
FUNNY GAMES
DEPENDING ON HOW you look at things, contemporary satire is experiencing either a golden age or a period of impotence. Never in recent memory have public figures acted like such buffoons. But comedians have the unenviable task of making fun of people who are already caricatures of themselves. How to parody someone whose persona already amounts to a malicious burlesque?
It was in this general mood of resignation and despair that I visited the recent James Ensor exhibition at Gladstone Gallery’s uptown space in New York, and to my pleasant surprise I left with a slightly renewed sense of hope for