Contemporary artist Philip Taaffe, specializing in post-modern decorative abstraction, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1955. He lives and works in New York City. His paintings are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Rene Ricard writes the following paragraphs about Philip Taaffe, placing Taaffe's work in the context of Pompeiian painting: "Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis is the principal source for what we know about Greek and Roman art. I'd been reading Pliny this winter. Coincidentally, Philip Taaffe also read Pliny's "Natural History" this year, and hearing about my research wanted me to see his new paintings that derive considerable inspiration from the book. What cau...