The photographic works of Canadian artist Jeff Wall (born 1946) - staged, seemingly everyday scenarios that he presents in large-format lightboxes - have continually engaged art historians and critics. Stefan Gronert, curator of contemporary art at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, explores in this volume the multifaceted references to the history of painting that Jeff Wall, himself an art historian, integrates into his work. The Thinker (1986), for example, alludes to Rodin in its title; however, Wall places the figure in the typical pose of the thinker within an urban contemporary setting and introduces a grotesque element with the dagger in the protagonist's back, which in turn references Dürer. Through 17 selected examples from the late 1970s to the present, Gronert traces the complex strategies of appropriation and reinterpretation of famous models.