Faure Walker and Jones conceived the new magazine as a showcase of new British and American abstract modernist painting and sculpture as typified by the work of Patrick Heron.
In the early 1980s neo-expressionism epitomized by the work of Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer, Jörg Immendorff, Francesco Clemente, and Steven Campbell had gained international attention.
Faure Walker rejected this view, and his scathing analysis of this mindset in art in an article on the 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting co-curated by Nicholas Serota and Norman Rosenthal, made Artscribe appear out of step with contemporary trends.
Collings made the magazine's content more international, leading to the name change—which was introduced in 1985 when ownership of Artscribe passed on to a retired American couple, Pat and Jack Butler, who had homes in London, New York and Florida.
These included glamorous figures of the moment such as George Condo, Julian Schnabel, Markus Lüpertz, Albert Oehlen, Werner Büttner [de], Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eric Fischl and Nancy Spero, but also worthy Brits, such as Art & Language, Hannah Collins, Ian McKeever and Gerard Hemsworth.
By 1991 the downturn in the international art market affected Artscribe's advertising revenue, and it was sold to Hale a company that published glossy home interiors magazines while another editor Marjorie Allthorpe Guyton was installed.
The final issues included notable articles on Jannis Kounellis and Damien Hirst by artists Jon Thompson and Liam Gillick but the decline was terminal and the magazine ceased publication in January 1992.