ART REVIEWS : Vietnam Revisited : Vietnam-related shows at UCLA are worth thinking about but sometimes they are as troubling for their limitations as for their censure of human folly.

Many Americans feel their country’s recent military victory in the Persian Gulf was really quite lovely as wars go. It was fast, decisive and, they say, lifted a pall of shameful insecurity left over from the Vietnam era.

Hooray for our side.

As if to counter this euphoria, UCLA just opened new exhibitions that remind us all wars are brutal and tragic. They concern Vietnam. There are poster exhibitions in the basement of Haines Hall. Two main shows are in the Wight Art Galleries, “As Seen From Both Sides,” opposing views of the war by 80 artists, and “A Different War: Vietnam in Art,” which was organized by John Olbranz and critic Lucy Lippard. The latter show includes about 100 works by 54 artists, with paintings, sculpture, prints and photos made by artists protesting the war, veterans’ works, and art ruminating on the divisive struggle after it was over.

Lippard’s catalogue essay is required reading for anyone interested in the period. Because she is a social activist as well as a commited art critic, she paints a very different picture from that found in standard histories. They tend to stick to the up-side of what, in fact, was a vibrant period in American art, full of the giddiness of Pop, the refinement of Minimalism and a general, “anything can be art” ambiance that produced everything from Allan Kaprow’s “happenings” to Andy Warhol’s movies.

Lippard, by contrast, provides a valuable chronicle of a rather thin wedge of socially-conscious artists and advocates who opposed the war. She takes the position that the moral disorientation caused by the conflict gave pause to all sorts of people who felt marginalized by the society. Their soul-searching, according to Lippard, contributed to everything from the civil rights movement to women’s liberation. Artists and intellectuals organized and protested.

She characterizes the effort of mainstream artists as “pallid” and the success of their activities as more therapeutic and symbolic than practical. She cites two events in Los Angeles.

In 1965, a Vietnam debate was held between artists and representatives of the RAND Corp. Artists shouted. Corporate types tried to temporize. The artists declared themselves victors.

In 1966, sculptor Mark di Suvero designed a “Peace Tower” that was erected on the Sunset Strip. It incorporated 400 individual panels sent by artists around the world and involved such locals as Mel Edwards, Arnold Mesches, Judy Chicago and Lloyd Hamrol. Although intended to stand until the end of hostilities, it was shortly dismantled when the owner of the lot backed out of his agreement to let it stay.

Anyone who remembers those long-ago events first-hand recalls that their principal quality was one of impotence. The debate and tower seemed to affect only those directly involved.

Lippard’s rather mournful thesis in the catalogue seems to point to the sorry status accorded artists and intellectuals in this country and to their own inability to organize for sustained political action. Artists tend to want to make art.

According to catalogue illustrations, they did. Even though anti-war art was often nothing more than a singular gesture like Jasper Johns’ “Moratorium” poster, enough individual works accumulated to show that artists were deeply, if fitfully, concerned.

If it had been possible to bring it all together for this exhibition the result might have been both moving and impressive. Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial, dignified and grieving, is arguably the finest work of art to emerge from the conflict and one of the most admirable cautionary lessons in the annals of sculpture, a form that has historically glorified war. It of course cannot be moved so it is not here.

Neither, for whatever reasons, are such masterworks as Ed Kienholz’s profoundly sarcastic “Portable War Memorial,” Duane Hanson’s gory “Vietnam Scene, 1969” or George Segal’s rejected memorial for the Kent State killings.

What is on view is certainly worth thinking about but sometimes it is as troubling for it’s limitations as for it’s condemnation of human folly. Paintings by Peter Saul and Peter Dean attack President Johnson with classic muckraker gusto. That’s cathartic but it leaves out the tragic side of Johnson as a man brought low by his desire to create universal social justice at home while prosecuting an unjust war abroad.

The longer one looks at “A Different War” the clearer it becomes that the artists’ statements are intensely personal rather than ideological. Robert Colescott’s sense of humor does not fail him in “Bye Bye Miss American Pie,” which shows a black soldier fighting for a white man’s erotic fantasy. Ben Sakoguchi’s satirical orange-crate labels bristle with angry humor.

Although the show is clearly liberal in bias, it doesn’t reject the feelings of doubters or patriots. Nancy Floyd’s “The James M. Floyd Memorial” mourns the death of a soldier who called Vietnamese a racial slur. Roger Brown’s “Vietnam Commemorative” looks askance at the whole military-industrial complex and Rachel Romero’s touching portraits of veterans prove they were not held in universal contempt.

This is an exhibition that asks us to look at art for its thoughts, feelings and themes rather that for its aesthetic superiority. It tends to let itself fall short on that latter count. That circumstance creates a curious climate in which amateur artists or relative beginners can be more affecting than the pros. Michael Aschenbrenner, a veteran traumatized by the war, shows a series of sculpture of splinted bones that have the autistic authenticity of work by someone who was there. Michael Page’s “Pieta” is a wood carving of a GI holding a dead baby. The heartfelt horror it expresses witnesses to real confrontation.

Once in the thrall of an exhibition whose mood encourages us to prefer a kind of autobiographical sincerity, we are almost inclined to prefer the more modest second exhibition to the main event. Titled “As Seen From Both Sides,” it was organized by veteran C. David Thomas, who directs Boston’s Indochina Arts Project. It includes 80 small works by 40 artists equally divided between members of the opposing sides.

American artist Arnold Trachtman painted the image of Eddy Adams’ famous execution photograph into a montage that shows President Nixon pointing to a Vietnam map emblazoned with logos for GE, GM and Ford. Like much of the most striking art here, it has the graphic punch of a propaganda poster. In contrast, David Shirm came home to paint highly subjective images of his own blasted innocence.

Most touching in this group, however, are works by Vietnamese artists. They consistently pictured the war in its moments of poetic calm. A quality of operatic lyricism informs Tran Te’s “Spring at the Border.” There is something almost unbearably forgiving and patient in Nguyen Te Minh’s Renoir-like “Visiting an Old Battle Site.” It is an art that bespeaks the sweetness and forbearance of a people overrun for centuries by foreign invaders.

At their best, these two shows function as do the names of war dead when they crawl up the screen at the end of TV news broadcasts. Suddenly, all the abstract statistics and strategies melt away. We realize an obscure Pfc. from Rockport, Me., is truly dead far from home, and we wonder if anything is worth that.

UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, to May 19. Closed Mondays; (213) 825-9345.