Art Apart: A Study in Contrasts

You may have to do a bit of driving to get the full impact from an exhibit organized by Security Pacific Corp.’s Gallery at the Plaza.

“The Private Work of Public Artists,” through July 1, is designed to compare and contrast independently motivated artwork with art that is conceived and created for an institution or organization such as a developer who commissions an outdoor sculpture for a new skyscraper.

The “private” works of 10 artists are on view at the Security Pacific gallery, and the public installations are located in Santa Monica and downtown. For instance, multimedia wall works by Jeff Weiss correspond to his photomural at the Santa Monica Library; Richard Haas’ architectural drawings are the link to his multipaneled mural at the Home Savings of America Tower downtown.

There can be similarities, but “there is always a difference between an artist’s public and private work,” said Donna Stein, the show’s guest curator.

“An artist has so many things to consider in a public situation,” she said. “The site, the materials or the community in which a work is being placed, which often has a voice in how it will be used. All these are constraints. But when you move into the studio for your own work, then you’re free. There’s a sense of exploration to do whatever you want, to explore issues and ideas, material or subject matter unrelated to anything other than your personal interest.”

Among the most striking contrasts in the exhibit are the works of Michael Davis and Gwynn Murrill, Stein said.

Davis’ geometric sculptures are best known to the public, but here are haunting scenes of San Pedro harbor, views the artist sees from his studio.

Murrill’s sculpted bronze animals are her forte, but this exhibit contains expressionistic oil pastel landscapes she made on trips to Hawaii. “Her pastels are something she does for herself and never sells,” Stein said.

MOVING ON: Walter Hopps, considered a local legend who helped shape Los Angeles into a major art center, has resigned as director of The Menil Collection in Houston to return to his greatest passion, art curation.

Hopps, who will work as an independent curator of 20th-Century art, was a co-founder of the vanguard Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and in the ‘50s and ‘60s was director of the Pasadena Art Museum, where he curated such exhibits as the world’s first retrospective of Dada master Marcel Duchamp. He will remain as consultant to the Menil Foundation and will curate special exhibits for the Menil Collection, a private museum he co-founded that specializes in modern art.

“The decision came to me on the eve of my 57th birthday in the beginning of May,” Hopps said by phone from Houston recently. “Our staff here is very small. Resources are hard to come by today, and directorial demands go in every direction except in the area closest to my heart, curation.”

Hopps said he plans to curate exhibitions around the country and the world as well as in Houston. He also hopes to work in California but declined to reveal any specific plans.

Paul Winkler, assistant director of the Menil Collection, will serve as acting director. He is expected to be named director, Hopps said.

WHERE THERE IS DEVELOPMENT . . . Water will flow and flames will flicker from a recently commissioned monumental sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Eric Orr; the sculpture is to be installed downtown next summer. The artwork, consisting of two 32-foot-high triangular bronze towers, will stand in the plaza of a 52-story skyscraper to be built at Figueroa Street and Wilshire Boulevard. Water will stream continuously down all six sides of its two towers as flames rush upward intermittently. Orr’s sculpture was been commissioned by Mitsui Fudosan (U.S.A.) Inc., Japanese developers of the planned office building, under the Community Redevelopment’s Agency’s Downtown Art in Public Places Program. That program calls for developers to contribute 1% of their construction costs for public art.