In 1980 , the artist Arch Connelly, a newcomer to the soon-to-be-clusterfucked East Village gallery scene, wrote his Pink Manifesto —so called because it was typed on pink paper:

My work is MANNERED, is HOMOSEXUAL, is EFFETE, is BASE, is SNOBISH [ sic ], is SELFISH, is SELF CONTAINED, is SELF RIGHTEOUS, is EGOTISTICAL, is REAL, is RETARDED, is RUDE, is RELIABLE.

Connelly came of age under minimalism, that testosterone regime of figures like Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris, whose art had all the sensual piquancy of a Home Depot. Against such austerity, Connelly’s work was a flashbang: excessive to the point of camp.

He called himself a “Midwestern drag queen,” and the materials that make up his assemblages and sculptures are what you’d expect to find littering any backstage floor: costume jewelry, faux pearls, silk, sequins, glitter. In his craftier moments he transformed pennies and eggshells—hoarded during his shifts as a weekend brunch cook—into decorative embellishments.…