| Summary: | As part of its Millennium celebrations, the National Gallery has invited over twenty major contemporary artists to create a new work in response to paintings in the Collection. Close Encounters: New Art from Old surveys the history of dialogue between contemporary art and the art of the past and places in context the group of works created specially for this exhibition. These include paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography and video. In the first of two introductory essays, Robert Rosenblum gives an overview of the use made of past art by living artists from the late eighteenth century to today's emerging new generation, and in the second Richard Morphet discusses the art in this exhibition. These essays are followed by individual sections on each of the new works. Based on extensive interviews with the artists, they explain the reason for the artist's selection of his or her source work and the ways in which the new work relates to it. Each new work is reproduced alongside the painting which inspired it, and a brief entry explaining the significance of the National Gallery picture. Comparative illustrations and photographs of the exhibited work in progress offer insight into a
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