If Theodor Adorno spoke of art as a “fait brut” (rough fact), the current danger is that it is merely a fait accompli. Art’s mediatization and distribution have engendered a condition in which its legitimacy is confused with success. If for Donald Judd, “The true test of art [was]. . . its credibility as art,” today, cynicism, hopelessness, and vacuity are its likelier modalities.

Though artists in France during the ’80s redeployed media strategies without playing up kitsch contents as did the American Simulationists, they nevertheless fell victim to the condition fostered by the intercourse of

Alain Séchas’ mocking phantasmic imagery may simply be too perverse for our current state of somnolence. One should not look for an ironic critique of post-Modern academicism in his funny, slightly schizophrenic black and white drawings. Neither should the viewer expect a derisive commentary on the absurdity and vulgarity of our times, like those in newspaper comic strips by the likes of Reiser and Claire Bretécher, from which this show borrows its incisive style and black humor. Séchas’ art does not plumb psychological or social depths; rather it skips across the surface, addressing the indecent