This show, curated by Klaus Honnef, was intended as a corrective of the current view of art, as a straightening out of standards. Its departure point was the recognition that since the end of the ’70s discussion of art has focused mainly on Europe. The “new painting,” notably in Italy and West Germany but also in Switzerland, Austria, Holland, and France, has concentrated attention on formulations that connect up with specifically European traditions while also breaking with them, melding the most varied pictorial conventions. The attention garnered by this new art has been phenomenal—even in