Summer Splash III : Looking For Hot Tips? Well, We Recommend . . . : Art

In past years there was a leading indicator of the arrival of the summer season. The art scene went completely comatose like a dog dozing in the dusty sun. This is no longer true. These days our museums go into a frenzy of activity putting up splashy exhibitions for the tourist season. Then they go competely comatose.

Before the end of June the County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art will paper their walls with half a dozen major exhibitions designed to dazzle and delight. By significant coincidence, most of them are traveling shows from such distinguished venues as New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the drowse of summer, it’s a little easier to book in exisisting exhibitions than to whip up your own.

The one inciting the most curiosity is MOCA’s “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture” (June 23-Sept 15). Encompassing 250 works by 50 artists, the ambitious assemblage undertakes to examine crucial cross-fertilization between the vigorous vulgarity of the art of the common life and the ideas of advanced artists of the century. It was panned by critics when it opened in Gotham’s MOMA but many of the objections sounded parochially influenced by East Coast art politics. It will be interesting to see how the show plays here.

Among exhibitions visiting the County Museum is “Clarence John Laughlin” (now through July 7). This offbeat New Orleans photographer was influenced by the French Symbolist poets and reflects the same romantic decadence that turns up in such Southern writers as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Carson McCullers.

“Mirror of Empire: Dutch Marine Paintings of the 17th Century” (May 30-Sept. 1) promises to be more interesting than it sounds, especially to those who include a fascination with history in their interest in art. It combines 120 paintings, prints, maps and charts to light up Dutch maritime civilization at the pinnacle of power.

Everybody wonders how great our very good local museums can become in the future. That depends on their permanent collections, which in turn depends on the kindness of local collectors and on what they have to donate. The public will find out more about that when LACMA presents its original “Monet to Matisse: French Art from Southern California Collections” (June 9-Aug. 11). It will plumb indigenous holdings of great modern French art and prove at least the presence of 75 examples by everybody from Renoir and Degas to Braque and Matisse.

The breakdown of Soviet glasnost and perestroika hasn’t yet slowed the flow of interest in avant-garde artists of the Revolution. That epic movement did not shirk to include women, and one of the most significant of them will appear here when “Liubov Popova” materializes at LACMA (June 23-Aug. 18). She did everything from Cubist painting to Constructivist designs for theaters, fabrics and graphics. Her reputation has risen right up there with that of Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko.

If any of the above sounds a trifle heavy for summer browsing, things are sure to lighten up when the busy County Museum winds up its canicular eruption with “Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was” (June 30-Aug. 25). It will illustrate the third great design style of the century that emerged after Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Including L.A. designers like Charles Eames and Henry Dreyfuss in its long roster, it’s the kind of show that makes visitors say, “If I’d known that old Crosley refrigerator was going to become a collectors item, I’d have saved it.”

Those are the highlights, but highlights aren’t everything. Surprises are important. Watch for unexpected frissons when the Norton Simon Museum puts up “Marcel Duchamp and the Surrealist Tradition” July 4-March 8, 1992. Prepare to be unprepared when MOCA shows “Recent American and European Photography” (July 28-Oct. 17), or when the Getty exposes the always-amazing eye of Lisette Model (Aug. 6-Oct. 20).

One the other hand, the beach is nice too.