If Glow exhibits an unexpected visual cohesion, there is little evidence of it in Blinds, above, where light serrated by venetian blinds illuminates a massive modern sculpture crammed in amid the pseudo-Early American furnishings of a 1950s ranch style home that epitomizes the conflicting cultural tendencies of the decade that spawned both Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy. An even zanier scene appears in Modern Circles, top of page, a depiction of an interior where psychedelic 1960s wallpaper confronts the stark geometry of the flamboyant deco-inspired modernism of the 1970s, that unlikely age of Nixon and Lou Reed, leisure suits and disco fever. In such works, velvety luminous colors and lushly defined surfaces are deployed in clever visual ruminations on the cultural history of the not so distant past. Invoking a kinder and more generous, if no less ironic, version of postmodernism, Richard probes the thin and often blurry line that divides high art from kitsch. ~D. Eric Bookhardt
Make Yourself at Home: Paintings by Jim Richard, Tuesdays-Sundays Through Feb. 24, New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, 658-4100. Left: Centered III