Exhibitions: Love, Hate & the Machine

To the ancients, wind and sun, sea and forest grove seemed to be informed by inscrutable spirits to whom, in awe and propitiation, they gave human personality and shape. To modern man, the mechanized gadgets that his own brain has spawned also seem to have cantankerous lives of their own. What adult American has not swatted a flickering TV set? Or made an uneasy joke about the day when the computer tries to take over?

Last week "The Machine," a ten-week-long exhibit of 220 works detailing the myriad ways in which artists have...