"This Companion represents a move away from the more traditionally conceived broad surveys of contemporary art available to date, and is refreshing in its innovative approach to this complex subject ... essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary art history, visual culture, and visual theory, and general readers just wishing to develop their understanding of this complex subject." Provocative, wide-ranging, and impressively inclusive a welcome and important addition for the understanding of the art of our historical present and a boon companion for the general reader, the artist, the student, the art historian and the critic alike. By keeping its finger on the pulse of the present, while commenting on the recent past, this book reminds us why contemporary art, and contemporary art history, matters."