PAINTINGS AS ‘SCAPES’ AT UC SANTA BARBARA

Opening Wednesday at UC Santa Barbara’s University Art Museum is a group exhibition titled “Scapes,” which dislodges conventional notions of landscape painting.

According to curator Phyllis Plous, who organized the exhibition and wrote its catalogue, “The painting of ‘views’ and states of mind--paintings as scapes--is working its way to the forefront of new art. As an assimilation of public and private experience, such painting deals with environments, situations and spaces within the diverse facets of our cultural framework.” The 15 artists represented are: Robert Ackerman, David Amico, Fred Escher, Charles Garabedian, Bob Gober, Randy Hayes, John Hull, Mark Innerst, Bill Jensen, Jon Kessler, Elizabeth Murray, Gustavo Ojeda, Jody Pinto, Gillian Theobald and David True.

The exhibition runs through Dec. 15, and will travel to Honolulu’s University of Hawaii at Manoa.

At the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, an exhibition of prints by 18th-Century master printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi, titled “The Lure of the Past,” presents a traditional approach to the art of landscape documentation.

The prints, drawn from a first edition suite acquired by the museum in 1984, demonstrate the fascination of Europeans with the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome.

During the 18th Century, when knowledge about the origins of European civilizations was being codified, expeditions to Greece brought back descriptions of exotic ruins which stimulated the public’s imagination.

Such interest was intensified by archeological excavations on the site of of Mount Vesuvius’ volcanic eruptions. These brought about the discovery of entire cities buried by molten lava which preserved them virtually intact for hundreds of years.

Droves of tourists invaded these sites at Herculaneum, Pompeii and the nearby Paestum, an ancient Greek city founded in the 6th Century BC.

Piranesi’s lifelong preoccupation was the documentation of the great monuments of classical antiquity in drawings and prints.

According to chief-curator Robert Henning, “Piranesi’s record of a place and time combined the skills of architect, archeologist and artist. It shaped the taste and knowledge of the classical past, from his own time to the present day.” The show remains on view through mid-November.

Internationally noted sculptor George Segal will discuss his work on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Park Plaza Hotel, 607 Park View St. Segal’s talk is the first of a three-part lecture series on figurative sculpture sponsored by Otis/Parsons. On Nov. 6, Italo Scanga will give a lecture on his metaphoric sculpture based on folk traditions. Concluding the set will be Manuel Neri, who, on Nov.20, will address issues pertinent to his fragmented human figures. The lecture series was organized by sculptor Richard Oginz, a faculty member at Otis/Parsons.

Series tickets, $12; individual admission at the door, $5.

The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition of two music installations by The Residents and Harold Budd, in conjunction with the 1985 New Music America Festival. Opening Tuesday, the presentation offers visual and aural access to these composers’ works.

The Residents, a group of San Francisco area composers, will exhibit sets from their Mole Show tour which sought to activate interest in a variety of creative fields: music, theater, literature, painting/sculpture, dance, film/video and computer programming.

The Residents who were invited to open the New Music Festival in Washington in 1983, are publishing their 16th recorded album. The audio part of the installation will feature recorded works never before heard in this country. Harold Budd’s “Blue Room with Flowers and Gong” is an installation with taped music. Budd, a Los Angeles based composer whose work is often defined as “minimal,” performs it using the piano and electronically altered versions of keyboard sounds. He has held solo concerts in New York, Rome, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo. The composer/performer has recently been producing his own recordings on the Cantil/Jem label and has collaborated with Brian Eno on two recordings released by EG. Harold Budd will be at LAICA on Saturday at 2 p.m.

The Santa Monica Arts Commission has published a booklet titled “From Studio to the Street: Proceedings and Update” on its public art programs. It covers proceedings of a Forum on Public Art in May, 1983, which was the genesis of many of the city’s subsequent programs, and an update on current plans. Information: (213) 458-8350.

L.A. artists Hirokazu Kosaka and Ellen Lampert are two of 11 artists from around the world invited to exhibit in the special theme exhibition, “Man and Life,” at the 18th Sao Paolo International Biennial Exhibition through Dec. 15 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Forty-seven nations will be represented at the Biennial.