Artists Turn Landscape Art Into Video

A museum-organized exhibition of several video installations focusing on a single theme opens Friday at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. In “American Landscape Video: The Electronic Grove,” video works by six artists--Dara Birnbaum, Frank Gillette, Doug Hall, Rita Myers, Steina Vasulka and Bill Viola--continue the strong American tradition of landscape art, transforming natural outdoor imagery into electronic fusions of picture and sound.

“I think the importance of this exhibition is that (the artists) are using a specific 20th Century technology to express their relationships to the landscape,” said Marilu Knode, the museum’s assistant curator. “Each (artist uses) a full room (for his or her video installation) and incorporates elements of the architecture or space (of the room). . . . They’re creating an intellectual or social landscape.”

The six works include Birnbaum’s “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” which employs video monitors, music and large photo panels as a metaphor for the interrelationship between individual and social experience; Gillette’s “Arkansas,” which contemplates the individual’s place in the world through its multi-channel composition of images recorded in the coastal region north of Corpus Christi; and Hall’s ominous “The Terrible Uncertainty of the Thing Described,” which represents nature as a dangerous presence in a sculpture of video, steel chairs and a steel mesh fence in which a lightning-like charge of electricity is set loose.

The others are Myers’ “Rift Rise,” a meditation upon destructive force that incorporates video monitors, music, live trees and mixed media constructions into a confrontation of landscapes; Vasulka’s “The West,” a 22-monitor tribute to the American Southwest, that plays both harmony and counterpoint to the rich colors and forms of the New Mexican mountains, desert and architectural remains; and Viola’s “Room for St. John of the Cross,” which recreates a 16th Century mystic who was imprisoned by the Inquisition and whose spiritual verse is heard accompanying dramatic landscape images.

“So many people expect just a video monitor (from video art), but these works are all encompassing, and try to express a certain mood about the environment,” Knode said.

ON THE BLOCKS: A complete portfolio of 21 gelatin prints from Alfred Steiglitz’s “Equivalent” photographic series will be auctioned off Oct. 31 at Christie’s auction house in New York. The prints will be offered along with other important 19th and 20th century photographs including “Boulder Dam,” by precisionist painter-turned-photographer Charles Sheeler; Edward Westin’s classic “Nautilus,” of a single conch shell; and Margaret Bourke White’s “George Washington Bridge” (1933) and “Chrysler Building” (1930).

Steiglitz once described his “Equivalent” series as “a picture of the chaos in the world and of my relationship to that chaos.” According to Claudia Gropper, director of Christie’s photography department, the portfolio could fetch “in excess of $200,000.”

In an unrelated series of auctions beginning Oct. 24, Sotheby’s in New York is selling works from the collection of Roberto Polo, including French and Continental furniture, tapestries and works of art. The collection, which is being sold at the direction of the Internal Revenue Service, is expected to bring $6 to $8 million.

First to be sold are several 19th Century European paintings on Oct. 24, then on Nov. 3., the heart of Polo’s collection, 144 lots of French and Colonial furniture and tapestries, will be offered. This portion of the collection is expected to realize $4 million.

Other auctions with pieces from Polo’s collections will be held December 1 and 2 (rare 20th Century bronzes by Rembrandt Bugatti), in January (Old Master paintings), and in March (contemporary jewelry).

BENEFIT: “A Collector’s Afternoon,” a benefit for the Westside Arts Center that will include a drawing for monoprints by artists including Lita Albuquerque, Peter Alexander and Laddie John Dill, will be held Saturday at Michael’s restaurant, 1147 W. 3rd St., Santa Monica. Twenty-one local artists have donated monoprints, which will be combined into a portfolio. Five of the complete portfolios will be raffled during the benefit.

Other artists donating works are William Brice, Karen Carson, Jim DeFrance, Guy Dill, Richard Duardo, Joe Fay, Elsa Flores, Charles Garabedian, George Herms, Gilbert Lujan, Dan McCleary, Margaret Nielsen, John Okulick, Laurie Pincus, Astrid Preston, Donn Suggs, Ann Thornycroft and John White.

Tickets for the 2 p.m. event, which includes a buffet meal and 15 raffle tickets, are $125 each. Additional raffle tickets are $10 each or 15 for $100.

The Westside Arts Center is a non-profit organization which provides arts programming for children and families. For information, call (213) 453-3966.

NOTES: The Long Beach Museum of Art has received $125,000 in recent gifts. Long-time Long Beach resident Ellen M. Taylor left the museum a $100,000 bequest, which will be used to establish an operating endowment for exhibitions and educational programs; and an anonymous Long Beach community service foundation has sent the museum $25,000 to initiate a new art education program. LBMA director Hal Nelson said he hopes the latter donation will challenge other community groups to match it. . . . The Museum of Contemporary Art has new free multilingual family guides available to its patrons. The guides are printed in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Japanese, and are intended to provide a basis for discussion of contemporary art between parents and children. Included are a glossary of basic art terms, activities to be done after leaving the museum, and tips to make the museum more accessible.