In the 18^th and 19^th century the anecdote experienced a flourishing period, especially in England, with almost every important artist receiving a collection of anecdotes. But still in the 20^th century it played an amazing role among painters of Abstract Expressionism. The stories, which the artists mostly circulated themselves, are an expression of counter-positions to established convictions, they respond to artist colleagues as well as to art criticism. The paintings of Mark Rothko, for instance, tell stories of their own directed against the false appropriation of the works. With almost criminalistic intuition, Werner Busch uses artist anecdotes to bring to light the veiled meanings of great works of art.