Audrey Flack, "Montauk Harbor, September 28, 2001," 2001.

This past September 11, New Yorkers commemorated the attack on the World Trade Center four years ago by reading aloud, at Ground Zero, the names of those killed. Compared to this straightforward approach, art critic Arthur Danto's way of marking the occasion might seem eccentric. The art exhibit he curated at Apex Art could impress a casual viewer as making only marginal reference to 9/11. This was no accident; it was precisely the "obliqueness" of artistic responses to the attack that he wanted to highlight.

Therefore, one sensibility prominently displayed in "The Art of 9/11" is that of the curator. Danto has long labeled himself a Duchampian, meaning that, in the spirit of avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp, he believes there is more to visual art than meets the eye. The eye alone cannot, for example, distinguish a real Brillo Box from a Warhol counterfeit, or, for that matter, a "real" bicycle wheel from a Duchamp appropriation. Where does the world end, then, and art begin? What separates art from non-art? These are the questions Danto has pursued ardently in his columns and in the numerous books he has written on the subject, starting in 1981 with "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art."

Consequently, Danto ruled out the documentary approach for this show, which meant, for example, there would be no footage of men and women jumping from the blazing towers. He also declined to showcase the political response that took shape later, in opposition to the Patriot Act and to the invasion of Iraq. That's not because Danto himself shies away from politics. His influential, eminently thoughtful art reviews have been appearing for years in "The Nation," hardly an apolitical venue.

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It is because, in curating "The Art of 9/11," Danto sought insight into some fundamental questions about art. What art seems worth making in the face of catastrophe ? What kind of art can emerge in an atmosphere as thick with grief and horror as New York was after 9/11? The show affirmed that making art remained a vital activity, even as the towers smoldered. This, in fact, is the defiant point made, in one medium or another, by many of the artists on view, some of whom only recognized later how deeply their feelings about 9/11 entered into they made.

This was the case, for example, for Audrey Flack. Flack was just arriving at a foundry north of New York City to work on a large statue commissioned when she learned of the attack on the World Trade Center . Resuming work on the statue was emotionally impossible. Nor, with the roads closed, could she get back to the city. Instead, she took a ferry to Long Island, and spent long late summer days at Montauk, producing the watercolors of fishing boats in bright water that are among the visual delights of this show. She records in her artist's statement that she now finds these pieces to be a departure from the more restrained work she had previously produced in that medium. The colors of the Montauk work "were so intense," she wrote, that, "they seemed to vibrate with the energy of the crash."

Robert Rahway Zakanitch's "Blue Birds" and "Red Squirrels," both made of lace, are -- like Flack's fishing boats -- images that would be difficult to tie to 9/11 without help from the artist. In his statement, Zakanitch notes that lace itself has metaphorical significance for him, symbolizing "the interconnectedness of all things." "9/11," he wrote, left the "firmament ... badly torn." Lace -- "delicate, beautiful, and powerful" -- served as a sort of field dressing, a cosmic bandage.

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Cindy Sherman, probably the best known artist at the show, is celebrated for the photographs she takes of herself assuming widely different personae. Here she is photographed impersonating a sad-faced clown. This color image can seem arbitrary at first: What links clowns to terrorism? But Sherman's view of clowns -- "cheery on the outside but horrific underneath" -- gives the piece a chilling relevance to 9/11.

Some pieces make less coded references to the attack. That's true, for example, of Leslie King-Hammond's installation, "Prayers for the New Ancestors," a lavish shrine consisting, among other things, of newspaper articles, cowry shells, masks, beads, garments, Red Cross announcements, candles, poems and African statuary. The generous, eclectic spirit of the piece brings to mind the numerous shrines and altars that went up all over New York City in the days following 9/11. Consequently, "Prayers for the New Ancestors," has a double function: it is a memorial in its own right, and, at the same time, salutes the impulse that drove so many New Yorkers to come up with their own ways of honoring the dead.

The fact that artist's statements play a central role in "The Art of 9/11" is in keeping with Danto's refusal to seal off the visual. The texts and objects of "The Art of 9/11" make it a satisfying show. It would be worth seeing in any case simply because it is part of Arthur Danto's ongoing probe into the character of contemporary art.

Click here to read Harvey Blume's interview with Arthur Danto about 9/11 art.

"The Art of 9/11" exhibition curated by Arthur C. Danto is on display at apexart in New York City, NY through Oct 15, 2005.

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