Staunch anti-Modernists used to celebrate paintings with an obvious narrative line (such as those by Jorg Immendorff and Eric Fischl), if only as a means of antagonizing those who espouse an “antitheatrical,” formalist approach. Narrativity has since been unhappily linked to content in its yet unhappier quarrel with form. “Chronologies,” a tight international exhibition of recent narrative works, refrained from playing the role of the post-Modern contrarian. The allure of these stylistically hybrid pieces derived less from their subject matter than from the artists’ concern with creating artworks