A Masterpiece of Fiction Inspires the Urge to Submerge in a Gallery Crawl

“Oh, how bonny and lush were the banks of the Lucinda River!”

Euphoria opens “The Swimmer,” the John Cheever story that greeted New Yorker readers 60 years ago this month. On a hot summer day much like this one, the upper-middle-class, lower-middle-aged Neddy Merrill decides in a burst of hale spirits — “bonny!” — to swim across his county (a thinly veiled Westchester) by way of a necklace of 14 backyard pools, a makeshift “Lucinda River” he names for his beloved wife. A comedy of suburban class and taboo ensues, propelled by the socialites, nudists and plebeians who dot this improbable journey — and by Neddy’s struggle to overcome them.

A master class in pacing and character, “The Swimmer” is astonishingly brief for its punch, a test of values, and the story is often read more than once. A 1968 film adaptation trampled Cheever’s careful psychological ambiguities even as Burt Lancaster — at the peak of his powers — brought Neddy to life as a starry-eyed idealist.

So it was with some skepticism that I entered Flag Art Foundation’s group show based on “The Swimmer.” As with “Rear View,” a saucy group show of backsides last year at the short-lived LGDR gallery, and “Joan Didion: What She Means,” from the Hammer Museum, themed art shows are guilty pleasures. Expression, not subject, is what matters in art. Right?

But life is different, and in July you want a cold, delicious plunge. Tactile craving drew me into these 72 studies in water, some of them serial artworks, bringing the show to about 100 objects. Though Flag’s director and curator, Jonathan Rider, commissioned new work from only six of his 29 participating artists (and one duo), this scattershot, at times aggressively conceptual assortment provides a rich anatomy of the swim, loosely united by Cheever’s achievement. It’s a model for how to handle literature in an art gallery.