Thirty of today's leading artists reveal their ideas, insights, and inspirations in their own words. No one can communicate the meaning of art better than the artists themselves. In a curatorial career that spans thirty years, Michael Auping has had the unique opportunity to visit hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, and writers in their studios to talk about what they do and how they do it. His interviews are renowned for their clarity and depth. Here he collects thirty of the most compelling and penetrating of these interviews, each illustrated with images of the artist at work. Conversations with Tadao Ando, Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Jenny Holzer, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Rothenberg, and Richard Tuttle, among others, offer extraordinary insight into the creative process of some of the most influential artists at work today. Together they provide a collective portrait of the artist's responses to the world we inhabit.