For more than a decade Peter Pakesch has been functioning as a kind of trapdoor for the work of West German artists, most recently that of Günther Förg, Georg Herold, Hubert Kiecol, Meuser, and Reinhard Mucha. Collectively, their work has provided a synopsis of the current trend in West Germany toward an art that is brash, intellectual, and precise—what I would like to call an “Aesthetik der Austrocknung” (esthetic of drying out)—as evidenced in a new reduction of materials, form, and subjective content. The confrontation with this rigorous esthetic has thrown the Vienna art world, with its