THE BEST OF ART 2005

BY ARIELLA BUDICK | STAFF WRITER

December 25, 2005

An exquisite exhibit on Fra Angelico at the Metropolitan Museum, through Jan. 29.

Shows of contemporary art have been demoralizing of late, as the art market rises to dizzying heights and the search for bright young things yields ever-less experienced artists.

One trend that continues to gain momentum involves works that entail enormous effort but offer only three-second jolts of interest. Collectively, the devotees of this "much ado about nothing" school testify to the inability of craftsmanship to compensate for flimsy ideas.

Warmed-over conceptualism is another mania that has lingered too long. Art of this type tells us what we already know, clumsily. "The Jewish Identity Project," an exhibit of 10 specially commissioned projects at The Jewish Museum, was full of this obvious stuff, as was "Edge of Desire," a sprawling survey of new Indian art jointly presented by the Queens Museum of Art and the Asia Society. The lingua franca of the international avant-garde has become the mildewed cliche.

PS1's "Greater New York," a highly anticipated roundup of the most luminary artists in the five boroughs, was a goulash of lackluster accomplishments spiked with pinches of inspiration. Frenzied dealers trying to please hyper-acquisitive collectors have pushed unprepared, unseasoned youngsters into the spotlight, with predictable results.

None of this has put a damper on prices for contemporary work, which continue to set new records even in a difficult economy. Sotheby's got $23.8 million for a monumental steel sculpture by David Smith, making it the most expensive contemporary artwork ever sold at auction. When all the excitement dies down, the awful will fall away and the awesome will remain, but until then we struggle to beat back the hype.

Of course, there are exceptions. Petah Coyne, featured at the SculptureCenter, incited unease and bewitchment with her enchanting concoctions of dead birds, silk flowers, human hair, dirt, chicken wire and floor wax. Brian Jungen, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, impishly merged ancient and modern fetishes. Both have tapped into something deeper and more magical than ideology on one hand or the bottom line on the other.

The further we get from the cash nexus of the contemporary market, the more sanity prevails. This is, in many ways, a great time for art of the near and distant past. The Metropolitan Museum continues to rule, presenting exhibits that delight crowds and scholars alike. Besides the three of its shows listed among my top 10, it offered an affecting display of Van Gogh drawings, a thoughtful Max Ernst retrospective, a phenomenal survey of Diane Arbus photographs, an examination of Rubens' virtuosic drawings and much more.

Then there were the oversized projects that did end-runs on the art establishment, mixing colossal ego and public service. Jeanne-Claude and Christo festooned Central Park with "The Gates" and photographer Gregory Colbert had a temporary museum built on a Hudson River pier to house his poster-size photographs. These works demonstrate that even a city run by a voracious cultural oligarchy has room for outsider entrepreneurs.

TOP ART

1. "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult," Metropolitan Museum of Art, through Dec. 31. This mesmerizing exhibit explores a time when the supernatural fascinated a cohort of committed rationalists. Psychologist William James, novelist Thomas Mann and even Arthur Conan Doyle all consulted mediums. Believers and skeptics alike turned to photography, a visionary art born of the Industrial Revolution, to document emanations and ectoplasm. The exhibit puts the evidence on display, letting the viewer decide which cheesy special effects, creepy abstractions and shimmering nebulae merit scientific or artistic respect.

2. Fra Angelico, Metropolitan Museum of Art, through Jan. 29. For a pious 15th century Dominican friar, Fra Angelico cared a great deal for the things of this world. He luxuriated in the folds of expensive fabrics. He wallowed in the lavish textures of gold. He bathed his vision in the seductions of saturated color. The Met's divine Angelico retrospective reveals an artist who served God and earthly beauty in equal measure.

3. Andre Kertész, International Center of Photography. Kertész, the Hungarian photographer whose life spanned most of the 20th century, was the subject of a deeply affecting retrospective at the International Center of Photography. With his pictures of prewar Paris and Depression-era New York, he always managed to steep his traces of reality in wistfulness. "You don't see the things you photograph," he once explained, "you feel them."

4. "The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons," Jewish Museum. Gertrude Stein's bohemian-crammed drawing room made her the world's best-known Jewish salonnière - a woman of taste who presides over gatherings of gifted guests - but she was by no means the first, as a fascinating and beautifully organized exhibit at the Jewish Museum made clear. It explained how wealthy Jews were uniquely positioned to bring people of all sorts together for mutual inspiration.

5. "Memling's Portraits," Frick Collection, through Dec. 31. It's hard to imagine how spooked and amazed Hans Memling's contemporaries must have been 500 years ago when they first saw his painted portraits. His eerie precision must have dazzled and delighted their disbelieving eyes. Dazzle he still does. The Frick's assemblage of Memling's masterpieces is an orgy of glamour and virtuosity.

6. Tim Hawkinson, Whitney Museum of American Art. Besides a demented imagination and a considerable allotment of talent, the painter, sculptor and gizmo-maker Hawkinson has one quality that loads of other artists lack: a self-deprecating sense of humor. Each gallery of his Whitney Museum retrospective was full of such gasp-worthy, giggle-inducing wonders as "Hairbrush Clock," a timepiece in which the hands are two barely visible strands of hair clinging to the plastic bristles.

7. "Russia!" Guggenheim Museum, through Jan. 11. A sprawling, occasionally bumpy but always fascinating survey of icons, paintings, sculpture and assorted objects from the largest nation on Earth, "Russia!" is by far the season's most ambitious show. The Guggenheim has assembled a dizzying chronological narrative tracing 900 years' worth of art that raises as many questions - what's Russian about Russian art, anyway? - as it answers.

8. Roger Fenton, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fenton's career as a photographer was confined to one decade in the mid-19th century. But from 1852, the year he first hoisted his heavy camera, to 1862, when he laid it down to return to practicing law, Fenton took achingly beautiful pictures that encapsulate the inspirations and obsessions of his era. The Met convened 90 of them in a revelatory exhibition that proved Fenton's genius.

9. "Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color," Whitney Museum of American Art, through Feb. 12. Bluemner was a paranoid, self-centered eccentric who advertised his pain in brilliant color. How ironic that paintings born of such suffering and frustration can be so glorious, even transcendent. Bluemner killed himself in 1938 and was promptly relegated to obscurity. The Whitney has resurrected him in a vibrant retrospective that should help his reputation grow beyond a small circle of connoisseurs.

10. "The Gates," Central Park. Whether you consider it a boon or a bust, "The Gates" was the major art event of the year. It lured upwards of 4 million visitors into a frigid Central Park and pumped an estimated $254 million into the city. Even if they were not quite golden (or even saffron), as artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude asserted, the frame-and-curtain structures cast a splendid glow over a gloomy few weeks in February, evidence that art can nourish festivity and spark a sense of fun.