We tend to use paraphrases in day-to-day life. We know quite a few names from looking in big art encyclopaedias and we know how much these artists are appreciated, but do we really know what they actually achieved? We know who Nietzsche is, we've heard about Dostoevsky and we nod when we hear the names Richard Wagner or Vincent Van Gogh. In fact, it would be hard to find someone who has never heard of Van Gogh, but are these names still relevant today or have they lost all significance? The portrait of contemporary painter Sam Dillemans, ‘The Madness of Detail’, aims to answer that question. To Dillemans, who lives in the Antwerp area of Borgerhout, Van Gogh, Picasso, Rubens or Goya are not painters of the past, but painters of the present. They inspire him every day and their overwhelming genius sometimes even depresses him. Sam Dillemans is not only a very talented artist, he is also a gifted speaker. We see him in his studio creating a painting, a self-portrait, and in the meantime he tells us about his life and work, how it is connected to cultural history, the sacrifices he makes for his painting and how you can learn to look at paintings in the right way.