Traveling Shows Paint Picture of a Brighter Year : Museum, Gallery Offerings to Focus on Imported Exhibits

Well, there’s been a good bit of moaning and groaning in this space about dismal 1991, but next year’s art offerings sound remarkably promising for these lean times. Still, it’s worth noting that most of the larger exhibits are imports, assembled by out-of-town institutions and sent on the traveling circuit. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but top museum honors inevitably go to fine shows produced by the home team.

Inevitably, one major entry, “Devil on the Stairs: Looking Back on the ‘80s”--a traveling exhibit from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia--looks back at the flashy, trashy (but far from declasse) ‘80s. The special lure of this show (making its only West Coast stop at Newport Harbor Art Museum, April 17 through June 21) is its organizer: Robert Storr, the insightful new curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit contains about 100 works in various media by about 50 artists from the United States and Europe, including Jonathan Borofsky, Jenny Holzer, Anselm Kiefer, David Salle and Cindy Sherman.

Newport Harbor’s other trump card--a show that isn’t just a sampling of contemporary Latino works, but also deals with particular cultural roots and meanings--is “El Corazon Sangrante/The Bleeding Heart” (Dec. 18 through Feb. 21, 1993, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. The exhibit links work by contemporary Mexican, Cuban and Chicano artists with historical influences found in pre-Columbian Mexican and Catholic visual and religious traditions. The artists include Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, Terry Allen and John Valadez.

Photography is the subject of several upcoming shows, including “Concept/Construct: Photography in Los Angeles Art, 1960-1980” (Laguna Art Museum, Oct. 30 through Jan. 17, 1993): “The Encompassing Eye: Photography as Drawing” (Laguna Art Museum, Feb. 14 through May 24), “Ralph Eugene Meatyard: An American Visionary” (Newport Harbor Art Museum, Dec. 18 through Feb. 14, 1993) and “Convergence: 8 Photographers” (UC Irvine Fine Arts Gallery, Jan. 7 through Feb. 4).

“Concept/Construct” (a working title) sounds like the Laguna Beach Museum’s one big fish to fry in ’92. Organized by museum director Charles Desmarais, former director of the California Museum of Photography, the 85-piece exhibit surveys two decades of innovative approaches by artists using photographic techniques and imagery. Artists include John Baldessari, Robert Heinecken and Edward Ruscha.

“The Encompassing Eye” contains historical and contemporary works (gathered by New York Times photography critic Charles Hagen for the Emily Davis Gallery of the University of Akron in Ohio) which explore the relationship between photography and drawing. Works range from William Henry Fox Talbot’s early photographic experiments of the 1840s to prints by Brassai, Robert Rauschenberg and Michael Spano. Drawings made by astronomer and scientist Sir John Herschel with a camera lucida (a prism device predating the camera) add an extra historical dimension, thanks to a special loan from the recent Graham Nash gift to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.

The Meatyard exhibit, organized by the Akron Art Museum (what is it about Akron, anyway?) is the first major retrospective of the career of an eccentric and exceptional artist who died in 1972. He worked days as an optician in Lexington, Ky., and spent weekends making odd images of family and friends, who often look downright spooky, sometimes outfitted in bizarre masks.

“Convergence” consists of work by contemporary African-American artists, organized by Deborah Willis, curator of photographs and prints at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. The artists work in various formats--including straight black-and-white images, large-scale photographs and images that are combined with texts, but all deal with such issues as “identity, unity, spirituality and death,” according to Willis. The little-known artists include Albert Chong, Todd Gray, Jeffery Scales, Coreen Simpson, Clarissa Sligh, Elisabeth Sunday, Christian Walker and Wendel White.

It may not be a trend, exactly, but two upcoming exhibits deal with relationships between art and music. “William T. Wiley: Struck! Sure? Sound/Unsound” (Laguna Art Museum, July 30 through Oct. 11) focuses on an abiding passion of the quirky Bay Area artist, who also happens to be a bluegrass musician. Organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, the show offers examples of Wiley’s sculptural musical instruments as well as paintings, prints and drawings he has studded with musical references. Wiley will also do a commissioned installation for the museum, his first in 10 years.

“Instruments of Sound” (Irvine Fine Arts Gallery, Feb. 29 through April 22) is an exhibition of musical instruments that look like sculpture and art that incorporates musical elements. The works (some of which can be played by the viewer) were made by 13 people active in art or music circles: Kai Bob Cheng, Richard Dunlap, Arthur Frick, Wolf Gowin, Marlin Halverson, Catherine MacLean, Brian Ransom, Daniel Wheeler, Richard Waters, Karen Frinkess Wolff , Susan Rawcliffe (who performed on her homemade instruments at Newport Harbor several years ago), someone who goes by the name of John Doe Co. and “outsider” artist Charlie Nothing.

