Nicole Eisenman: What Happened (Whitechapel Gallery, 11 October 2023–14 January 2024)

Born in Verdun, France, in the 1960s, Eisenman practices in Brooklyn and I’m very glad I caught this just before it closed – although a more awake me would have spent longer and a more alert me would have made the link to Ridykeulous at Nottingham Contemporary. (I seem to keep missing stuff here – maybe it’s just the wrong part of not central London. But engineering works led me, via the Dulwich Picture Gallery and Rubens to Blackfriars and the District Line…) It formed quite a contrast from the relative elegance of the Rubens oil on panels – especially as the theme of that exhibition was to evade the Rubenesque – and I felt much more in a R. Crumb/George Condo/Philip Guston tradition of the grotesque.

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