We’re so pretty – oh, so pretty vacant

These paintings by Alex Katz have been selected to fit the theme of New York, and include the period when the city was undisputed capital of the world. An originator of sincere irony - the faux-naif approach that has become today's dominating artistic order - Katz depicts a literary and artistic elite in large paintings whose style could almost be called capitalist social realism. The uptight proprieties of metropolitan existence are painted in a way that is pretty, in an illustrational way, but weirdly banal or disconnected. Still, it's potent stuff - an undercurrent of messy, emotional leakage gives Katz's work a resonance that many of his imitators lack. Neal Brown

Alex Katz, Feb 28 - May 20, 2007. Irish Museum of Modern Art. Tel: +353-1-6129900. Admission free.