ART REVIEWS : Anti-Semitism: Paranoia on Parade

In 1985, Steve Turner, an L.A. dealer who specializes in posters, came across an anti-Semitic poster in an antiquarian bookstore in Vienna. He quickly snapped it up, recognizing that he’d stumbled across virgin territory ripe for collecting. He soon discovered, however, that though few other buyers were vying for propaganda of this sort, collecting it wouldn’t be easy. Most European dealers with access to the material he was looking for refused to handle it--the trauma of the Holocaust too fresh in their minds for them to take a disinterested view of anti-Semitism in any form. Turner persisted nonetheless and succeeded in building a collection that includes several hundred pieces.

A choice selection of this work is on view at Turner’s gallery, the Steve Turner Gallery in Hollywood. Historically, it’s an important show that functions as a fascinating footnote to the “Degenerate Art” exhibition recently opened at LACMA. Representing just 10% of Turner’s collection, the show includes 12 rare posters as well as a selection of postcards, books and ephemera spanning a 45-year period. Turner points out that anti-Semitic propaganda continues to be produced today by white supremacists, but his collection concludes with the downfall of the Third Reich. He also asserts that he shows this work with considerable trepidation; he too finds this work almost too volatile to handle.

All these posters were designed to be posted on city streets (they turned up all over Europe) and 75% of them were made by anonymous artists. A few artists known in their day did put their names on these works, but most clearly understood that racism was best practiced under cover.

The earliest work on view is a French poster alluding to the Dreyfus Affair, an infamous court case that took place during the final decade of the last century. Tried for treason, a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus was ultimately proven to have been framed, and his trial exposed a strain of anti-Semitism that divided all of France at the time. One image from a series of 50 titled “Musee des Horreurs” (“The Freak Show”) done by French artist Lenepveu in 1899, the poster on view depicts Emile Zola--who spoke out in defense of Dreyfus--as a mud spattered pig. (Turner’s collection includes a complete set of Lenepveu’s series).

Also on view are Viennese voting posters from the ‘20s, most of which depict insulting caricatures of people with Jewish features threatening to dominate and exploit Gentile workers. The hysterical paranoia of these images is profoundly disturbing. Posters produced by the Third Reich depict Jews as being in cahoots with the Bolsheviks or pushing Uncle Sam off a cliff, while other images offer tips on how to identify Jews.

The content of these images is so horrifying that it would be inappropriate to critique them as artworks. Suffice it to say that they exploit the visual vocabulary of political propaganda quite efficiently. There’s nothing amateurish or underground about these images--they’re a slick expression of a popular collective sentiment of their time. They’re on view today as a reminder of the poisonous depths man is capable of sinking to when his dark side is allowed to go unchecked.

* T he Steve Turner Gallery: 7220 Beverly Blvd.; to April 13; (213) 931-1185. Closed Sundays-Tuesdays.

Vintage Cheesecake: From the same period but in a considerably lighter vein are photographs by Alfred Cheney Johnston, on view at the Jan Kesner Gallery in Hollywood. One of the premier celebrity photographers of the Jazz Age, Johnston was the house photographer for Ziegfeld Follies and as such, played an important role in helping transform America’s ideal of womanly beauty from voluptuous Victorian to slim, scantily clad flapper.

This show is largely composed of Johnston’s private work--images he made for his own pleasure that were too risque for public consumption 60 years ago. Needless to say, these pictures seem downright demure by today’s standards, but at the same time, the restrained teasing of Johnston’s images generates considerably more heat then much of what passes for eroticism today. His pictures leave a lot to the imagination and are veiled in a soft-focus dreaminess evocative of the schoolgirl romanticism of Maxfield Parish. However, Johnston wasn’t above really getting down and baring the occasional breast. Known as “Mr. Drape,” Johnston liked to swathe his subjects, most of whom were actresses and models, with strategically positioned fabric that flirts with the idea of nudity. Sometimes there’s very little fabric indeed.

The pictures were further unorthodox in that Johnston dispensed with the painted backdrops popular in portrait photography of the period and chose instead to pose his models with props (a mandolin, a crystal ball, a palette and paintbrush), cast them as fantasy figures (Gypsy, goddess, harem girl), or place them in luxurious settings. Favoring ostentatiously wealthy rooms with undertones of kink, Johnston got the jump on Helmut Newton by several decades on that score. However, the most interesting thing about Johnston’s work is that, like all glamour photography, it reveals that standards of beauty are continually evolving; today’s vamp may look quaint and a trifle corny tomorrow.

* Jan Kesner Gallery: 164 N. La Brea; to March 23; (213) 938-6834. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

England Swings: For an entirely different code of beauty, one need look no further than the work of David Bailey, on view a few doors down from Jan Kesner at the Fahey/Klein Gallery. The unofficial court photographer of London during the Swinging ‘60s, Bailey was originally known as a fashion photographer and much of the work on view here takes us back to an era when Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton were the reigning goddesses of chic. Bailey’s women tend to conform to a type; they’re all virginal ingenues who look blank and bored, have arms like garden hoses and obscenely full mouths. It’s a look that’s currently experiencing something of a revival--you see it a lot in the coffee houses that are presently sprouting up all over town. Along with Richard Avedon, Vogue Magazine, designer Mary Quant and a handful of other ‘60s tastemakers, it was Bailey who invented the style.

During the ‘60s the worlds of fashion, film, art and rock merged, and Bailey’s portraits depict several figures who served as important connecting links between these worlds. The Who turn up, as do John Lennon, Mick Jagger (looking immensely pleased with himself), Fellini, John Huston, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and those fondly regarded criminals the Krays--nasty thugs who look like human pit bulls in Bailey’s picture of them.

Bailey’s ‘60s portraiture continues to be his best loved work, but as can be seen in this show which spans 33 years of his career, he’s experimented with several other styles (he’s also done quite well directing television commercials). Included here is recent work that involves photographs collaged onto painted canvases, a series on lesbian sex, and several surrealist still lifes. All this work falls a little flat (the photo-collages are particularly awkward) and leads one to conclude that Bailey will be remembered as a man with an appealing roguishness and a decent eye who was once at the right place at the right time with a camera.

* Fahey/Klein Gallery: 148 N. La Brea; to April 6; (213) 934-2250. Closed Sundays and Mondays.