“For the past decade, the New York art world seemed to have retreated into an exceptionally apolitical version of postmodernism, convinced by a combination of theory and action movies that a digitally enhanced future would favor spectacle over reality. Now, with the advent of an all-too-real war presented as mere spectacle by television, artists are suddenly faced with the very surrealistic task of making reality real. So it’s not surprising to see—both in works on view at galleries and in the strategies of the burgeoning anti-war activists — a reprisal of the imagery and the sincerity of earlier periods of art history.”