absence of distinction between originality and reproduction and the idea that you go to the past, uncloak the past, remake the past, in order to say something new. for today's artists, the problem seems to be, what new is there to say? in a vanitasive style, pat steir takes the traditional still life genre and fragments her painting into 64 separate frames. the range of styles presents an encapsulated course in the history of western art. boldly invoking the classical tradition, carlo maria mariani has painted looking into celestial mirror. the artist self-consciously winks at his postmodern audience, a public fully aware of the ironies of reciting the heroic past in an unheroic age. here julia paolini presents art looking at art-- two replicas of the most famous of greek sculptures, the venus de milo, mirror each other. beauty studies beauty in order to develop. the palais royal in paris is an 18th-century building that houses part of the french administration. daniel buren was asked to make a sculpture for its courtyard that would complete this glorious architectural monument. what he c