In the slim catalogue to this latest overview of “New Art from Los Angeles,” all twenty-five participants are said to be either “investigating” or “exploring” something. First up, Mark Bradford is “investigating the mixed, contradictory and hybrid space of the popular.” Next comes Edgar Bryan, who “has taken his investigation of this traditional medium [i.e., painting] to an unusual depth.” Tessa Chasteen, meanwhile, is herself proposed as the object of inquiry with “drawings [that] reflect the role that drawing plays in self-discovery.” With Lecia Dole-Recio we are back to investigation, pure

Why are there so few great green paintings? Put another way: Why has no painter (with the possible exception of Jasper Johns) identified with greens the way Philip Guston identified with pinks?

Posed by an intelligent painter who accompanied me to Tyler Vlahovich’s fine debut solo show, these unanswerable questions reflect the terms of my own search for a way to consider painting without provisos. By that I mean paintings unburdened by tired narratives of found stains or pure pigment folded over metal rods like dish towels and unpopulated by interior-design schemata, kitschily bosomed bunny-types,