ART REVIEWS : Photographs by an Eminent Victorian

Lady Hawarden had it all--great wealth, a splendid estate in Ireland, a London pied-a-terre, intellectual friends, a happy marriage to a viscount and a growing family, which would eventually produce seven daughters and a son--when she took up photography in 1857 at the age of 35. Yet the overwhelmingly women’s world of her photographs is fraught with enough brooding tension to give feminist observers a field day.

The 40 prints by Clementina Hawarden at the J. Paul Getty Museum--selected from its own collection and the immense one at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London--are not offered in the spirit of sociological commentary, however. The brochure essay dwells instead on the posed images of Hawarden’s daughters as examples of good composition, skillful lighting and unspecifically “expressive” emotion.

The albumen prints--to which Hawarden gave only perfunctory titles--typically feature two of her daughters, attired in the full-skirted fashion of the day or draped in a hodgepodge of shawls and fabrics meant to simulate foreign, historical or imaginary garb.

The young women assume dramatic or wistful poses--clutching hanging bolts of drapery, gazing into mirrors, kneeling with head in hands, looking heavenward, turning away from the viewer. Bathed in light streaming from the large window in Hawarden’s sparingly furnished drawing room, the clarity and intense human focus of the compositions allow them to rise above amateurish costuming and the occasional wooden pose.

Other photographs taken in Hawarden’s London home represent historical tableaux--like the scene from the sad final days of Mary, Queen of Scots--or allegories (such as paganism versus Christianity).

Although Hawarden was the first woman to achieve prominence in the Photographic Society of London, few outside her circle were familiar with her work. She died at 42--after losing a weeklong battle with pneumonia--leaving behind no journals and only a few letters to reveal her private thoughts and yearnings.

The image of one sister embracing the other, looking straight into her eyes, might be a meditation on the empathic nature of women’s friendship. The frequent presence of mirrors suggests a woman’s continual awareness of how she is perceived by others. For all her own good fortune, Hawarden lost three of her children in infancy; perhaps the contrast of distraught pose and streaming sunlight was meant to reaffirm the photographer’s (waning?) belief that earthly pain nevertheless receives a heavenly reward.

Of course, these are just conjectures. But one thing is known for certain: Hawarden wasn’t responsible for the charmingly peculiar shapes of many of the prints. They were apparently the work of her granddaughter, who yanked the images out of their album books in order to donate them to the Victoria and Albert--appropriately, right across the street from the Hawarden household.

J. Paul Getty Museum: 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, (213) 458-2003, to Feb. 17. Parking reservations required. Closed Mondays.

Men vs. Women: “You Just Don’t Understand” is the title of an engrossing new book by linguist Deborah Tannen about the different ways men and women communicate with each other. For example, while women generally look for consensus and try to minimize differences, men tend to focus on ways they are independent of others. Tannen views both approaches as equally valid; her concern is to alert the reader to the distinction between “style differences” and substantive disagreements.

Artists who deal with sexual relations also seem to view them in stylistically gender-based ways. In an exhibit with the anatomically baroque title, “Ovarian Warriors vs. Knights of Crissum,” a group of young artists offer work that comments--loudly, slyly or inscrutably--on the sexual wars. The men tend to make their point in terse single volleys, spiked with rough humor; the women more often veil their messages in allusion, deliberate contradiction and various levels of imagery.

Although only a few pieces are particularly memorable, the full line-up of works--in two galleries strictly divided by sex--makes for a toothy show.

Paul McCarthy’s large, insouciantly sloppy ink drawing, “Lunch,” shows an immense supine female nude apparently oblivious to the activities of Lilliputian men: eating, sleeping, sexual stimulation, death (by hanging). If the sleeping giantess were to wake, though, she just might smash the whole peanut gallery to smithereens.

Raymond Pettibon’s group of terse line drawings typically presents a cluster of viewpoints on the various forms of currency between men and women--power, money, sex. Seemingly cliched situations have a wry fillip. (Nude woman patron to unseen artist: “I’ll live with you, die with you . . . but I won’t read your book.”)

Leonard Seagal’s “Device for Kissing” is a redoutable cast-iron contraption that makes osculation a painful affair to emphasize the psychic pain of involvement.

Jim Shaw’s silk-screened image of an anatomical-looking sliced apple combines the rococo style of ‘70s pop posters with the rococo yearnings of teen-age lust.

A group of metal pans from the mess kits of anonymous American servicemen offer the most baldly unmediated view of women--they’re decorated with homemade “engravings” of Betty Grable and anonymous well-endowed nudes.

Melissa Hoffs deftly uses advertising imagery and texts in “Matthew” to tell a brief story--about a churchgoer worried about her son at home--in which one set of themes (false assurances of protection, broken promises and abandonment) is wrapped within another (organized religion, the gun industry, advertising).

Carol Caroompas lines the background of her painting, “Peter Pan,” with pale-blue images of hackneyed “blue joke” situations: the boss and the secretary, the patient and the nurse. In the big picture, little naked boys ( putti from Old Master paintings) romp naughtily around a big clown’s face. A ‘50s-style family scene shows why some boys don’t feel inclined to grow up.

Laura Cooper is the lone romantic in this group: Hung high on the wall, her translucent canoe-shaped piece contains the indentation of a female form, filled in with lank black fabric. The black shadow-figure recalls the love-victim’s loss of self-esteem and self-awareness; she is nothing without her man.

Kathe Burkhart’s “Hole” from her “Liz Taylor Series” shows the actress’s head swathed in bandages, except for her eyes and mouth. The crude sexual allusion of the painted title word deliberately contrasts with the image of Hollywood-style self-beautification.

In swift, savage strokes, Sue Williams’ cartoon-like painting, “The Low Sink of Debauchery,” equates the stooped posture of cleaning (i.e., women’s work) with the hoary view of women as no more than handy sexual orifices.

Other artists in the show are Maija Beeton, Dominica Salvatore, Lauren Lesko, Stephanie Wilger, Laura Whipple, Hugh Lentz, Dani Tull, Paul Varnac, Tom Hartman and Kevin Sullivan.

Sue Spaid Fine Art: 7454 1/2 Beverly Blvd., (213) 935-6153. Parker Zanic Gallery: 112 S. La Brea Ave., (213) 936-9022. Both: To Jan. 30, closed Sundays and Mondays.