A poignant news photograph, a striking headline or a major international event: for more than forty years Kees de Goede (1954) has been responding very tangibly to the news. For his series of Astral drawings he uses newspapers as subject matter and as the image support. He paints, draws, applies gold leaf to the pages or manipulates the paper. The works express a great curiosity about and involvement with the world. Recurrent themes include space, science, faith, violence, racism and geopolitics. The series tells the story of the artist - and how he relates to a rapidly changing world during the years surrounding the millennium transition. De Goede's work is part of numerous prominent public and private collections around the world. This book was published simultaneously with an exhibition of sixty-five Astral drawings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.