ART / Cathy Curtis : Without a Text, This Exhibit Will Indeed Be Greek to Viewers

Peculiar things happen when no one is minding the store at the Modern Museum of Art in Santa Ana. Well, maybe that’s not quite the way to phrase it. Someone is always ready to ring up a sale in the boutique--through which visitors must pass to get to the museum’s gallery. But the institution has no curator and no one on the staff with the educational background and expertise to select or interpret the art that hangs on the walls.

In the museum’s current exhibit, “Contemporary Greek Art From the Vorres Museum” (through Aug. 27), there isn’t a single panel of explanatory text in sight. A visitor is left utterly in the dark as to the show’s point of view. There’s not a word about the state of art in contemporary Greece, not a hint about the backgrounds of the artists. Some of the painting labels even list “plastic” as the artist’s chosen medium rather than, presumably, acrylic.

Nearly four weeks after the show opened, a visitor in search of more information was told that the show comes with a catalogue but that it hadn’t arrived yet. Two weeks later, the Vorres Museum’s skimpy catalogue (lots of pictures, a dribble of simplistic text) had arrived, but the walls remain mute.

A respected art museum would not countenance such an educational vacuum. It simply isn’t standard operating practice to sign up for a traveling exhibit without being assured that it comes with the appropriate didactic labels. And if something did happen to go wrong on the organizer’s end, a museum worth its salt would hustle to fill the void with staff research.

In any case, however, a show like this one would normally not be high on a respected art museum’s wish list. The Vorres Museum, it turns out, houses post-1940 art formerly owned by collector Ian Vorres. So it’s a Greek “boutique” museum, a monument (in Paiania, Attica) to one collector’s taste. No one could question Vorres’ single-minded devotion to his country’s artistic resources. But in the context of contemporary art as a whole, the work on view is overwhelmingly mediocre.

The paintings--produced during the past two decades--generally resemble the lifeless variety you’d see in a second-rate gallery anywhere: coy, academic nudes; crass futuristic visions; routine landscapes; bland abstraction; rote borrowings from well-known artists ranging from Paul Cezanne to Fernando Botero.

Specifically Greek themes emerge here and there. Yannis Koutsis’ “The Abduction of Persephone”--a bald guy grabbing a young woman from behind with much stagy waving of hands--is based on the myth of the daughter of Zeus who was carried off by Hades, god of the underworld, while she was out picking flowers.

Dimitris Mytaras’ “Epitaph With Yellow Background” is a wry modern-day version of an ancient stone funeral relief. Here Corinthian columns frame the profile of a man seated in an office chair with his dog at his feet.

A few of the artists seem to be dealing directly with the Greek crisis of cultural treasures being damaged by pollution. Christos Sarakatsianos’ “Hallucination” contains a smoking chimney and an antique statue in a state of disrepair. In Michalis Georgas’ “Greece, Past and Present,” an ailing sculpture is bound with plastic tape. Despite its kitschy appearance, the crying statue in Sarandis Karavousis’ sculpture “The Tear” may have been intended to bemoan the fate of the art heritage of Greece.

Stylistically, though, there is little news here. Even the few works of more than passing interest--such as Zoe Skiadaressi’s otherworldly, Byzantine-influenced “Angel,” Alkis Ghinis’ unsettling, Surrealist-tinged “Portrait of L.V.” and Yorgos Derpapas’ allegorical “Glimpse Into the Universe”--are wistful backward glances.

Perhaps it should be explained that the international contemporary art world is actually a surprisingly small place. The United States, Germany and Italy are the kingpins of this world at the moment, and some countries scarcely “count” at all. It’s like anything else in life: If you’re a follower rather than a leader, you don’t get much recognition. The leaders are on the cutting edge; the followers tend to imitate dated styles that originated somewhere else.

Art professionals do, to be sure, indulge in a certain amount of breast-beating about the exclusivity of the officially recognized contemporary art world, especially as it affects art produced in Third World countries (see the June and July issues of Art in America magazine for far-ranging discussions of this issue).

Working from a broader perspective, an informative exhibit with a cultural or sociological outlook on modern-day Greece might have been salvaged from the work on view. But such an endeavor would have to be carried out by a trained and knowledgeable staff that understands the way the art world is structured and the specific contexts in which it deals with art.

In any case, there is something decidedly wrong with an institution that calls itself a museum that uses its gallery space simply as a showroom. To do that is to take the name of museum in vain, falsely aligning oneself with scholarly institutions that work damn hard to earn their stripes.

“Contemporary Greek Art From the Vorres Collection” remains on view through Aug. 27 at the Modern Museum of Art, Griffin Towers, 5 Hutton Centre Drive, Santa Ana. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free. Information: (714) 754-4111.