Martin Honert’s sculptures are a form of insistence: readable at first glance, they remain enigmatic nonetheless. Their banality, their insignificance, their very origin (the artist’s childhood in Bottrop, a coal-mining town in Germany) should leave us cold, instead, they do not cease to intrigue us. An enormous faux-wood starling with multicolored feathers was affixed to the wall of the gallery, like a childhood memory of a stunned starling surprised on its branch. A mundane electric transformer, a hiding place for the children of Bottrop, was planted in the middle of the gallery, on a green

This retrospective of the works of Martial Raysse afforded an opportunity to see his new, large-format allegorical paintings in tempera, one of which, Georges et le Dragon (George and the dragon, 1990), was shown at last year’s Documenta. The show also brought together his Nouveau Réalisme and Pop periods (1958–69) with works from after 1970, following his break with the art market and his retreat to the country to do work in traditional forms and media. This is a conjunction that might serve to shed light on that heroic rupture and to lift the veil from what must be termed “the Raysse mystery.”