In recent years, the story of Franz Erhard Walther, when told, has been of his influence. A classmate of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Blinky Palermo at the art academy in Düsseldorf, later the teacher of Martin Kippenberger, Christian Jankowski, and Jonathan Meese, among others, in Hamburg, Walther occupies a pivotal position in postwar German art history. This narrative of influence, however, threatens to obscure the importance of his own work, with its material sophistication and conceptual acuity—as evidenced by the four dynamic pieces that constituted this very thoughtfully

Explicitly gay perspectives in art can all too easily be interpreted as merely individual permutations of “otherness” or “difference,” and now-familiar strategies of camp and queerness can be used to evade essential questions, not just of gender specificity but also of social and cultural determination. Kaucyila Brooke faces such issues squarely, which makes her first major survey exhibition, “Do You Want Me to Draw You a Diagram?,” all the more important.

At the center of the exhibition was Tit for Twat, an ongoing work begun in 1993 and now encompassing nearly thirty large-format photomontage