ART REVIEW / L.A. FESTIVAL : Erika Rothenberg’s Delights of Dissent

Erika Rothenberg seems determined to make user-friendly art. Physically, that means getting her work out of the art gallery--a cool, white-walled zone more typically identified with quiet intimidation than with casual friendliness, and with a specialized art world distinct from a general audience--and inserting it onto the street.

Currently, the artist has erected a cheerful billboard that looms over Van Nuys Boulevard at Hatteras Street, in the San Fernando Valley, as well as a window display at The Soap Plant, a shop at the corner of Melrose and Martel Avenues. (The billboard, on view to Monday, is sponsored by the Los Angeles Festival; the window display, to Sept. 24, is part of the concurrent Open Festival.) Rothenberg’s means are simple and direct. If she sometimes lapses into pale jokiness, she is nonetheless capable of moments of stupefying wit.

More important, her user-friendliness also has a resonant conceptual side. The legacy of Pop art plainly informs her work; but, Pop’s political dimension, which is typically ignored, is here given equal emphasis. Rothenberg’s art means to engage a diverse and wide-ranging audience in a consideration of their shared situation as citizens living in a rather confused and confusing time.

Of the two current projects, the billboard is the most completely resolved. Pointedly located along a quintessentially American suburban strip, right between the Casa de Cadillac Used Cars showroom and the Four ‘n 20 Restaurant & Pie Shop, Rothenberg’s billboard features a red and blue map of the United States, superimposed with four smiling white faces: Mom, Dad, Junior and Sis. (For good measure, Fido stands by, too.)

“There are still homes in the U.S. that consist of a husband who works, a housewife and two kids!” declares the bright yellow text. “(4%).”

Since a billboard is a traditional vehicle for mass culture marketing, it’s reasonable to wonder just what Rothenberg is selling. I think she’s peddling two things. One is a simple, if mildly surprising, bit of information (the figure of 4% locates the cliched, postwar American family somewhere between obscure minority and endangered species). The other is a penetrating idea, which has to do with the commodity mechanism itself.

Mass culture mediums, in trying to appeal to the widest possible audience, inevitably traffic in distortion and stereotype. (Obviously the billboard’s “Donna Reed Show”-style family--its cheery image loaded with nostalgia for supposedly traditional family values--was itself invented in that manner.) Our common failure to conform to the stereotypical images regularly generated by mass culture creates gnawing desire, which is nominally “satisfied” in the ritual of consumption.

As often as not, the product consumed isn’t something material like toothpaste, detergent or an automobile. It can be an ideology or a way of thinking, too, like commitment to supposedly “traditional” family values themselves. Mortgaging your soul to a faith in a slyly manipulated way of life is now as American as apple pie.

Erika Rothenberg’s art is most appealing in its attempts to turn this powerful commodity mechanism toward an ideology that predates mass culture. The big banner in her storefront window display on Melrose Avenue inquires, “Have You Attacked America Today?” Political dissent, which is indeed an authentically traditional value, is about as all-American as you can get. The window display suggests that dissent isn’t just a right; it’s a patriotic duty.

Rothenberg’s window display, which was first shown last year in New York, speaks to the ordinary ruckus of pedestrian shoppers and weekend browsers. Beneath the banner are arrayed a variety of products: a flag burning kit, composed of a boxed Old Glory and a disposable lighter (“Now! Easier & more fun than ever!” insists the package); “Strike Anywhere” matchboxes; “The (New!) Star-Spangled Banner cassette tape,” with rewritten lyrics that would do Roseanne Barr proud; “Freedom of Expression Drugs,” including protest pills, anti-apathy ointment and Defend-brand mouthwash (“guaranteed to make you say the most awful things”); and, finally, the Celebrity Simulator, a press conference podium whose Medusa-like tangle of 18 microphones is “designed to make ordinary Americans feel as important as people on TV.”

These satirical items are, to varying degrees, amusing. But the real kick comes from a life-size poster cut-out meant to advertise the flag-burning kit. The thing is downright diabolical.

Rothenberg photographed two fresh-faced, clean-cut, adolescent models--they look like poster kids for Young Americans for Freedom--proudly displaying the Stars and Stripes. It takes a moment to notice that the coyly grinning young lady nonchalantly holds the flame of a cigarette lighter to one corner of the flag. Instantly, this small gesture transforms your reading of the demeanor of the grinning duo. These “young Americans for freedom” suddenly switch to the other end of the political spectrum.

In the comment-book set up next to the window display, a street-side critic has noted that the handmade look of some of Rothenberg’s product-packaging detracts from the impact of the display. (The matchbooks were commercially printed, for example, while the pills and ointment feature hand-painted labels.) This anonymous scribe may be half-right, if the brilliance of the slick, deceptively artless poster-couple is any guide. Still, it isn’t Rothenberg’s aim to make convincing political novelty items. The scrawled critical commentary in the book is as handmade as her art--a small note of dissent that gives quiet testimony to the success of her artistic user-friendliness.