Book excerpt: "Van Gogh, Dalí, and Beyond : The World Reimagined brings together many of the artists who transformed modern art. Employing subjects once thought of as traditional -- landscape, still life, and portrait -- these artists pioneered groundbreaking visual languages to depict the people, places, and things particular to their own times. Drawn entirely from The Museum of Modern Art's remarkable collection, the paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, prints, and media works gathered here reflect the shifting attitudes toward everyday subjects from the late nineteenth century to today. This book is organized into three sections, each tracing the development of a particular genre: landscape from Vincent van Gogh to Salvador Dalí to Tacita Dean; still life from Paul Cézanne to Giorgio Morandi to Urs Fischer; portraiture from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to Frida Kahlo to Gerhard Richter. At the same time, shared strategies, from abstraction to appropriation, and common movements, from Surrealism to Pop art, create connections across the three categories. Fully illustrated in color, the publication also includes and introductory essay that explores how modern artists overturned the Academy's hierarchy of genres; close readings of a portrait, a still life, and a landscape at the dawn of modernism; and a compendium of artists' and thinkers' reflections on the continued relevance of these genres."--Jacket.