SUMMER SPLASH II : Our Picks for the Best of the Summer : ART

The big exhibition splashes in the aesthetic summer swelter will come mainly to the County Museum of Art. It launches the season June 17 with “A Primal Spirit,” a timely and ambitious extravaganza devoted to the work of 10 Japanese sculptors.

Ever since Japan became a world economic power and started paying millions for Van Gogh, we’ve been curious about what their own artists are up to. Names represented in this show are strange to these shores, but anyone who knows of Zen sand gardens, traditional Japanese respect for nature and love of drama may find familiar echoes.

Artists often work in the form of big room-filling constructions using natural materials such as wood and stone, minerals and metal. We are talking big here.

Don’t be surprised to see huge tree-trunks bent like pretzels, sculpture that has been purposely incinerated for that char-broiled look or forms that appear like huge volcanic rocks that are actually made from zillions of tiny ceramic cubes. That’s the traditional Japanese love of complex ingenuity afoot.

At very worst, “A Primal Spirit” promises boffo visual spectacle mixed with some philosophical serenity before closing Aug. 26.

Such a curtain-raiser naturally presents the age-old question of what to do for an encore.

The County Museum of Art’s graceful answer and summer finale will be “Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection” (Aug. 16-Nov. 11). When you combine a blue-chip selection of 50 paintings in the world’s most beloved style with the first public in-depth look at one of the finest compendiums of art still in private hands, you have a win-win situation. Those who cannot resist a fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous can imagine themselves at Walter Annenberg’s estate near Palm Springs. After golfing with Ronald Reagan and Prince Charles you stroll into the house for a look at the five prime Van Goghs, the Monets, Degases and the recognizable rest. For a moment, life is sweet.

In between, the museum will host a patrician Old Master collection that spans the history of European art in 160 paintings and drawings from Titian to Modigliani. It’s “Treasures From the Fitzwilliam Museum,” a reknown repository in Cambridge, England, that announces itself with the Masterpiece-Theater subtitle, “The Increase of Learning and other Great Objects of the Noble Foundation.” Sounds edifying. Also sounds like a great browse through works by artists from Rubens to Hogarth, Van Dyck to Delacroix (June 21-Sept. 9).

A late entry will be the Museum of Contemporary Arts show of New Yorker Tim Rollins and his group called KOS. They are South Bronx street kids whom Rollins has turned into bankable artists (July 3-Sept. 9.) There will also be good reason to visit outposts near the ocean. The Newport Harbor Art Museum will offer “Committed to Print” (July 15-Sept. 23). Current artistic concerns with real-world matters will reflect in 144 prints by 108 artists artists in pursuit of such themes as nuclear power, ecology, gender and race.

Architecture buffs will head further south for “Frank Lloyd Wright: The Realm of Ideas” a major traveling retrospective visiting the San Diego Museum of Art (July 23-Aug. 27).

A properly timed visit can also net the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Satellite Intelligence: Boston/San Diego New Art Exchange” (June 15-Aug. 5). The show will include 10 artists from each town and try to discover any affinities that exist between two thriving art towns that nonetheless exist in the shadow of the major art centers of New York and Los Angeles.