Cynthia Talmadge, “1076 Madison”

Contemporary artists have recycled nearly every imaginable art-historical genre, except, perhaps, for Impressionism. That is, until now. Enter Cynthia Talmadge, who combines approaches from Seurat and Monet, using painstaking pointillist strokes to paint the same spot at different times of day and different seasons of the year, making careful note of the play of light as the hours and months roll by. Her choice of subject matter, however, is somewhat odd: Instead of haystacks or the Rouen Cathedral, she focuses on the Frank E. Campbell funeral parlor, the Upper East Side undertaker that sends off one-percenters to the great beyond. Class, it would appear, is just as important a theme here as color, and to underscore her tongue-in-cheek take on the issue, Talmadge has dressed up this Chinatown space to resemble the sort of Beaux-Arts townhouse where Campbell’s future clients reside.