There's something quietly apocalyptic about so dramatic a cultural shift. But the day of reckoning isn't really sensed in "Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s," a new show (through Jan. 4) at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
There's plenty of flash and even some bombast. How could there not be, when artist Julian Schnabel was busily making the epic 1988 painting "Cortes"? A coarse, gashed, 20-foot-wide, olive-drab tarpaulin stained in map-like blotches, it's like a hazy chart for a massive military campaign.
Near the top hangs an embroidered Baroque altar front in royal purple and gold. Even the title, which refers to the Spanish conquistador who demolished the Aztec empire, speaks of feverish ambition.
