ART REVIEW : FROM AUSTRIA, BOTTLED FOR THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

If you equate the size of the Free World with the sphere of vanguard contemporary art, the planet seems about as big as a cantaloupe. The only art that holds onto strong nationalistic characteristics is the egregious stuff that comes from countries whose governments control it. Elsewhere, modern communications, travel and crossbreeding have had such a relentless, homogenizing influence that it’s not unusual to find paintings made in Madrid resembling those made in Omaha.

Now that “Los Angeles Summer/styrian autumn,” a big show of contemporary art from Austria, has settled into the Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park, the Western art world seems to have shrunk to the size of a kumquat. Though the Austrian artists’ names are unfamiliar, the only foreign things about this show are a videotape in German and a batch of awkwardly translated catalogue essays.

That’s not to say the art is bad. It’s just boring. There are no embarrassments akin to the Japanese rip-offs of French Impressionism presented in the gallery several summers ago during another exchange show, but there’s nothing very stimulating here, either. The only revelation this exercise delivers is that Austrian artists are keeping pace with the flow in Europe and America, albeit in a less trend-conscious, more tradition-bound way. Did any serious art watcher expect otherwise?

Every student of art history and every traveler who looks beyond the trinkets in tourist shops know that Austria has a grand artistic tradition. And if Austrian contemporary artists have been overshadowed by celebrated careerists in Germany and Italy, they’ve certainly been in a position to absorb the evolution of art movements since Klimt and Schiele. Anyone naive enough to be surprised that today’s Austrians make credible Expressionistic paintings and hip photographs would probably be blown away by the announcement that the country has electricity.

“Los Angeles Summer/styrian autumn” is the first phase of a cultural exchange with Styria, home of an Austrian art festival called “styrian autumn.” The exhibition is an unwieldy affair, divided into three segments: two groups of painting and sculpture (the first displayed through Thursday, the second next Tuesday through Sept. 1) and a separate show of photography and conceptual work (to remain intact through Sept. 1). We’re told that the second portion of paintings and sculpture will be more traditional than the currently exhibited Expressionistic examples.

The paintings and sculpture on hand are predominantly figurative works, dour or melancholy in tone and rich in surface. The artists fairly wallow in paint, thus distinguishing themselves from the Keith Haring variety of American painters, who uses the brush as a drawing implement and canvas as posterboard. Siegfried Anzinger, for example, slathers broad strokes of pigment as he immerses nudes in murky environments. Erwin Bohatsch clings to the graphic device of black outlining, but it immediately fades into darkly ominous, painterly forests surrounding his rudimentary figures.

Whether slashing his way through a bold abstraction, building a faceted composition on “Living and Dying” or stretching a long red figure through the center of a red canvas, Hubert Schmalix is at home with paint, a comfort that seems indigenous. Herbert Brandl’s summery landscapes are so awash in thick oil, they threaten to slide right off the canvas, and Erwin Wurm’s figurative constructions are more three-dimensional paintings than sculpture.

This effusive use of pigment is a unifying factor in a show presenting distinct personalities, but it bows to subject matter and emotional impact in the work of Josef Kern, Alfred Klinkan and Alois Mosbacher. Kern stands out as a realist here, but his portraits are loaded with distrust and defensiveness. Looking down on his subjects from a high vantage, Kern sharpens their nerves and chisels their volumes in piercing investigations of human sensitivity.

Klinkan and Mosbacher turn away from such reality to focus on fantasy. Klinkan’s “Honeymoon Trip” paintings are cheerfully colored dreamscapes, all clogged up with ghoulish animals that are about as threatening as stuffed pillows. Mosbacher plays out Surreal situations in pastel colors and friendly atmospheres. A dark-spotted dune rising from a yellow field seems a ghost of Redon’s “Cyclops.” Two other paintings--an eye sprouting among leaves and a floating mouth biting a blade of grass--transform Magritte and Man Ray images into daydreams.

The photographic component of the show is drier, and not only in material. In general, the six artists included are more interested in photography’s descriptive function than in its emotional or metaphoric potential. Helmut Tezak gathers “Fragments of History” in black-and-white prints while Branko Lenart observes outdoor subjects over a long period of time in his “Subjective Topography.” Friedl Kubelka-Bondy records lives through hundreds of little photographs of the same person, a system that offers more visual information than insight.

One documentary project of considerable poignancy comes from Seiichi Furuya (who was born in Japan). His photo essay on his adopted country’s national border contrasts nature’s physical beauty with the madness of man-made boundaries. Richard Kriesche’s and Peter Gerwin Hoffmann’s yearlong conceptual project involving an ailing community (dependent on a mine that’s no longer viable) also addresses an important social issue but fails to convey it compellingly for those who can’t understand the German videotape.

At best, the show is a civilized diplomatic gesture offering a chance to make a passing acquaintance with art not previously seen here. Another positive note is that the art seems to be without pretense, blessedly lacking in the puffery that has inflated many better-known products. So why get cynical about a harmless art show, especially one of reasonably good quality?

Because this work is no better than that of dozens of other countries. And, more important, because bringing such an exhibition to Los Angeles is an enormous undertaking (funded by the government of Styria, several Austrian agencies and Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department) that demands a greater return from the investment. What we get is a sleep-inducing reassurance that a beloved little country is as culturally upscale as its American friends and European neighbors.