The New Yorker: Goings On About Town

This eighteen-person meditation on a Hallmark-worthy theme (the subject of kisses in art) steers clear of schmalz, thanks to the smarts of its curator, Francesco Bonami. It opens with a 1970 lithograph of undulating red lipstick marks, made by the experimental filmmaker Joyce Weiland while she sang “O Canada.” The work hangs next to the show’s title piece, “Kiss Off,” made a year later (in Canada) by Vito Acconci (1940-2017), who applied lipstick to his mouth, kissed his hand, and transferred the marks to a lithography stone. The show closes with another game of compare and contrast. In Francis Picabia’s strange, brightly colored “Couple de Monstres,” from 1925-27, lovers are seen in an embrace. Nearby, in Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s heartrending untitled sculpture, two rings of silver-plated brass hang side by side on a wall, so close that they appear fused together—but, in fact, they’re not touching at all.