Manet's brisk little painting of a frieze of men in black opera hats and a few leggy girls in bright fancy dress, Masked Ball at the Opera (1873), kicks off Faces in the Crowd: Picturing Modern Life from Manet to Today, at the Whitechapel until 6 March. The last rooms in the exhibition show photographs, pictures, videos and projections made in the last couple of years - for example, Jeremy Deller's film of 2001, The Battle of Orgreave. As you tread a more or less chronological path from Manet to the present you are pursued by ideas about the progress of art, and ideas about the commentary art gives on lives led in the city. Because it is ideas which link the artworks, and because the art comes from so many hands in so many styles, they tend to read as examples and illustrations even though many of them are very fine in themselves. The show is visually disjunctive but intellectually suggestive.

LRB 6 January 2005 | PDF Download