Nicole Eisenman is a riot. The French-American artist has filled the Whitechapel Gallery top-to-toe with her raucous, pungent, tumultuous pictures, running from all-out japery to tragicomic narrative. At 58, and with a MacArthur Genius Grant, she is an art star in New York for her lesbian satires and Brooklyn bacchanals, her mordant take on contemporary US life.
A New York shrink pockets his patient’s money – the victim lies red-nosed and freezing, bare feet dirty on the couch. Sex takes place while people’s eyes flit distractedly to the telly. A big doleful head, all dark-eyed sorrow with brows a deepening purple, looks down into the fatuous little gadget between his poor hands, getting the break-up by text.
