Since opening last week, the New Museum's first edition of its "Younger Than Jesus" triennial--a survey of international artists aged 33 and under--has become a flashpoint for debate over the direction of art in the post-Bush 21st century. Assembled by a curatorial team led by Massimiliano Gioni, Laura Hoptman, and Lauren Cornell, the show displays 50 artists from 25 countries who were selected from a pool of 500 candidates thought to best represent their generation's artistic preoccupations--which largely (and unsurprisingly) turned out to be globalization, the proliferation of social media like Facebook and YouTube, and the place of identity in this strange new terrain. What did the critics have to say? Well, not all of them were nicer than Jesus.

Jerry Saltz, New York magazine's indispensably pro-art-world critic, was the most positive. Calling the show "flawed but tantalizing," he said it "suggests that ideas about culture, ethnography, anthropology, and sociology, YouTube and Facebook, and science and documentary film have all become more important than" hyperintellectualized postmodernism. Like the other critics, Saltz singled out Cyprien Gaillard's video Desniansky Raion as "riveting." The piece--a triptych combining footage of a battle between Russian fight-club members, the fireworks-embellished destruction of a Parisian project building, and a Kiev apartment block videotaped from a mini airplane--is "an amazing video, a harrowing record of ancient rituals being revived in new ways in unexpected places, and a picture of our new cities of ruin."

The New Yorker's Peter Schjeldahl found the show to be "low-budget bubbly fun, for the most part," although the generational format seemed "dicey" to him. "Every new generation is pretty much like the one that came before it," he said. "If there is anything unique about today’s young, it may be a precocious alertness to how such rhetorical typecasting and economic targeting work." The "star" of the show, according to Schjeldahl, is the already much-buzzed-about Ryan Trecartin, "an American artist based in Philadelphia, who orchestrates a shaggy installation in which scripted, digitally eventful videos (catchable on YouTube) feature madcap, often sexually ambiguous performers enacting phantasmagorical dramas in squeaky voices at very high speed."

In the New York Times, Holland Cotter--for his first review of a New Museum show--agreed with Schjeldahl about Trecartin: "There is some danger of his motormouth wizardry sliding into shtick, but right now it’s mesmerizing." Cotter also liked Liz Glynn's "spectacular" performance piece, where she spent 24 hours rebuilding ancient Rome from cardboard and other throwaway materials, only to destroy it at the end. But as for the rest of the exhibition, Cotter was less charitable. "The routine of dealers hustling talent straight from the classroom has made exhibitions of 20-somethings the wearying norm," he wrote, adding that the show "feels familiar, like a more-substantial-than-average version of a weekend gallery hop in Chelsea and the Lower East Side, right down to the token Asian and African imports."

By far the most vituperative response to the show, however, came from Artnet's Charlie Finch. Observing that much of the art on view requires explanatory wall labels to be understood--"This is the texting generation, so why not?"--he wrote that "elements of freedom and dissent are absent" from the show "and the viewer hungers for any esthetic form." His kicker? "For months, I have been meaning to write a piece called "The Death of Fine Art," but couldn't quite compel myself to believe it. After touring "Younger than Jesus," I believe it." Well, fans of the exhibition can take comfort in the old saying: never trust anyone older than Jesus.

Read these reviews and others:

"Jesus Saves," by Jerry Saltz [via New York]:
"Their Generation," by Peter Schjeldahl [via the New Yorker]:
"Young Artists, Caught in the Act," by Holland Cotter [via the New York Times]:
"Jesus Responds," by Charlie Finch [via Artnet]:
"'Younger Than Jesus’ Artists Find Voyeurism Inspiring," by Katya Kazakina [via Bloomberg]:
Read Artforum's "Scene & Herd" report on the opening (complete with party photos):
Read a profile of Mark Essen, the show's youngest artist, by New York's Blythe Sheldon: