Courtesy Art: Concept, Paris

Philippe Perrot, "L'homme invisible" (2007). Oil on canvas, 30 x 39 in.

March 2009 Field Guide

Paris: The Jazz Century

Interview: Second Trienal Poli/Graficá de San Juan

London: Focus on Forsythe

Minneapolis: The Quick and the Dead

Washingon, DC: Guido van der Werve

North Adams, MA: These Days: Elegies for Modern Times

Nuremberg, Germany: Katinka Bock

Ghent, Belgium: Dara Birnbaum

Pablo Picasso All Around Town Zen and the Art of Axel Vervoordt Ernst Beyeler, Legendary Art Dealer, Collector, and Philanthropist, Has Died The Starn Brothers Bring Bamboo to the Met Denver Museum of Contemporary Art Names Associate Curator Dealers Find “Completely Different Market” at Dubai Fair Iraqis Recover Picasso Looted From Kuwaiti Museum

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Art institutions and biennials present their roundups of hot, young, zeitgeist-distilling artists throughout the year, sure as clockwork. This month is no different, with a confluence of three surveys loosely forged under the banners of national character, youth-as-seer, or both. Opening first is the New Museum’s highly anticipated new triennial, launching with the provocative title "Younger Than Jesus." While none of the 50 artists have yet founded a new world religion, they all share in the Jewish carpenter’s youth, as anyone over 33 is verboten. This "millennial" generation is the first to come of age alongside the Internet, and a fair amount of work will reflect this, with online projects and video-game art.

Next is the massive "La Force de l’Art 02" at the Grand Palais in Paris. Forty artists and 15 duos from France will present their work throughout the cavernous nave of the glass palace, where architect Philippe Rahm designed a flexible structure that will respond to each project’s demand for space or light.

Up in Stockholm, curator Camilla Larson spent the last year trolling the studios of young Swedish artists with the dubious task of singling out a coherent theme that runs through their work. As it turned out (and as the unfortunate return of stirrup leggings may herald) the early 1980s looms large over this young generation: Larson uncovered a keen interest in the era’s postmodernism. Titled "Rummaging,"the exhibition will pair influential works from the early ’80s with new works by the 15 featured emerging young things.

These three exhibitions should illuminate contemporary Frenchness, the existential joys of being a young Swede, and what, in general, the "kids of today" are up to. As Picasso famously said: "It takes a long time to become young." We’ll all get there someday.

newmuseum.org

laforcedelart.fr

bonnierskonsthall.se

"Survey of Surveys" originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' April 2009 Table of Contents.