Damien Hirst is the official poster boy of the Young British Artist movement. While studying in the renowned art program at Goldsmiths College in London, he conceived and curated his own exhibition, "Freeze." Charles Saatchi, advertising magnate and art collector, caught the show and began acquiring

Agitated, Death, Excessive, Perverse, Visceral, Young british artists

A provocateur par excellence, Joseph Beuys never ceased to emphasize the act of art or to conceive of art itself as an action. His entire oeuvre aims at dissolving the distinction between art and life, at recognizing creativity in every milieu, whether it be in the way an artist paints a canvas or a

Elegant, Fluxus, Media art, Mythic, Open-ended, Political, Process art, Repetition, Spare, Visceral

The works of German painter Anselm Kiefer explore the intersection of Germany's recent history and the artist's individual experiences. The myths and realities of Nazism meet personal iconography in works of roaring emotionality that blur the line between the symbolic and the real. His theory of the

Death, Dense, Epic, Layered, Mythic, Neo-expressionism, Political, Violent, Visceral

If you walk into a room and find everything you held dear in childhood degraded, chances are it's a Paul McCarthy installation. McCarthy is known for shocking, sexually charged pieces that feature benign cartoon and pop-culture characters -- Olive Oyl and Santa Claus, among others -- in a bacchanalia

Angry, Biomorphic, Erotic, Modern sculpture, Perverse, Phallic, Primal, Visceral