Exhibition note

The title of Deborah Kass’s exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery, “MORE Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times,” is enough to clue the viewer into her glib brand of post-everything art. Really. You don’t need to see the accompanying pictures—text-based canvases rendered in a Pop palette and delineated with can’t-be-bothered-with-this brevity—to glean an ironic sensibility pleased with itself and working overtime. The things are stand-ins for an artist who has made a substantial career from exalting her own narcissism.

Then again, that’s pretty much the case for any artist who can be pegged with the prefix “post-.” It doesn’t matter if she hews to a feminist reading of history, self-consciously apes historical modes of abstraction, or engages in Warholian strategies, the “post-” artist will happily jettison aesthetic engagement for the opportunity to...