Dying moments

Spectator, The, Oct 13, 2001 by Shone, Richard

Humbling is also a performer, giving a rabbit-out-of-the-hat surprise to the subjects she has chosen over the last 30 years or more. Comic chuckles or black humour can sometimes disguise her manual dexterity and deep feeling. Sometimes the jokes misfire - broad where they should be witty. But in all she does there is a wriggling, inextinguishable vitality.

She is a disconcerting, even uncomfortable artist. She walks a tightrope, one end of which is considerably lower than the other. She can dip down into bathos and caricature and move upwards to what R.B. Kitaj once described as the aim of figurative art - `the delineation of the face and fortunes and torments of us all'. While these two remarkable shows embrace both positions, it is the latter that dominates.