ART REVIEW : THREE-IN-ONE PRINTMAKING EXHIBIT

“Contemporary Prints/Contemporary Visions,” at USC’s Fisher Gallery to Dec. 10, shades three artists with the broad umbrella of printmaking, but their “visions” gaze off in three different directions. The disparity is pervasive, running through the artists’ printmaking techniques, artistic styles and sources of imagery. So what we have here is not one exhibition but three reasonably well-balanced solo shows by Jiri Anderle, Edward Ruscha and Rufino Tamayo.

Anderle, a dazzlingly fine draftsman from Czechoslovakia, takes Old Master artwork as his muse and mines it thoroughly for his figurative etchings. His is parasitic art, for it feeds off a host of talents, from Rembrandt and Vermeer to Ingres and David, but it is also in the hallowed tradition of art-about-art. More important, Anderle spins so far off the originals that he creates a new entity, one that seems to set the celebrated images in shifting time and context.

A favorite technique--used so frequently that it begins to look like a gimmick--is drawing overlapping, repetitive images that change in expression from calm to distressed or even horrific. He often brings out distortion and ghoulishness--as if they were there all along and we just missed them--and makes the art bellow in pain through reverberating halls of history.

He undresses Rembrandt’s “Woman in Fur” and turns his portrait of “Saskia” into a monster who progressively snarls then retreats to quietude. Corny? Well, maybe, but Anderle draws so splendidly that he sweeps you into his art historical fantasies with sheer virtuosity.

It’s hard to believe that Ruscha, who lives in Los Angeles and thrives on America’s popular culture, lives in the same century as Anderle, or even on the same planet. Ruscha is a highly original artist who typically takes the simplest image--say, a night sky over a horizon--and overlays it with a word or phrase to produce an ironic or witty meaning. He currently shows 14 lithographs, etchings and screen prints, from the County Museum of Art’s collection.

Ruscha’s art is verbally inspired; when words aren’t part of the image, the title is essential. The block letters of “Strength,” written diagonally across a black background, progressively diminish in size, while a print of two tiny oil wells at opposite ends of a long horizontal landscape is called “Well, Well.”

Ruscha has a warm-spirited way of poking holes in pretense and showing you how surreal reality is. His is lighthearted art that, at its best, makes you glad to be alive. Even when it turns wistful or vaguely ominous--as in a “Home With a Complete Electronic Security System” isolated in the center of an elongated landscape--it does so with an eye on absurdity.

Tamayo, a Mexican master, might be expected to be the weak link in this exhibition. He is, after all, 86, and his best work is far behind him. But he makes a surprisingly vigorous appearance in a show of 30 prints produced in the Mixografia process on handmade paper. (Mixografia allows for the combination of classical printmaking techniques to be combined in a single work, printed from a copper plate fabricated from a mold of a collaged artwork. Unlike traditional printmaking, all colors can be printed at once.)

The inspiration for Tamayo’s recent prints is, as usual, ancient Meso-American culture. Primitive figurative images in vivid primaries or earthy tones dominate his pulpy-textured prints: a man with hands raised in protest, holy images, chunky profiles and silhouettes inspired by Pre-Columbian sculpture. The largest work, certainly a technical feat, pictures two characters running from wild dogs in a bleak landscape.

Overall, Tamayo leaves an impression of an artist who has succumbed to decorative forms while remaining true to his Mexican heritage. A combination of surface effects, intense color and sure design make these prints look better than they are. What finally sustains them is a strain of Mexican mysticism that feels authentic.