Today’s 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook The Observer newsroom in Midtown Manhattan, but once it passed, our minds turned to finer things–contemporary art, namely, that fine and elegant mediator of trauma.
At left, a guide to the works through which we experienced, and are reflecting on, the tumult, from Doris Salcedo’s terrifying cracked floor at Tate Modern—a foreboding sign of doom—to scenes of post-apocalyptic disaster by the likes of Urs Fischer and Christoph Büchel.
We conclude with Carsten Holler’s Upside-Down Glasses, designed to do exactly what their title suggests, showing a changed world, a world that we avoided today.
