ART REVIEWS : Robert Williams Finds the Savage in Humanity : His cynical pictures of victims and victimizers reveal an artist devoid of illusions and expert at provocation.

Among the more provocative percolating art trends threatening to explode in the ‘90s is an irreverent “low art” style that explores the adolescence of the American male. The rampaging hormones and speeding cars, breasts, beer and sexual frustration, rock ‘n’ roll and the enraging discovery of social hypocrisy--it’s an ecstatic, nightmarish time indeed, and the passage rites (and embittering humiliation) of male teen-age life are proving to be fertile ground for such artists as Mike Kelley, Gary Panter, Richard Prince, Pruitt & Early and Jim Shaw, among others.

One could speculate at length as to why this kind of art is appearing at this point in time. Is it a backlash to the Phil Donahue/Alan Alda sensitive-guy trend? A response to the feminist movement? Rebellion against the anal retentive cleanliness of the art world? The possibilities are endless--but whatever the cause, Robert Williams pretty much wrote the book on this style. And, as can be seen in an exhibition of new paintings on view at the Tamara Bane Gallery on Melrose, nobody does it better. Born in Albuquerque in 1943, Williams moved to L.A. in 1963 and went to work for the high priest of outlaw car culture, Ed (Big Daddy) Roth, creating designs for hot rods and tattoos that are considered classics of the genre. Then in the late ‘60s, Williams came to the attention of a wider audience as part of the underground comic book scene that also launched the careers of R. Crumb and S. Clay Wilson.

Like those demented geniuses, Williams’ work is essentially an expression of the overwhelming disgust he feels for a world he sees as being governed by the baser side of human nature. Williams seems to be a man wholly without illusions--he’s particularly jaded when it comes to romantic love and the intellectual capabilities of the human beast--and his savagely cynical pictures are populated with victims and victimizers. A pathetic sap of one sort or another turns up in nearly every picture, as does some kind of commentary on the sexual drive that enslaves us all.

The id runs rampant in Williams’ work, which attempts to reveal the subconscious drives governing the stupid behavior of the scary monsters and super creeps that live in his pictures. Large breasts are a central icon in his visual vocabulary (he interprets them as strange and powerful orbs that make men do foolish things), as are images of violence and naked aggression. One painting depicts a man literally ripping the head off an adversary with his bare hands, while other canvases show a staid businessman vomiting in the street, and Venus De Milo in jack boots and a 5 o’clock shadow, chomping a cigar (this variation on Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a mustache is Williams’ way of thumbing his nose at “fine art”).

Other themes that get the Williams treatment are nostalgia for the ‘50s (“a time when mediocrity and conformity were next to godliness,” fumes the artist), the Holy Scriptures, the nuclear family, skateboarding, nose picking, reckless driving and the brave men who maintain septic tanks.

Technically Williams is pretty slick. He clearly learned a lot from Mad magazine and E. C. Comics, and his flashy style is basically a glorified version of cartoon graphics. His pictures are extremely dense, and each little detail adds a layer to the story the picture tells, while intensifying the sense of chaos that permeates his work. At a glance Williams’ images appear to have no underlying organizing structure--they seem to just splat! rudely across the wall. That’s probably the effect he intends, as his pictures all seem designed to drop trou and moon society.

Tamara Bane Gallery, 8025 Melrose (213-651-1400), to Jan . 7 . Closed Sunday and Monday.

L.A. Photographers Survey: On view at the Los Angeles Photography Center is the first in what is planned as an ongoing series of biennial exhibitions showcasing the work of emerging L.A. photographers. Curated by Betty Wan, the show declares itself as focusing on “artists with a determination to push the limits and expand the concepts of photography.” What that apparently means is that the curators looked for artists who use photographic images as part of complex mixed-media pieces, as that’s the kind of work that dominates the show.

Alix Solomon creates small shrinelike objects out of metal and wood that house fragments of photographs, while G. Daniel Veneciano shows an ambitious conceptual work that attempts to comment on the way mechanical images can obstruct communication. Joyce Roetter’s large mixed-media piece involving torn photos collaged onto a massive black monolith addresses the abuse of the feminine image, while Corinne Whitaker affixes abstract photos on geometric sculptural forms made of aluminum. All these pieces feel a trifle busy and overcooked--the strongest work in the show, in fact, is also the simplest.

Mathew Iadarola’s tiny black and white prints have the haunting, ephemeral loveliness of haikus (we see a cross on a distant hill in one image, a dead animal on the highway in another), while Robert Neal Stivers shows photographs of physical oddities--a man with breasts, a girl whose hair is so long it tickles the tops of her toes. Richard Billick shot portraits of the high school students he teaches, then had his subjects write something about themselves on the margins of their pictures; the fact that lots of photographers are currently doing this sort of “inscribed” portraiture makes it no less powerful a device, and it works well for Billick. James Fee shows rather contrived nudes that treat the body as a compositional element (mounds of sand contrasted with a bare rump), and Marlene Hutchison shows hand colored photographs of shopping carts loaded down with the possessions of the homeless people who live out of them. Largely because of the subject matter, these are the most powerful pictures on view. Los Angeles Photography Center, 412 S. Park View St., (213-

383-7342), to Jan. 6 . Closed Monday.