About a decade ago, a German painter of my acquaintance explained the difference, as he saw it, between himself and the then newly fashionable painters from the former East Germany. “Their work is based
on what they know about painting,” he told me. “Our work is based on what we don’t know.” His quietly dismissive comment was clear enough: The Easterners—mainly the painters of the so-called New Leipzig School—were too enamored of tradition, insufficiently exploratory. Among those often cited as members of the Leipzig School is Rosa Loy; whether or not my friend’s strictures hold against

Simply described, Richard Grayson’s The Magpie Index, 2010, the sole work in this show, is a portrait of the singer-songwriter Roy Harper. Perhaps best known for his work as a sideman with luminaries such as Jimmy Page, Dave Gilmour, Keith Moon, and Kate Bush, he is still relatively unknown to the broader public despite the honor of having a Led Zeppelin song named after him. This single-channel, high-definition video does not show Harper singing or playing, nor is it a typical documentary with historical footage and interviews with friends and associates building up a picture of the musician