The official line on the exhibition Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection is that it presents “the 21st century’s first bona-fide artistic phenomenon.” Serious critics have not accepted this hyperbole as truth, but they often consider it, which is a testament to the massive appeal of the crew of figurative painters, including Neo Rauch and Tilo Baumgärtel, who were “protected… against the influence of Joseph Beuys” and postwar abstractionism by being shut behind the Berlin Wall, in Leipzig. Now, they’re out, and this is their only stop on the West Coast. (Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, 622-9250. 10 am—5 pm, free.)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...