Artistic Differences Are All in the Family : Art: Alison and Betye Saar show secrets : to their success at first joint exhibition.

Alison Saar says that when she was young, her mother was always after her to pick up her messy room. Now that she is a respected artist, she points to that messiness as one of the main differences between her art and that of her famous mother, renowned assemblage and collage artist Betye Saar.

“The art the two of us create has always been very distinctive in many ways, and a lot of that comes from her being tidy and me being messy,” said the younger Saar, now 33. “Her art is all serenity and order in things, and mine is like utter chaos.”

The similarities and differences in the two artists’ work, as well as their unique mother-daughter relationship and its effect on their art, are examined in their first joint exhibition, “Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations: The Art of Betye and Alison Saar,” which opens Tuesday at UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery.

“Doing this show has opened up a lot of discussions between us that we wouldn’t have taken the time for otherwise,” says Alison, who also has a solo show, “Milagros Pequenos,” which runs through Feb. 10 at the Jan Baum Gallery on La Brea Avenue. “It’s really forced us to compare our works to each other--we’ve never done it in a concrete way before.”

Much of that discussion took place during a break in the UCLA show’s installation. As the artists tossed around possible similarities and differences in their works, they concluded that Alison’s work tends to be larger than Betye’s; that Alison works with burnt objects or shards of glass, whereas Betye works with complete, more polished objects; that Betye’s work tends to be fragmented, using portions of the body such as a hand or an eye, whereas Alison’s is figurative, using the whole body or a bust; and that Alison’s work represents universal spirits, whereas Betye’s deals with spirits that are particular to one individual.

“But we have things in common,” said Betye, 63, whose work is known for its mystical qualities. “We both have always been attracted to non-Western cultures. Neither one of us is a witch or practices voodoo or anything, but we’re really interested in the power that those images evoke. So we incorporate those kind of images (such as African spirits or tarot cards) and the power that is drawn from them into our art.”

Another similarity, Betye said, is that both Saars frequently deal with dualities--such as love-hate, good-evil or nature-technology--and with puns, such as that in Betye’s piece “I’ve Got Rhythm,” which depicts a black man dancing on a metronome.

But despite such similarities, daughter Alison seems confident about her own abilities as an artist, and does not seem to mind the days she inevitably spent labeled as “Betye Saar’s daughter.” But there was a time, she said, when she fought the urge to follow in Betye’s footsteps.

“As a model, (Betye’s success) always showed me that it was possible to do what I wanted to do,” said Alison, who has spent most of her nine years as a professional artist living in New York. “But it scared me away too. I don’t think you really want to aspire to be what your parents are. And it wasn’t until I failed as an art historian that I decided to become an artist myself. I finally gave in, and I just went with what was natural.”

The transition, Alison said, occurred when she decided to get her master’s degree at Otis/Parsons Art Institute. But as Betye, who still lives in the Laurel Canyon home where Alison was raised, said, “It wasn’t until (Alison) made the commitment to move to New York (in early 1984) that her work really took a strong direction.”

As Alison tells it, her work changed greatly when she moved East. Having lived at home throughout graduate school, she was for the first time truly on her own and finally felt like a “bona fide adult.” But still, her first break back East came from her mother’s dealer, Monique Knowlton, who gave Alison her first New York gallery show.

“At first I felt ignored and resented (Betye’s success) a lot,” said Alison, who switches back and forth from “Mom” to “Betye” when referring to the elder Saar. “But somewhere along the line, I realized that it wasn’t something to be fought, but something to take advantage of. It served as an introduction, and so I started to utilize it. And as soon as I got some recognition of my own, I began to lose that competitive edge.”

Ironically, Alison’s living on the other side of the country may have paved the way for the mother and daughter to do their first joint show: “This was the right time for this show,” said Alison. “We’ve been living separately for a long time. If this were seven years ago and I was just moving out and beginning my own life, it would feel real different.”

As part of the exhibition, which includes about 30 works by each artist, the Saars put together what is only their second collaborative piece ever. (In the early 1980s they created “Fortunes and Fantasies: A Room Full of Clues” along with Alison’s older sister, Lezley, for Barnsdall Art Park’s “Magical Mystery Tour.”)

The piece, which they call “House of Gris Gris” (referring to gray magic, as opposed to black or white magic), uses the domestic symbol of a house to reflect the newest addition to the Saar family, Alison’s 5-month-old son, Kyle.

“It was difficult to collaborate 3,000 miles away, but a week after my son was born, I was thinking about nesting and nurturing,” said the younger Saar. “I was thinking of magpies and how they collect objects and build a nest.” In this case, the “nest,” represented by the walls of the house, is made of moss, brambles, eucalyptus leaves and rose canes.

The show, which was curated by the Wight Gallery’s Elizabeth Shepherd and runs through Feb. 25, actually begins with what Betye called the “Documentation Room.”

“It includes pieces (of mine) that were in the house when she was growing up, that may or may not have influenced her,” said Betye, who began her assemblages in the late 1960s. “There’s also drawings that she did as a child, and photos of us at the Watts Towers. The Watts Towers were a wonderful, mystical symbol to us. My grandmother lived nearby, and I used to take my daughters. (Creator Simon Rodia) put so much stuff in there--and (Alison’s) early works have that influence in them.”

Betye, who has become known for works dealing with her experience as a black woman, said that although she had no ambitions for any of her three daughters to be artists, she did want them to be artistic. (Daughter Lezley, 37, does book art and drawings on a part-time basis; Tracye, 28, is Betye’s assistant. But Alison has always been the “most ambitious” of the three, Betye said.)

“We always had art materials around and I was always doing artworks,” reminisced Betye. “They took classes at Barnsdall Junior Art Center--it just seemed the natural thing to do. Like cooking or anything else, art was a part of it.”

Now, Betye, who has reached veteran status in her native Los Angeles, says that she has mixed feelings about her daughter being an artist. Of course she is proud--”She’s really good! Had she been a mediocre artist, I don’t think I would feel so good about it.”

But there are other emotional responses as well. A tough moment, for example, was when Alison received a 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship--an award that Betye has never received.

“I think she felt badly telling me about it,” said Betye. “And it isn’t envy or jealousy, but I do have some emotional feeling there. Of course, I have to say that whoever selected her had good taste.”