Sherrie Levine, Untitled (After Walker Evans): 2 (1981), courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

There was, by my count, one compelling work of art included in “The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984,” an exhibition that recently closed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paul McMahon’s Postcard Fan (Girl in a Bathing Suit) (1975) shouldn’t be lauded for its pictorial invention: Aligning seventeen copies of the same postcard in a circle so that the title figure kicks her shapely gam like a Busby Berkeley-style perpetual motion machine is, at best, art school clever. But McMahon captured collage’s capacity for the absurd in a winningly efficient manner. Squeaking by on kitsch appeal, Postcard Fan provided much-needed whimsy. If there was one thing that marked the cadre of like minds at the Met, it was a deadening lack of humor. This “generation” was no fun.

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