How Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and the rest of the German gang took control of the means of reproduction

Polke was a one-man group show, working with a staggering array of materials

No need to stop the presses: Everyone already knows that Andy Warhol is the zeitgeist

Polke transformed what was usually an exacting and laborious printing process into a serendipitous hurly-burly of dark splatters and luminous runnels.

While it’s mostly other painters, insightful curators, and savvy gallery-goers who know Polke, everybody has been touched by Harvey Kurtzman even if they’ve never read his signature creation, MAD magazine