Publisher's Synopsis
Taking their cue from the French writers of the Décadence Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire, a new generation of artists in Germany also liberated itself from the corset of the edifying and improving. Painters from Hans Markart and Anselm Feuerbach to Max Klinger, Lovis Corinth and Egon Schiele defied the prevailing art criticism of the times with "Sex and Crime" and postulated the autonomy of art.