With this exhibition, the dance has picked up the pace. The show's pace has a way of backfiring badly, however. I found myself moving through the galleries more quickly than usual, with a glance for photos and old favorites. The breakneck speed picks up Postmodernism's worst feature, in fact. Once again, the two concepts seem destined to live with off other into the Y2K, but not as a happy couple.
Works hang apart that depend on one another for sense.
Sometimes a dizzying placement helps. One turns in surprise between Brancusi and Rodin. Yet one can become a dervish spinning about to compare the Picasso and Braques guitarists, awkwardly facing each other. In the Matisse room, that seated woman hangs on the wall as one layer of reality within many. A loss of chronology takes away the sense of things, as both history and art history.