Photograph by Paul D’Agostino
Paintings though they most certainly are, there’s something about Philip Taaffe’s five massive works currently on view at Luhring Augustine Bushwick (through April 26th) that makes them seem, individually as well as collectively, like something other than merely paintings. There’s also something about them that makes them seem very well suited for display in a sort of gallery of Natural History—in the future, that is, when networks of galleries might exist to augment, or feed into, museums devoted to the same—rather than one that showcases merely art. Moreover, a couple of these paintings in particular led at least this viewer to long, however implausibly, for Pangaea.
