Kenneth Josephson: A Retrospective

By Richard Lacayo

What a treat! A man with a sense of humor and a sense of awe, Josephson contrived some of the most beckoning brainteasers of postmodernism, especially in the 1960s and '70s. When an anonymous arm holds up a Polaroid of clouds against a cloudless sky, all certainties about certainty are gently undone. And when a parked car is twinned in the radiance of a wet street, you realize that if the world is a funny place, it's because the eye and the mind are jokers of the highest order.

--By Richard Lacayo