Paul Z. Rotterdam is one of the most influential art scholars of his generation, combining mature scholarly comprehension with the knowledge wrought from a renowned artistic career.

For this anthology, art historian Carl Aigner brings together for the first time Rotterdam’s writings: essays, interviews, and lectures, including lectures given at Harvard University’s Visual Art Center and the Cooper Union School of Art, where Rotterdam teaches. In his writings, Rotterdam explores art and nature, beauty and myth, and realism and abstraction, questioning the conditions for artistic creation and making a compelling case for the necessity of tradition in art. Among the writings in this volume is Rotterdam’s famous essay on Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss.