Body conscious

These paintings are about consciousness - the consciousness of the now ninety-year-old Austrian artist Maria Lassnig, who paints not only the appearance but also the feeling of her own body, in a way that relates biological facts to subjective experience. It's not a brainy quest for complicated neuro-philosophical truth, but neither is it the silly, look-at-me stuff of popular culture (naked ninety-year-olds do not make celebrity stardom, presumably). As the pictures are often, shall we say, ruthlessly raw, it's more about the artist describing the turmoil, misery, embarrassment, comedy and pain of her very human existence.

Neal Brown