A postulate of Minimalism and Conceptualism was that art is a kind of phenomenological frame. The frame as such was autonomous, independent of any charge or sign. Purely affirmative in and of itself, it bracketed or suspended the motivation of the world to reveal the motif of the world wherever and whenever the attention arrested. The consequent characteristic of much of this work was a double “ecceity,” or “here-is-ness”; the presence of both art-as-art and thing-as-thing (or site-as-site) was reaffirmed in a simultaneous act. In structuring such work, only two forms of practice were admitted.

It is not very fashionable in England to produce paintings that are bursting with enjoyment, and so this vibrant exhibition of works by Jack Smith comes as something of a surprise—not for nothing are a group of paintings entitled “Celebrations.” This is even more surprising when one remembers that Smith was perhaps the archetypal Kitchen Sink painter of the ’50s, with his muted, browny-gray renditions of the monotony of everyday life, the stark reality of the angry young man. The pictures here—painted in the past five years—are far removed from the messages and imagery of social realism. Instead