ART REVIEW : La Jolla Contemporary Shows Its Lively Side
SAN DIEGO — Part II of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition of works from its collection mirrors art’s refreshing break from the dry days of minimalism recalled in Part I. All the humor, pathos, passion and even exuberance that were unwelcome during minimalism’s reign pour out here with the dizzying pleasure of a breath released after long captivity.
With its earliest works dating from the mid-1960s, “Selections from the Permanent Collection II†overlaps chronologically with the first segment of the show but is more heavily weighted toward the pulsating present. Pluralism is the term most often used to describe the current preponderance of new--and used--forms and strategies. Anarchy suits just as well, but, as this show demonstrates, the extreme diversity of ideas and styles floating about is invigorating.
The only visible drawback to such limitless tolerance is that it makes room for lazy cynicism just as readily as for penetrating insight. Fortunately, not much dead weight is accommodated here, except among some of the newest art, which seems to age even faster than it matured.
Pop art sets the stage here for the overturning of hierarchical values. The floral still life, a traditionally exalted subject in painting, is sucked dry of its splendor in Andy Warhol’s “Flowers†(1967), a huge canvas of flat, washed-out blossoms cheaply and methodically rendered by the silk-screen process. Meanwhile, such mundane objects as potatoes and ice cream bars are elevated to monumental stature in Claes Oldenburg’s sketches and constructions.
Words become icons, too, whether snatched from popular speech or professional discourse, as in Edward Ruscha’s “Ace†(1962) and John Baldessari’s tongue-in-cheek painting of “Terms Most Useful in Describing Creative Works of Art†(1966-68). Jenny Holzer brings the practice into the ‘80s with her painted declaration, “With All the Holes in You Already There’s No Reason to Define the Outside Environment as Alien.†Each states its case with a simplicity and directness that lodges in the mind with unexpected resonance.
The individual’s fragile position within society turns to outright vulnerability in Italo Scanga’s massive figural sculpture, “Monte Cassino: Betrayal of the Intellectuals†(1983), a moving lament to war’s blind wastefulness of human mind power. Terry Allen’s “The First Day†(1983) evokes a Vietnam veteran’s difficult, delicate re-entry into the world. Through framed objects and texts, as well as words and place names stamped into the memorial’s sheet-lead surface, Allen aptly suggests the complex mixture of confusion and wonder with which the veteran re-experiences once-familiar sensations.
William Wiley points a finger at another of society’s shameless blunders with a candor that at first reads as obliqueness in “Nothing to Blame†(1979). Wiley scrawls an indictment of the “midnight dumping†of toxic chemicals in a continuous web of line across the large canvas. In a preparatory drawing for the work, Wiley lapses into a stream of punning, jabbing commentary that recalls verses of Bob Dylan. Seemingly casual and spontaneous, it homes straight in on its target: “I ain’t scared you seen one cataclysm you seen em maul well drain the swamps build jails make sales a void taxes sharpen axes take classes to relax us . . . “
James Casebere’s lightbox-mounted photograph and Mitchell Syrop’s captioned images both employ the slick veneer of advertising to critique society’s breeding of militaristic and materialistic values. But by adopting this strategy of instant impact, both recent works also suffer its companion limitation of having only transitory significance.
Tactics and strategies aside, we are all subject to the same universal laws, and it is these that the Swiss team of Peter Fischli and David Weiss so cleverly explore in their 1987 video, “The Way Things Go.†Using only the most fundamental of resources--fire, water, gravity, latent energy--Fischli and Weiss activate an endless sequence of contraptions, with barrels rolling into bottles that pour water into pans that tip, spilling the water and setting in motion a tire, and so on. The continuous momentum of this chain of events metaphorically suggests the course of individual lives as well as civilization as a whole: Whether tripping clumsily, floating gracefully or pulled violently, they move ahead, propelled by natural forces.
The museum has put out some of its very best here, and the works are so enlivening that one hardly notices that the collection skips and stutters a bit. Accompanying this abbreviated tour through the art of the past two decades is a show focusing on the work of New York sculptor Judith Shea. Extending the notion that clothing expresses its wearer’s identity, Shea’s fragmented and hollow garments serve as surrogates for human presence in general.
Her work from the late 1970s reduces familiar garment forms such as sleeves or pant legs to an emblematic simplicity. At their most minimal, they become merely flat fabric patterns hanging rather mutely on the wall. Since the early 1980s, Shea has invested her work with greater psychological and physical depth. Working in heavy felt and cast bronze, she evokes palpable human presences by sculpting their draped or tightly conforming fabric wrappings.
While making concrete references to the forms and timeless solidity of ancient Greek statuary, Shea’s work attains its power through the withholding of actual form. She either truncates her figures or removes them entirely from their shells, leaving an implication of their contours and setting up a playful dialogue between absence and presence. In “The Balance†(1986), a solid cube rests on the lap of a seated figure defined only by an empty, loosely draped tunic. The cube counters the figure’s invisibility with a resounding solidity, giving an elegant answer to one of Shea’s many elegant questions.
Both shows continue through May 22.
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