A Poet For Our Times: Rashid Johnson Wows at the Guggenheim

It is an inadequate use of language to call Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers an installation, an exhibition, a survey. Because it feels like more. A defining moment of our times? A definition of art in the 21st century. A shape-shifting moment? I have been struggling this weekend thinking of what to say in regards to a show that, for one, I was highly anticipating and, two, I think the art world sorely needed. Johnson’s art for me has been about the idealization of growth, and there is enough around Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim design where Johnson’s work touches on organic and non-organic biology. But it is the way he does this, the fact that history, philosophy, literature, and…