Art: Here Come the Monsters

While abstract expressionism rules the cash register in Manhattan's prospering art galleries, young artists across the land are turning back to images—but with a difference. The classical tradition, reasserted in the Renaissance, has always been that people are beautiful, at least in art. The new imagemakers dispute that. Their figures are human, but horrible. The horror school has its center in Chicago, is staffed by an earnest, loose-knit and surprisingly well-adjusted handful of Art Institute graduates.

¶Oldest and best known is scholarly, affable George Cohen, 40, whose The Serpent Chooses Adam and Eve caused something of a sensation at last year's...