His new show opens Thursday, October 30

As a painter, Courbet ravishes a nude in the same manner as he would a tree or a trout: for the visual evidence of its expressive physicality.

For an abstract painter of her generation, the older distinctions between figurative and abstract art, or between politically critical art and the consumer products of mass culture cease to have much importance. Perhaps that is why her essentially cheerful art shows no signs of th angst which inspired so many of the pioneering Abstract Expressionists.

Like Henry Darger, Ku refers to a mindset populated by children who undermine confidence in the world as it is. She presents disturbing tableaux, meditations on transgressions that make no sense, that seem to come out of nowhere.

McCarthy’s chimerical hybrid creations are sphinx-like. Mysterious and inscrutable, their individual characteristics undermine any symbolic reading. They are rooted in the real world, but also convey a complete sense of otherness.

In Luc Tuymans, you are never allowed to forget that the source is banal and secondary. Painterliness underscores alienation rather than ameliorating it.

Lewis’s unfailingly authoritative skill for painting real, rich and crystalline light, joined to his muscular composition, is the key to his power and success.

Silvia Bächli at Peter Freeman, Inc., Michal Rovner at PaceWildenstein, Catherine Sullivan at Metro Pictures, Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman Gallery, and Dan Walsh at Paula Cooper Gallery

Tauba Auerbach, Daniel Buren, Sol Lewitt, Mike Quinn, and Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein Gallery

Given Huang’s indirectness, we experience the scene as if imbued with symbolist forms, which reveal their meaning only fleetingly. Yet the painting does not feel deliberately obscure, but rather poses the question, How much must be revealed before the images makes narrative sense?