LA CIENEGA AREA

The word in the art community is that Don Bachardy’s new paintings are portraits of genitals. It isn’t true, but he makes it seem so by presenting his nude models crotch first. Bachardy’s low vantage point forces us to check out prominently displayed private parts before drifting back to the rest of the subjects’ reclining bodies and up to their heads. Once we arrive at their loosely brushed faces, we see an array of arts and entertainment personalities looking perplexed, goofy, bored or grim--anything but blithely at ease. Lurid Day-Glo color heightens an air of unrest by infusing the models’ flesh with vivid oranges and pinks. Though the few women represented are granted relative modesty (actress Teri Garr looks downright prudish in her white bikini panties), the collective effect is of flesh exposed to the prickly heat of the public eye. Alice Neel once said that newborn babies reminded her of “little bits of hamburger.” Bachardy’s nudes have the look of raw meat and nerves.

But if the models have bared themselves, that’s nothing to what the artist has done to himself. He’s sure to be accused of (a) joining the Neo-Expressionist trend and (b) stooping to sensational effects. Both charges ring hollow; the first because he has slowly evolved from a deft illustrator to an increasingly fluid and expressive portraitist; the second because there’s nothing erotic about these nudes. They look uncomfortably naked, not romantically or seductively nude. And there’s real power in their numbers. Single works might fall apart, but the crowd nearly covering the gallery walls speaks of the imperfections of a race. This, too, is consistent with the artist’s sensibility. He has rarely flattered his sitters, though his past work has tempered truth with grace. These new paintings effectively prod us into an unsettling confrontation with the way we look--and how we feel about that. (James Corcoran Gallery, 8223 Santa Monica Blvd., to Aug. 3.)