During the course of the past thirty years, video art has blossomed well beyond the expectations of its early practioners and theorists. Born as a critique of television and a medium at odds with traditional pictorial forms, at its inception video was filled with an utopian promise that lead artists to belive in a true democratization of art. Today it has reached a pinnacle of technical sophistication and aesthetic importance that was only dreamed of in the 1960s when the accessibility of the Portapak camera seemed to allow limitless creative possibilities.

Starting from the profane material of everyday culture, Polke interprets images of reality rather than reality itself, satirizes tendencies in contemporary painting, questions the role of the artist as author, breaks down the trivial visual worlds of media photography, and always, but always, takes off on the most magnificient flights of imagination. This publication is the most complete monograph on the artist to date, and includes a number of works never before published.