On the first warm spring day all the young men of SoHo appeared at Dean & DeLuca’s café on Prince Street in generic white T-shirts. A couple of years ago, the T-shirts were black and they were worn with an air of swaggering angst. Now the preferred look is one of squeaky-clean early adolescence. The gallery assistants and artists just out of art school are all impersonating the smooth-cheeked kid next door. With their hair cut to show their ears, these guys look freshly hatched. They cultivate a bit of nerdish gawkiness. This is the new, passive, do-with-me-what-you-will sexiness.

SoHo on a weekday morning is pretty good theater; it’s a spontaneous fashion tableau. Only when everybody has finished their cappuccinos does the work of the day begin: turning fashion statements into marketable art. In SoHo, where street style becomes gallery style as fast as you can say “Artforum,” the boys (and girls) who favor the twelve-year-old look are the same ones who are creating and promoting the new early-adolescent look in art. In the past year or so the galleries have been full of the products that early adolescents think they’re too old for (stuffed animals, cartoons) and the things that they want to be old enough for (beer, motorcycles). The entire art scene is backtracking from Rebel without a Causeto “Leave It to Beaver”—an X-rated “Leave It to Beaver.” The question on everybody’s mind is, “What did Beaver do after he turned out the