However closely she references classical, renaissance and modernist genres, her paintings never lapse into nostalgia, but instead give off an arch contemporary emotion.

The tensions between intimate and public, between information and interpretation, in Simpson’s drawings of women’s hair take on a different meaning in a second body of work in what the artist calls the “orchestrated theatrical disaster” of war.

Ellen Berkenbilt at Anton Kern, Katy Grannan at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery and at Salon 94 Freemans, Jane Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy, William Kentridge at Marian Goodman and Chris Martin at Michell-Innes & Nash

There is a pervasive ambivalence in Katy Grannan’s portraits: the gaze that returns the viewer’s is a mix of coyness and exhibitionism. The images themselves oscillate between similar extremes, building a visceral sense of the present through precision while succumbing to a remoteness that results from theatricality.