verbal constructs to raw nature and urban detritus -- that they could use. The limitless freedom of the modern artist has been an unending burden. If art can be anything, where do you begin?

Where to begin, indeed. This collection features many different starting points, both in the artist's place in the world and in the artwork itself. However, it's by no means a ten best or meant to be representative of art today. Tomkins doesn't imply that and neither do I. "Common denominators are notably absent," he writes.

Lives of the Artists, though, is a good intro to the lives beyond the work of some artists I didn't know much about (Turrell, Currin, Barney, Hirst) and a refresher of sorts to some I did know quite a bit about (Sherman, Schnabel, Johns, Koons). And in Cattelan's instance, it made me like him less while giving me a greater appreciation of his work. Go figure.