THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, modern and contemporary art in the West sought either to cheat history or to travesty it. To cheat history is to outrun it in gestures aimed at utopian schemes (as envisioned by Suprematism or the artists of De Stijl) or dystopian destruction (as in Futurism or some variants of Dada). Among modernist avant-gardes, history offered a necessary dialectical framework for its own supersession this is why the rhetoric of revolution remains so appealing and ubiquitous in accounts of modern art. Paradoxically, this legacy has been codified or canonized (and certainly
Celebrating the power of the collective, this year’s art jamboree veers from serious to jolly to chaotic. Our critic dodges the skateboarders – and finds peace in an Indonesian rice barn