The most dazzling work in the show is spread out like a rainbow-colored welcome mat on the floor of MoMA's lobby. Titled ZOBOP!, it's by Glasgow-based artist Jim Lambie, who has been using brightly colored vinyl tape to create site-specific floor pieces since 1999. Working with a team of assistants, Lambie covers the floor of a given area with concentric bands of tape, starting at the outer edges of the space and working inward. He selects the colors, the width of the lines, and the pattern of alternation. "Beyond that," he says, "the work makes itself."

Lambie's work is vibrant, playful, atmospheric, and, above all, decorative. As one critic has noted, it's easy to imagine a work like ZOBOP! covering the floor of a dance club or dorm room. And this, it seems to me, is the present-day legacy of the color chart sensibility. In the '50s, artists started shopping for paint in the hardware store, introducing decorators' materials into the rarefied realm of high art. Today, this tendency has finally come full circle: Art has evolved into a glamorous, high-end form of interior décor.