Asher’s always meticulous interventions encouraged spectators to reconsider the ways they thought about art, including how and why they valued it and what they valued it for.

I CONSIDER MY INSPIRATION to be sincerity. Truth. We're born with sincerity. A baby is sincere when it cries or yells—as anyone who has had kids knows. Sincerity comes naturally, a reaction to the whole environment. But it gets complicated very quickly.

Paris, a work by Sheila Hicks, hangs on a wall to the right of the fireplace, over my desk. The piece (10 by 5 inches, 1987) is small and sheer. See-through. It appears to be made from a single thread of natural linen (although I think it is made from two). Its two loose ends suggest that it might unravel at the slightest tug. At the center of Paris is a fragile opening, an immodest cutaway in an otherwise modest little panel.

THE BASIC UNIT OF THOUGHT in Hong Kong, my Chinese friends joke, is dollars per square foot. Not so funny if you’re an artist trying to find adequate space to live and work—or wanting to address something other than a collector’s likely financial return on your work.

Deborah Kass folds an array of sources into her witty mash-ups of art history, pop culture and identity politics.