When the German artist won the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize, in 2010, he used his prize money—a hundred thousand dollars—to paper the walls of the subsequent exhibition with one-dollar bills. You’ll find the same wry humor and preoccupation with display in this winning show of found paintings, some of which have been playfully doctored. Aristocratic Prussians now sport red clown noses or heavy-metal tattoos; nudes seen from behind include a creditable copy of Ingres’s “Valpinçon Bather” alongside garage-sale pinups; choppy seascapes might have been made en plein air or churned out for hotel décor. (Most of the paintings are suspended from wires, and their versos disclose which are vintage and which, such as a “Venus of Urbino” with a bikini tan, are not.) What makes Feldmann’s installation more than a jape is his evident passion for the history of art: he’s like a pining teen-ager who mocks his desire because he can’t bring himself to say he’s in love.
