WHAT I REMEMBER from the couple of shows René Daniëls (then not using the diaeresis in his name) did in New York in the mid-1980s is mainly feeling puzzled. The paintings were representational, and—if I recall correctly—mostly without figures. They more than flirted with abstraction, and they were shown at a gallery, Metro Pictures, that seemed to maintain a distinctly antipainting stance. At the time, these camps—the neo-expressionists, the abstractionists, and the Pictures crowd—seemed utterly at odds, and yet this artist shared something with all of them and none. Whose

TR Ericsson’s “Industrial Poems—Poémes Industriels” was a very private yet despairing portrait of the relationship between a mother and son. The artist captures this relationship in two phases: the period during which he had to deal with his mother’s mental instability; and his life after her suicide. Ericsson’s art reflects his experiences with a great deal of intimacy, and at first this felt uncomfortable, as if one were intruding on personal affairs. Yet its resonance was more than just personal; rather, it was an eerie reminder of the socioeconomic wasteland of the postindustrial American