Photographic Beautification Project

A group photography exhibition titled “Objectionable Beauty,” on view at the Jan Kesner Gallery in Hollywood, is based on a premise ripe with possibilities, but the work included doesn’t take things as far as one might wish. This show could be much tougher than it is. Curated by gallery director Jan Kesner (who is to be commended for presenting exhibitions that look at photography in new and original ways), the show is an inquiry into pictures designed to transform things generally dismissed as mundane or ugly into objects of beauty.

This is, of course, a tricky proposition because we all have different ideas about what constitutes beauty and the lack thereof. However, it’s pretty much agreed that several of the things depicted in photographs here--molded Jell-O desserts, tacky hotel lobby carpeting--are offensive to the eye. But how, one wonders, do we arrive at a consensus about such things? The clearest and most provocative point this show makes is how utterly arbitrary collective ideas concerning taste are.

The tamest part of the show is given over to vintage still-life photographs. Paul Outerbridge’s classically composed images of a shirt collar and a wine glass succeed in investing everyday objects with an elegance that’s almost mystical, as does Imogen Cunningham’s picture of a rumpled, unmade bed strewn with hairpins. Edward Weston does his usual number on plants and shells (Carlotta Corpron’s witty portrait of a Slinky toy seems like a spoof of the bloodless perfection of Weston’s style), while Pierre Dubreuil glamorizes cigarettes and eggs, and Paul Strand does the same for ball bearings.

On the evidence suggested by these images (several of which are well known and widely reproduced), it would seem that photographing something “beautifully” is simply a matter of balanced, symmetrical composition and controlled, sensual lighting. As seen here, this venerated method for expressing good taste in photography seems rather dull; fortunately, the newer work in the show has considerably more edge.

Sherri Zuckerman’s garishly colored tableaux of cheap toiletries, tropical drinks and nauseating-looking desserts are at once funny and horrifying, while her close-up shots of the carpeting at Caesars Palace and Disneyland are quite strange (it’s weird to see something so familiar to the eye in such a different context).

Art team Gwen Akin & Allan Ludwig’s formal portrait of a dead octopus has a chilly allure, while Richard Benson’s picture of a mud-spattered bicycle on an idyllic country lane puts a perverse spin on a visual cliche. All of this work is intriguingly off-kilter, however, Anne Rowland’s pictures are easily the most challenging in the show. Rowland takes biblical motifs--Adam and Eve’s fig leafs, God’s beard--and photographs them floating in a black void. There’s an inexplicably sinister sexuality to these images, something unsavory and wicked, and, in fact, Rowland throws the theme of the show into reverse; her pictures take exalted symbols and debase them. Coming at the theme of the show from the opposite direction, Rowland’s work illustrates the push-pull between form and content perfectly.

Jan Kesner Gallery: 164 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood; to June 15; (213) 938-6834. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Dugmore Re-Emerges: Edward Dugmore was an active participant in one of the most romanticized chapters of Modernist art history. A first-generation Abstract Expressionist who studied with Thomas Hart Benton and Clyfford Still, Dugmore split his time between New York and San Francisco during the early ‘50s, immersing himself in the critical manifestoes, the partying and, of course, the painting itself. “The whole feeling was huge,” Dugmore has said of the glory days of Abstract Expressionism, “you felt huge and all-encompassing.”

When Pop art edged Ab Ex out of the limelight in the ‘60s, Dugmore stuck by his guns and continued to wrestle with the creative challenges he’d set for himself early in his career. He also went into a kind of self-imposed exile--little has been seen or heard of him for the last 20 years. An exhibition of Dugmore’s work from the ‘50s, on view at the Manny Silverman Gallery in Hollywood, suggests that this little-known artist has perhaps been unfairly overlooked by history. Though not a major innovator, Dugmore is an accomplished painter whose work could comfortably hold its own alongside that of any of the Ab Ex heavy-hitters.

Still and Mark Rothko come to mind when perusing this show; Dugmore’s work has a vaporous quality, an ethereal dreaminess evocative of both those artists. Tempering the muscular composition of these mostly large canvases with a tremulous treatment of color and light, Dugmore’s paintings are at once rigorously thought out and sweepingly emotional.

Manny Silverman Gallery: 800 N. La Cienega Blvd., Hollywood; to June 29; (213) 659-8256. Closed Sundays and Mondays.