‘Sex/Love/AIDS’ Makes Statement at Newport Museum : Art: Tim Miller’s performance piece chronicles the impact of AIDS on his art.

The AIDS crisis, which has resulted in “the loss of what’s increasingly looking like a whole generation of American artists,” has helped redefine the artist’s role in society and caused a major shift in the nation’s arts community, says Los Angeles performance artist Tim Miller. The shift has occurred in the content of artworks, said Miller, who will take part in the “A Day Without Art” nationwide observance with a free performance of “Sex/Love/AIDS: Stories From Life” at the Newport Harbor Art Museum at 3 p.m. Friday.

The work, representing Miller’s first performance in Orange County, is drawn from three autobiographical pieces from the last six years and will focus on his life as a gay man in the era of AIDS.

“If your friends are dying, it certainly changes the theoretical underpinnings of your work,” said Miller, a Whittier-born artist who attended school in La Habra through the 12th grade.

Miller, 31, who became a leading figure on New York’s performing-arts scene before returning to California 3 1/2 years ago, has since taught performance art at UC Irvine and is well aware of Orange County’s virulent anti-gay faction.

“It certainly has been interesting recently, what with the Irvine election (in which the city voted to remove protections for homosexuals under a new human rights ordinance) and the NEA’s treatment of work having to do with AIDS,” he said, referring to the National Endowment for the Arts’ new amendment that forbids “obscene” works that do not meet high standards.

“As an artist dealing with material from my life as a gay person as well as political material relating to AIDS . . . I’m sort of a real ripe target,” said Miller.

But Miller praised the Newport Harbor Art Museum for taking active part in “A Day Without Art.” “It’s a spunky, pushy museum,” he said. “They take risks curatorially, and this fits right in with that.”

Maxine Gaiber, the museum’s public relations officer, programmed Miller’s performance. The museum is willing to risk presenting an openly gay artist amid the recent controversies in Orange County “because (the AIDS epidemic) is an important issue and no matter where we were located, we would do it,” she said.

“AIDS has devastated the art community and we owe it to our fallen comrades to participate and to give hope to the people still struggling,” said Gaiber, a former education curator.

“A lot of contemporary art right now is being devoted to the AIDS situation. Also, we have a wonderful trustee that is willing to stand behind it.”

Trustee Eugene C. White, an Irvine attorney, is underwriting the museum’s participation in “A Day Without Art.”

“A museum of contemporary art has to be on the forefront, artistically and culturally,” said White, who supports the Costa Mesa-based AIDS Services Foundation. “That involves taking risks.”

Today, artists are also taking a more active role in the political or social realm by marching for AIDS research funding or donating sculpture for AIDS benefit exhibits.

“Bianca Jagger would come to your opening and that was considered cool,” Miller said. “Now it’s cool to do what Leonard Bernstein did” when the conductor declined a national arts award to protest the retraction of endowment funding of an AIDS-related exhibit in New York. The funding was eventually restored for the show, but not for the catalogue.

Bernstein’s action is “something that hasn’t happened since Lena Horne refused to sing at a White House gala to protest the Vietnam War. Artists are realizing they have power, that they can use their impulses to change things or comment on things they don’t like,” said Miller.

AIDS isn’t alone in increasing artists’ activism, Miller said. “Ten years of conservative Presidents,” for instance, has contributed. But the epidemic has had a profound impact.

The art world trend toward greater social awareness parallels a similar evolution in Miller’s own work--an evolution that will be evident in his free performance at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, he said.

Piecing together parts from his performance pieces “Buddy Systems,” “Some Golden States” and “Stretch Marks,” all of which mix confessional monologue with music, slide projections and abstract movement, the work will also incorporate new material to link each segment.

“It forms an interesting time line showing the different ways I’ve dealt with AIDS in my work, from the kind of late adolescent selfserious optimism of ‘Buddy Systems,’ to the first brush with the reality of AIDS in ‘Some Golden States’ to a more politicized take on the subject in ‘Stretch Marks.’ It’s like a journey away from a youthful romanticism and towards activism and the world and a more practical, hopefully more adult approach.”