With Art Under Fire, Exhibition Returns a Salvo

An Andy Warhol print glares from the vast white wall as though in deliberate defiance of all that Orange County holds dear.

It is a 1972 portrait of Richard M. Nixon, a bland photographic silk-screen whose only remarkable detail is the pop-yellow color of the former President’s eyes. Still, the effect is sinister.

Underneath, the artist scrawled, “Vote McGovern!”

Nearby hangs another Warhol work, a yellow silk-screen of an electric chair.

This is “Committed to Print,” an exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum of politically inspired prints, posters, books and stencils by more than 100 artists.

The works span the period from the 1960s through the 1980s and range from pointed to abrasive to violent. Some smack the viewer with such subjects as nuclear war and sexual violence. Others tweak and wisecrack about guns, drugs, politicians and rapacious real-estate developers.

“Art for the Evicted,” by New York artist Dennis Thomas, for example, is a giant deed from a Monopoly game. “Second Avenue, Rent $250,” it reads. “With 1 Wine Bar, $550. With 2 Boutiques, $675. With 3 Gourmet Shops, $950. With 4 Galleries, $1,100. With CO-OPS $1,400. If landlord owns all the buildings on a block, the rent is doubled on unrenovated units in these buildings.”

In an unplanned irony, the exhibit was organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and won partial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts before the current firestorm over whether taxpayer money should support art that some deem offensive or obscene.

The provocative, even irritating show opened last month in a city and a county famed for conservatism--and during the same week as the fanfare over the opening of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace.

On Saturday, several visitors who had forfeited the afternoon sun for the stark exhibit said they found it gripping and disturbing. None, however, objected to the use of public money to create it.

“It’s very effective,” said Pat Sokarda, 50, of Chino. “You don’t have to agree with it to see that these artists are willing to commit themselves to a cause.

“Some of it I don’t consider art,” Sokarda said, adding: “I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who wanted to go out and spend a relaxing afternoon.”

Some images seem dated in the post-Ronald Reagan, post-Cold War era. A 1971 poster of the United States is no more than a map of violence in the United States, marking the sites of American Indian massacres, wars, assassinations, riots, strikes and slave revolts, all entitled, “The United States of Attica.”

However, other works are classics, including Keith Haring’s untitled poster of an irradiated baby, which was distributed at a 1982 anti-nuclear rally in New York.

“Art that’s abrasive is important,” said Jennifer Vassos, 27, a Los Angeles teacher. “You have to shock people to get their attention sometimes. I think this is great.”

Early feminism is wittily represented. A black-and-white lithograph shows a high-heeled woman lurching beneath the hourglass on her back. Inside the hourglass is a fetus. The work is titled, “Biological Timeclock.”

In one of many magazines included in the exhibit is a campy, ‘50s-style drawing of mother whispering to her teen-age daughter as the girl descends the stairs to meet the date sitting in the living room below. “Careful, honey, he’s anti-choice,” the mother whispers.

The collectors also include a 1973 work by Louise Bourgeois that may be the very last word in protest art. It is a photostat of a collage made up entirely of the word No.

RELATED STORY A4