Queen 1976

This is Audrey Flack's painting, Queen, and it's a trip. The super-real, almost aggressively precise airbrushing is the first thing you notice. You might not expect this level of detail, but, you know, art's full of surprises. The thing that's so cool about it is this odd combination of control and wildness. It's like Flack's saying, “Yeah, I can paint reality, but I'm going to mess with it a little.” Look at the way everything is layered up, almost collapsing together. The queen of hearts is front and center, but what about the rose? And those dewdrops, painted like hyper-real jewels. They're so tactile you feel like you could reach out and touch them. The whole thing feels like a party, a really weird, slightly decadent one, with all these objects crammed together, each telling its own story. It makes me think of those Dutch still lifes, only turned up to eleven. This isn't just a painting, it's a conversation, a dare.