Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997) is considered one of the outstanding artists of the 1980s and 1990s. One of the artist’s greatest related bodies of work, Medusa, was produced one year before his death. In over 80 works he addresses Theodore Géricault’s narrative painting The Raft of the Medusa (1819). In this critical, historical analysis the body of work is for the first time set within the context of the entire oeuvre, its evolution is extensively traced and Kippenberger's reception of Géricault's salon painting is examined in detail. Medusa illustrates much more complex dimensions than simply the metaphorization of the artist’s personal situation. Kippenberger translates Géricault's painting into the present day and in doing so reviews a shipwreck.