LA CIENEGA AREA

Jean Edelstein offers a busy show where the female nude is drawn in motion. The subject takes two forms:small colored works on paper that track serial movement in the manner of stroboscopic photographs, or over-life-size representations dashed onto free-standing columns or portals.

The viewer of kindly disposition might choose to wrap it all in a respectable mental mantle including cave paintings, Rodin’s figure studies and Matisse’s early dance figures. In truth, its nearest ancestor is ‘50s-style fashion illustration, minus the fashions. Here is the same calculated spontaneous line, looking rather Japanese but hung on an armature of impersonal academic anatomical studies.

The exhibition’s thematic title is “Spirit of the Goddess,” but nothing is evoked thereby. Edelstein draws nicely but in a narrow range that is not extended here despite energetic effort. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 804 N. La Cienega Blvd., to March 16.).