A month ago in these pages I fretted over how contemporary audiences and artists might respond to the fervent seriousness embodied in Clyfford Still’s paintings. Animated by irony, allusiveness, and free-floating cosmopolitanism, our governing sensibility was, I suggested, devoid of the solemnity of purpose that carried cultural weight in the decade and a half after World War II, when Still reached the height of his powers. All that has changed. What the mood and tastes of the country will be in the coming years is anybody’s guess. What can be said is that art made before September 11, 2001, does not today look the same as it did before that date: amidst confusion, fear, and uncertainty, no overarching sensibility prevails. Whatever merits the cultural context imparted to recent works of art are now withheld, and, due to this, we might regard art from a certain distance, but we might also look with fresh eyes now that the slate has been so s ...

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