Books and Arts; The Istanbul Biennial;Vintage is the new vanguard;

Virtually every day of the year sees another art biennial opening somewhere in the world. The role of these exhibitions is to showcase contemporary art, attract affluent tourists and stimulate local culture. Most biennials are a sprawling mess—and the worst look like commercial art fairs studded with brand-name trophies. However, those that succeed in making sense of some aspect of global culture can be both enlightening and memorable. This year's Istanbul Biennial, which opened on September 17th and runs for almost two months, is a case in point. Poignant, relevant and intellectually engaging, it has managed to create a coherent exhibition out of works by 130 artists from 41 countries—a rare achievement.

The Istanbul Biennial is held in two huge former warehouses on the banks of the Bosporus. Untamed, the buildings would force viewers into a monotonous marathon of spectatorship. But the biennial's curators, Adriano Pedrosa (a Brazilian) and Jens Hoffmann (a Costa Rican), enlisted the help of a master of exhibition design, a Japanese architect called Ryue Nishizawa, who has introduced new energy into the space by creating rooms of different sizes and marking off “exterior” spaces with corrugated-steel walls.

As curators, Mr Pedrosa and Mr Hoffmann have also adopted an effective premise. Rather than using a theory or theme as a unifying rubric, the biennial has a muse—Félix González-Torres, an artist who died in 1996 and who was selected posthumously to be the official American representative at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Born in Cuba and educated in Puerto Rico, González-Torres made minimalist conceptual works that were aesthetically innovative and politically sophisticated. Like its muse, the Istanbul Biennial is thoughtful rather than aggressive or sensationalist. “Activists spoon-feed messages but artists create works with layered meanings,” explains Mr Pedrosa.

The biennial also has an intelligent structure. There are five group shows around the main themes that inspired González-Torres's work—love, death, abstraction, contested histories and territories. Each group show occupies a large grey room and acts as a hub for a cluster of solo shows featuring 50 artists, all in smaller white rooms. The elegant solution to the spaces stands in contrast to the names of the group shows, which repeat “Untitled” in an awkward manner. Nevertheless, it is moving to walk through the room called “ ‘Untitled' (Ross)” named after the artist's longtime lover, Ross Laycock, who died in 1991 of Aids-related causes, like González-Torres himself.

Another of the group shows, “ ‘Untitled' (Passport # II)”, displays 20 works about maps and national identity. Hank Willis Thomas's “A Place to Call Home” depicts North America and Africa as big black continents joined by an isthmus. Jorge Macchi's “Seascape” covers all the landmasses below the equator with cut-outs of the northern seas. Displayed as a commentary to Mr Macchi's drowned hemisphere is a video by Kutlug Ataman, one of Turkey's most critically acclaimed artists, which depicts bands of choppy sunlit water.

In a series of vitrines in the same room, Baha Boukhari, a Ramallah-based cartoonist, shows the passports issued to his father under the British mandate in Palestine. Many of the artworks incorporate objects and documents found in historical archives. Contemporary art in 2011 has a distinctly vintage feel.

The curators are right not to let themselves be overly distracted by the latest thing; work made yesterday is not always the art that is most relevant to the present. They have chosen to include a range of historical artworks by women who they believe deserve greater recognition. For example, they have installed photo collages from Martha Rosler's “Bringing the War Home” series (pictured above), which were made during the Vietnam war between 1967 and 1972, but which still resonate because of America's continuing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Istanbul Biennial also gives solo shows to a number of exciting emerging artists. Many visitors were impressed with “Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File”, a video by Wael Shawky, an Egyptian artist, in which marionettes act out the story of the crusades from an Arab point of view. Also much discussed were “Tin Soldiers” by Ala Younis, a Jordanian, and “Historical Record Archive” by Dani Gal, an Israeli artist.

It is interesting to view these works against the background of the recent political upheavals in the Middle East and to see the unexpected interaction between Arab artists and those from South America. Both areas are on the periphery of European modernity and the biennial's artists have found much common ground over urban decay, disenfranchisement and the arbitrariness of national borders. Mr Pedrosa and Mr Hoffmann have played to their strengths, choosing more artists from South America than any other continent. It is a testament to the Turkish philanthropists who underwrite the biennial, particularly the Koc and Eczacibasi families, that the curators came under no pressure to include more local artists. Indeed, the stylish internationalism of the Istanbul Biennial feels entirely natural.