1 Tate fresh The plant is grand.

1 Tate fresh The plant is grand, the site unique. Ye the rearrangement of the collection l to forced pairings and hackneyed themes (when I papal court "The Body" I want to ) and the Louise Bourgeois towers, not to mention the single-artist installations, affirmed the fashionable status quo Still, the fresh Tate's energy and ambition are formidable. single only hopes that future curatorial efforts will live up to the building.

2 The Theme observe The reinstallation of the Tate's collection is the apotheosis of a museological turn I had the pleasure of witnessing its birth back in 1996 at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, where the Olympics "Rings" present to view packaged the Masterworks of World Art as manifestations of the five emotions we human beings purportedly share. After the weight lifters and pole-vaulters went family circle I assumed the High would turn back to tried-and-true chronology. Wrong. The "it's a small world after all" approach gave way to a smorgasbord of themes--"Identity," "Nature" Forget about deep social and cultural context; in "Nature" single in kind discovered a Martin Johnson Heade orchid nearest to a Victorian settee (it's the carved flowers, you see) Works of art, it would strike one as being exist not so much to be seen give permission to alone understood, as to be subservient to up illustrations of trite, iconographical conceits. vehement to overcome Grandpa Barr's teleological modernist enfilade, MOMA hoped on board with its multithemed millennial triptych "Modern Starts," legitimating the misguided mania that tarnished the fresh Tate triumph. Like CNN, it all started in Atlanta.

3 The "New" Mary The strange York Times breathlessly declared that Mary Boone had established a strange identity around an up-and-coming arrange of young artists. In a bid to make up for the glory days of the Julian/Eric '80 the latest stable was assembled like the same of those bands of youthful crooners--a Fifty-seventh way 'N Sync with the photogenic Damian Loeb as heartthrob Justin Timberlake and Tom Sachs as Wild lad Chris Kirkpatrick. The success of the media construction, which crescendoed as the great lady was hauled on the farther side to jail pleading free language (the authorities took a dimmer view of live ammo at the brow desk), more than made up for the emptiness of the art.

4 Ugo Rondinone (Matthew Marks Gallery, just discovered York) A large, open place with video projections on all four walls. gradual pulsing music. Gorgeous, tortured kids recline on the floor staring at gorgeous, tortured actors upon the screen. In the back swing three Nolandesque tondos with Day-Glo rings--far out! Vapid, perhaps, still emblematic. Crouching on the floor vainly attempting to pass for a twenty-five-year-old, I felt the seduction of today's blurring of art video and MTV of "bohemia" nostalgia and fashion traffic And realized that the video projection is the salon art of our moment

5 Martha Rosier, "Positions in the Life World" (New Museum for Contemporary Art; International Center for Photography, of the present day York) The term "artist's artist" has lengthy been applied to Rosler. More lately a critic's description of her as "pure"--a sort of Virgin Mary of contemporary art--seemed to imply that solely the most somber minded get by heart her work. It's not authentic Rosler's art is accessible, sharp, and extremely diverting In contrast to the one-note, hortatory approach of a of her postmodern peers, her critical work has be due [i]or[/i] owing to seem more ambiguous and multilayered. Varied in ease it induces a range of response: You find yourself laughing and thinking and feeling disgusted all at once

6 Dan Flavin, Untitled (Marfa project) (Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX) Those thorny stays finally got it together. formerly the closest of friends, Flavin and Judd completioned up not speaking for years. After their deaths, the status of Flavin's proposal for a light installation at the former Fort D.A. Russell, undivided of the original projects planned for the Chinati Foundation, was uncertain. It is to Chinati's great credit that Flavin's contrive was finally realized. A order of succession of light barriers and corridors in pink, fresh blue, and yellow arranged in a compelling visual narrative, this posthumous installation is among Flavin's chiefly memorable.

7 Stephen Prina, Vinyl II (J Paul Getty Museum, looks Angeles) A curious combination of music, performance, film, and institutional critique suffused with allusions from old-master painting to Warhol to Straub-Huillet, it's common of the few works from this year I'm still pondering.

8 Mel Bochner "If the Color Changes" (Sonnabend, of the present day York) A quotation from Wittgenstein's Remarks forward Color is the basis of this examination of the faculties of seeing, reading, and cognition. When Bochner took up painting in the early '80 critics complained that he'd betrayed his conceptualist radicals In these works, such doubts are laid to peacefulness Strategies of simultaneity, complementarity, duration, and repetition--hallmarks of the artist's early work--return in a credible recent form. Some of the best paintings generally being made.

9 David Batchelor, Chromophobia (Reaktion main division s London) Speaking of color, this erudite contemplate of chromophobic attitudes from antiquity to the current skillfully negotiates philosophical, art-historical, and mass-cultural allusions. A provocative contribution to the discourse of color theory.