BRICE RETROSPECTIVE, TOKYO DESIGN EXHIBITS

“William Brice: A Selection of Painting and Drawing, 1947-1986” and “Tokyo: Form and Spirit” open Sept. 1 at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Temporary Contemporary facility.

Organized by MOCA and sponsored by the Fellows of Contemporary Art, “William Brice” is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work. The 49 paintings and 25 works on paper survey the evolution of themes and ideas that define Brice’s oeuvre since 1947.

Born in New York in 1921, the second child of Fanny Brice and Nicky Arnstein, William Brice has lived and worked in California for more than 40 years. In his catalogue essay, Richard Armstrong writes that, as a whole, Brice’s work “is the record of a painter working largely outside the artistic fashion of his time, pursuing a style and content that acknowledges the seamless fictions of the past as well as the partial truths of the present.” Explaining that he has never been exclusively either a realistic or a non-objective painter, Brice says, “I have always been interested in the associative, but representation of external reality has not been central.”

Through his own art and his 33 years of teaching at UCLA, Brice has had a seminal influence on many Los Angeles artists.

The Brice exhibition runs through Oct. 19. It was organized by Julia Brown Turrell, MOCA’s adjunct curator, with research associate Ann Goldstein as project director; the installation was designed by John Bowsher. An illustrated catalogue co-published by the Fellows of Contemporary Art and MOCA was edited by Howard Singerman and designed by Jack Woody of Twelvetree Press.

“Tokyo: Form and Spirit,” a comprehensive architecture and design exhibition organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with New York’s Japan House, juxtaposes traditional design artifacts from the Edo period (when Tokyo was named Edo) against dramatic, three-dimensional contemporary environments created for this exhibition by leading Japanese architects and designers.

In his introduction to the catalogue, Walker director Martin Friedman states: “In the West there are two distinct images of Japan: a picturesque, romantic old culture apotheosized in the Akira Kurosawa films of shoji-screened tea houses and sword-wielding samurai, and an aggressive, post-industrial nation whose high-tech products appear in every corner of the world. Both views are valid, for Japan is an astonishing fusion of tradition and innovation, of conservative social patterns and sophisticated technology.”

One element in the show is a monumental screen commissioned by the Walker from Los Angeles artist Masami Teraoka whose work embodies this fusion.

The exhibition is installed in accord with several themes: “Tokyo Spirit,” “Walking” (the street), “Living” (the house), “Working” (the shop and factory), “Performing” (the theater), “Reflecting” (the temple) and “Playing” (recreation). Each area contains pieces from the Edo period and a commissioned contemporary installation.

Project director for “Tokyo” is MOCA associate director Sherri Geldin with MOCA assistant curator Jacqueline Crist; installation design is by Arata Isozaki working with Bowsher.

A lavishly illustrated catalogue with essays by Martin Friedman and other authorities on Japanese art and culture was co-published by Walker and Harry Abrams. The show remains at the Temporary Contemporary through Oct. 26, then travels to the IBM Gallery of Science and Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Merry Norris is the new president of the L.A. Cultural Affairs Commission, succeeding Alan Sieroty, who served for the past two years.

Norris is an art consultant who, with her husband, Judge William Norris, collects and supports contemporary art. She was a co-chairperson of the initial fund-raising committee for the Museum of Contemporary Art and later became its acting director of development.

The Cultural Affairs Commission’s responsibilities, defined by the city charter, include approval of design of all structures, marquees and street lighting standards built over city property, advising the Cultural Affairs Department and playing an active role in department programs.

An outdoor installation by Lita Albuquerque will have its inaugural “unveiling” on Sept. 27 at Orange Coast College. The 4-6 p.m. ceremony coincides with Costa Mesa’s “Arts Month.” The commissioned installation was funded in part through an “Art in Public Places” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, matched by an equal amount raised through private donations. Its site, chosen for optimum visibility and public accessibility, is a one-acre grassy area fronting Fairview Road.

L.A. artists out of town: Gary Paller recently held a solo show of paintings at the Pimlico Gallery in London. Also in London, “The Animal Show,” running through Sept. 1 at the Photographers Gallery, includes photographs by Los Angeles artist Basia Kenton and Helmut Newton, William Wegman, William Klein, Diane Arbus, Cecil Beaton, Eugene Atget, Berenice Abbott and Edward Weston.

Local painter/sculptor Bruria just concluded a solo exhibition of her new works from “The Divine Chariot Series” at the Jewish Community Museum in San Francisco. The show, conceived as an hommage to the 13th-Century Spanish Kabbalist poet Abraham Abulafia, included bronze sculpture, handmade books and recent paintings.