An offbeat homage to an unlikely pair International Herald Tribune

Under the motto "The Year of Art," this Rhineland capital has launched a Quadriennale that more than lives up to its hype. A dozen major exhibitions in museums and other public spaces are complemented by more than 20 shows in leading private galleries and an uncountable number of fringe events. The consistently high quality of this fine arts smorgasbord establishes Düsseldorf as Germany's only serious cultural rival to Berlin.

No fewer than seven public institutions in the city are devoted to modern and contemporary art. The prestigious Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, or "K-20," which is devoted to art of the 20th century, will soon acquire an extension nearly doubling its exhibition space. Art of this century is presented in "K-21," an elegantly renovated palazzo that once housed the state Parliament. Across the way from K-20, the grime- coated Kunsthalle, which has long borne unmistakable resemblance to a deserted bunker, is receiving a thorough makeover. Another neighbor, the historic Kunstakademie, continues to be a happy hunting ground for gallerists and collectors in search of fresh young talent.

Düsseldorf's progressive image is further enhanced by international architects like Frank Gehry and David Chipperfield, who have helped glamorize the city's once-defunct harbor area. Thus, the Quadriennale enjoys a fertile context that lends individual events additional authority. These range from "Mental Exercises," a Bruce Nauman anthology of video works and installations at the NRW Forum (through Jan. 14), to a chillingly reductionist ode to mortality by the Mexican installation artist Teresa Margolies at the Kunstverein (through Jan. 7). Meanwhile, K-21 is hosting a retrospective for the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (through Feb. 4), and the large-as-life figures of Manolo Valdés's "Las Meninas" saunter along a traffic island near the opera house.

Ironically, in a city that, with the aid of old masters Bernd and Hilla Becker and their gifted students, did so much to generate the international photography boom, the medium is largely absent from the official program. A number of gallery shows help to take up the slack. At Bugdahn und Kaimer, one encounters striking "Portraits from the Art World" by Dietmar Schneider. Under the rubric "Uniform," Gallery Voss features the ingeniously staged crowd scenes of Claudia Rogge.

A sense of dramatic staging also animates the large-format, black-and-white scenarios arranged by Jürgen Klauke, on view at the Hans Mayer Gallery. In many of these, the artist himself is the solo performer in an erotic-neurotic theater of the absurd. In comparison to earlier works, in which Klauke played with transsexual motifs, there is something almost classical in these dark-suited figures sprawled among tangled tresses of long black hair.

Klauke's self-dramatizations neatly complement the Quadriennale's central theme of the human body in the visual arts. Into this arena stride the true protagonists of the Düsseldorf event: Francis Bacon and Caravaggio. Surprisingly, the presentation at the Museum Kunst Palast (through Jan. 7) is the first German exhibition for Caravaggio's muscled œuvre, represented here by 30 canvases.

For the Francis Bacon show, entitled "The Violence of the Real," the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen has assembled 64 works dating from 1945, when Bacon exhibited the first of his celebrated triptychs, to 1991, the year before his death at 82. Among the exponents on view are 10 triptychs and numerous preliminary works, photographs and memorabilia. Bacon's writhing, tormented bodies suggest striking parallels, as well as contrasts, to the sensuous, earthy, well-fleshed figures that would created the 17th-century vogue of "Caravaggisimo."

Unlike Caravaggio, Bacon has been the subject of several important exhibitions in Germany, so that viewers can expect few surprises here. Yet there are revealing moments and sudden insights to be gained: from the icon-like, small-format heads that underscore the painter's fascination with classical painting or the "Studies for a Self-Portrait" (1979), on loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum, revealing the bulging, asymmetrical head that Louise Bourgeois once described as resembling nothing so much as "an overripe melon someone has sat on." Yet this small but stunning triptych turns these very irregularities into a painterly tour de force of sweeping curves, chiaroscuro effects and remarkable plasticity. This portrait of the artist as a vulnerable, far-from-young man has the stuff of fairy tale: of the repellent frog metamorphosing, before our eyes, into a handsome prince.

The models for Caravaggio's handsome princes and tormented martyrs were often youths recruited from the streets. Even his saints may reveal dirty feet, contributing with their very earthiness to the seemingly endless speculations about the painter's biography. Brawler, erotomane, murderer and a favorite of cardinals and noblemen, he died a mysterious, violent death.

Given the range of speculation about the painter's turbulent life, it would be comforting to say, "At least we have the pictures." But questions of attribution are almost as murky as the artist's biography. Following the baroque vogue of "Caravaggismo," the artist's star declined for two centuries, only regaining ascendancy at the beginning of the 20th century. As a result, scholarship now has to wend its way through an art- historical maze, tracking down originals, duplicates, copies and forgeries.

The Düsseldorf show takes this detective story as its point of departure, exhibiting originals and recently authenticated "discoveries" alongside duplicates from Caravaggio's own studio, copies later commissioned from other painters and outright forgeries. Only the fakes are clearly identified within the exhibition. For the rest, viewers are drawn into the drama of attribution, comparing for themselves different versions of the same motif and in the process discovering nuances frequently overlooked.

In the end, however, it is not the ongoing, sometimes acrimonious scholarly debate but the sheer power of figuration, the richness of color, the dramatic staging, the oblique framing that draw the viewer deeper and deeper into this odd but grandiose homage. A stately exhibition architecture heightens the effect. Long, comparatively narrow rooms have been augmented by niches suggestive of side-altars in a cathedral. With walls painted in rich, earthen tones, the total effect is hushed, sensuous, contemplative.

The curators at K-20 have had to contend with equally difficult spaces for the Francis Bacon show, but have failed to provide their Irish guest with suitable accommodation. A recycled exhibition architecture, originally conceived for last year's Matisse show, consists of a labyrinth-like setting with "cut-outs" that offer glimpses of works to come. This was a splendid concept for the Matisse show, which emphasized the borderline between interior and exterior spaces. The scheme makes no sense with Bacon. There is much that seems simply quirky here, but from which budding curators might learn a lesson or two. For example, if the decision has been made to situate labels to the left of works, stick to that principle unless the architecture forces you to do otherwise. And give folks a place to sit down.