Exploration of the Sexes Bogs Down in Politeness

Good manners can get in the way of good art. Demonstrating this are Carole Laventhol’s new paintings, “The Gaia Series,” on view at Mesa College Art Gallery. The series explores the female/male duality as both a sexual and a metaphysical opposition, but it does so too politely to bring forth anything particularly compelling or new.

“Anima-Animus,” of 1989, directly states Laventhol’s concerns in its title, using terminology for female and male popularized by Carl Jung. It represents this polarity with two stone-like forms, one rounded and one rectilinear. Their physical relationship on the canvas can be described as touching, nudging or, maybe, penetrating. If the latter, the union is a cool and very discreet one.

The same reticence restrains the 1987 painting, “Eidolon,” and “Innerspace II” of 1988. These use contrasts of light and dark colors, smooth and rough surfaces, and compositions of paired forms to express the artist’s idea of interacting opposites. This represents a very familiar game in abstract painting. In the comfort of this familiarity, novel expression and impact are lost.

Not all of these geometric works are so aloof, however. In “Attracting Chaos” of 1988 an orb and a spiked ribbon shape generate a visual tension that appropriately suggests the excitation inherent in their apparently imminent union. It is noteworthy, though, how the title suggests the attitude of the artist concerning this prospect. The prediction of “chaos” in the title, with its implication of undesirable outcomes, raises a question of whether the artist is uncomfortable with certain aspects of what she’s dealing with: that in the contrast between the erotic as a physical reality and the erotic as a metaphysical reality, she is at ease with the latter, but discomforted by the former.

This resulting distancing from possibly impolite passions even has its equivalent in the artist’s handling of materials. Her thick paints, and the raw edges of the large, unstretched canvases suggest an indulgence in sensuality. Yet the colors throughout are kept uniformly cool. This is not so unexpected in the blues, greens and earth tones that pervade the work, but seems peculiar in the reds, which are warm at best, but never hot.

On top of this, all the images are coated with a slick, clear glaze that acts like Saran Wrap. For the eye, this closes off contact with the physical stuff of paint and canvas the way a glove gets in the way of holding hands.

Perhaps recognizing what was happening in the paintings, the most recent works in the series, all produced this year, reveal Laventhol incorporating figures, primarily female ones, into her imagery. In “Venus,” she reproduces the 30,000-year-old “Venus of Willendorf.” This tiny statuette of a very robust female was created deep in the past, where one imagines that primal forces operated much more directly on human life than they do today.

Partly because of this knowledge, the image, in Laventhol’s painting, fairly clobbers one over the head as a symbol of femaleness both literal and primal. Laventhol presents this ancient Venus as a giantess placed in front of a series of archways that closely quote another source: a painting by the Italian surrealist De Chirico. It is not difficult to ascribe male attributes to the architectural elements of Laventhol’s painting and then to contrast these with the complementary aspects trumpeted by the female figure. But nothing comes of this because the maleness and femaleness don’t meet. They’re separated by a rigid screen of color and surface effects that locks each into quite disparate spaces. So much for the spice of life.

A similar isolation of elements occurs in “Discomposed Woman,” in which a nude, richly rounded female appears merged into a slab of pale stone. Above the slab is a smaller, blue, stone form next to which are the head and shoulder of a shadowy figure that may or may not be male. Surprising here is the way the head of the female is cropped off by her fit into the stone slab. Feminists generally find such treatment offensive and sexist for emphasizing women as objects at the cost of their full humanity.

To the extent that this is the issue Laventhol is focusing on, it represents a retreat from her broader concerns in favor of the more specific territory of real interactions between real people. As an illustration of sexist attitudes and consequences, the painting is effective but leaves one wondering where the artist’s passions are in all of this.

The one work that goes beyond this limitation is “God’s a Woman.” Here, a nude female sits on the bottom of the painting’s edge, facing into the space of the scene, where she confronts a dark shadow image of herself. This black shape appears joined to a massive crucifix that looms across the format on a bold diagonal. Beyond this, a dim face emerges from the painting’s gray background. However, this face seems superfluous because the interaction of the fleshy and shadowy figures and the weighty cross possess so much more drama. Here one sees a self directly confronting itself, both physically and spiritually.

The image is private and universal simultaneously. In it, Laventhol brushes aside simplistic politeness and seems personally invested for the first and only time in this exhibition. The return on her investment is a compelling work that begins to fully enter the domains that she otherwise only scratches the surface of in the “Gaia Series.”

The exhibition continues through June 16 at Mesa College Art Gallery, which has done commendable work in organizing the show and publishing a 42-page illustrated catalogue that thoughtfully surveys this San Diego artist’s past and current work.

For information about gallery hours, call 560-2878.