The Decade in Art@

"Packaging art by the decade isn’t realistic; art doesn’t come in squared-off units," Holland Cotter writes. But we seem to need handles on history, so that’s what we do. And here we are once again, in 2010, trying to make a chronological chunk of art — 2000s art, or new millennium art, or art of the aughts — make sense. Whatever you call the art of the last decade, there was a ton of it. Has the world ever turned out more, in more varieties, than in the last 10 years? I doubt it." “Balloon Dog,” a sculpture by Jeff Koons at the Château de Versailles in 2008.

Photo: Ed Alcock for The New York Times

"By 2000 the economy was a few years on the rebound. Chelsea had happened. Sales were going great. Politics, viewed by the New York market as yesterday’s news, seemed distanced, or disguised or put on the shelf. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Pundits spoke: The catastrophe marked a cultural watershed, the beginning of a new seriousness, the death of irony. Everything, including art, would change. But art didn’t change. It stayed exactly the same." On Sept. 18, 2001, Christine Rohm, a yoga teacher, meditated, with her hands folded behind her, in front of a Union Square memorial for victims of the World Trade Center attack.

Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

"As the 2000s progressed, we got acres of well-schooled paintings and drawings. We got Damien Hirst (talk about yesterday’s news) at the Met, and Jeff Koons, with his big-ticket baubles and vote-for-me smile, at every turn. Leftovers by modern masters and demi-masters (Picasso, Warhol, Klimt) were taken for wonders. Art fairs grew on top of art fairs. Did I mention that United States had started a war in Iraq? The art world didn’t mention it either." An installation by Jeff Koons, titled "Split Rocker, 2000" in Versailles.

Photo: Ed Alcock for The New York Times

"This is one view of the decade and a New York-centric one. More global perspectives are possible, to say the least. The decade was rich in new art from Africa, though we saw relatively little of it first hand. But we were given an extraordinary historical exhibition on the subject of African modernism in 'The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994.' Organized by the Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor, it opened in Europe in 2001 and traveled to New York the following year." "Flight," 2001, an installation by the South African artist Kay Hassan, part of the exhibition "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1944-1994."

Photo: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

"It was one of the decade’s most important shows." "The Kite," 1960, by Gabriel Sirry, part of "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994."

Photo: P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center

"So was another historical survey, 'Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America' at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2004, which cast comparable illumination on Latin American modernism. Its curators, Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, served notice that in contradiction to long-held stereotypes, 20th-century Latin-American art was not: a) restricted in theme to religion and revolution; b) unitary but made up of diverse countries and cultures; and c) derivative of European modernism but supplying Europe with new information." "Patroness," a 1923 watercolor by Xul Solar was among the works in the "Inverted Utopias" exhibition.

Photo: Fundacion Pan Klub-Museo Xul Solar, Buenos Aires

"Finally, perhaps most significantly, the 2000s brought us face to face with Islamic cultures. In the days after 9/11, many art-loving New Yorkers felt impelled to visit the overlooked Islamic galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, as if to get some grasp of a religion suddenly central to their lives. Through an accident of timing, the galleries closed for renovation soon thereafter, not to reopen until 2011. In 2008, however, a spectacular museum of Islamic art opened in Qatar, and the Met made one of the hires of the decade by bringing in Sheila R. Canby from the British Museum as curator-in-charge of its Islamic collection." The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.

Photo: Tamara Abdul Hadi for The New York Times

@SOURCE FROM:http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/12/30/arts/20090103_COTTER_SLIDESHOW_index.html