Other upcoming exhibits and events:

NEWPORT HARBOR ART MUSEUM

“Jackie Winsor” (Feb. 2 through March 29): The selection of the well-known artist’s elegant geometric sculptures from the past two decades--works made of such materials as bricks, cement, wood and copper--was made by the Milwaukee Art Museum.

“Sarah Seeger: New California Artist XX” (Feb. 2 through March 29): A group of paintings and sculptures by a Pasadena artist who often incorporates fragments of text into her work includes some pieces made especially for this exhibit.

“Max Ernst: The Sculpture” (July 12 through Sept. 6): Organized by the first-rate Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, this exhibit of about 80 works is the first substantial examination of the sculpture of the Surrealist artist best known for his paintings and works on paper.

LAGUNA ART MUSEUM

“Drawings from the Collection” (Feb. 14 through May 24): As a complement to “The Encompassing Eye” (see above), the staff selected works on paper by 20th-Century California artists, including Maynard Dixon, Ben Messick, Jay DeFeo, John Altoon, Hans Burkhardt and the photographer Paul Outerbridge.

“I Thought California Would Be Different: New Work in the Permanent Collection” (Feb. 7 through May 17): How do you add shapeliness to a routine “recent acquisition” show? One way is to find some theme the works have in common. In this case, somebody realized that there were quite a few new pieces that deal with the phenomenon of “California dreaming” (great weather, beautiful landscape, personal freedom) and the way it sometimes boomerangs. Selections include work by such wittily eccentric Los Angeles artists as Russell Crotty, Raymond Pettibon and Jeffrey Vallance.

“Feminine Japonism: The Art of Helen Hyde” (Feb. 7 through May 3): Hyde, a San Franciscan born in 1868, was one of the first Western artists to study traditional Japanese woodcut techniques and brush painting in Japan. Her vision of sweet domesticity a la Japanaise appealed to wealthy Americans.

“Paintings from the Teens and ‘20s in the Permanent Collection” (working title; May 17 through Nov. 20): And once again, for those who can’t live without ‘em, here are highlights from the museum’s plein-air holdings, with work by Joseph Kleitsch, Franz Bischoff, Granville Redmond, Elmer and Marion Wachtel, and others.

“Modernist Abstraction in American Prints from the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution” (May 29 through July 26): Winding up a national tour, the show of work by 60 artists includes such familiar names as Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Max Weber and Adolf Gottlieb.

At the South Coast Plaza museum satellite, offerings include an installation by Susan Joseph (March 20 through June 21) and an exhibit tracing the genesis of a painting by Peter Alexander, with drawings, prints and photographs (May 8 through July 19).

Upcoming lecturers at the main museum include San Diego artist Jean Lowe on Jan. 9 at 11 a.m. (her exhibit, “A Dilettante’s Conversation on the Topics of Anthropocentrism and Western Consumerism,” is at the South Coast Plaza satellite through March 8) and Geri DePaoli, adjunct professor at Princeton University, who speaks on Jan. 12 at 3 p.m. about the influence of Asian art and philosophy on American Art.

BOWERS MUSEUM OF CULTURAL ART

The museum will reopen Oct. 15--after being closed more than 3 1/2 years for a $12-million expansion and renovation that has more than doubled its interior space--with a grand total of five concurrent exhibitions.

“Tribute to the Gods: Treasures of the Gold Museum” (to March 15), organized with the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia, consists of 300 examples of pre-Columbian gold and other objects in ceramic and stone. “Expanding Horizons: Art of Han Dynasty China” (to Dec. 10) offers 100 objects in clay, bronze and other media. It is a co-production with the National History Museum of Taiwan, which is also contributing its expertise for “Traditional Japanese Flower Arrangement” (to Oct. 31), a changing exhibit of floral and herbal compositions made fresh each day by Taiwanese artists.

Two of the exhibits are actually portions of the Bowers’ permanent collection, which will be rotated (on an as-yet undetermined schedule) through the appropriate galleries. “Realm of the Ancestors: Arts of Oceania” will contain about 75 sculptures, masks, canoes, jewelry and other objects from the Australoids, who settled New Guinea, Australia and Melanesia (one of the three major divisions of the Pacific islands) about 40,000 years ago. “Power and Creation: Africa Beyond the Nile” will focus on the arts of sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on wood sculptures from West and Central Africa.

UC IRVINE FINE ARTS GALLERY

“Monumental Fictions and Lost Histories: Chicago Stories” (March 31 through April 27): Artist Deborah Bright, assisted by Nancy Gonchar, curator of the University Art Museum at SUNY at Binghamton, has cooked up a multimedia exhibit--with photographs, posters, banners and other paraphernalia--about two labor events that happened in Chicago a century apart: the Haymarket Riot of 1886 and the 1985 strike at the Chicago Tribune. The piece is about the way public reaction to labor crises is shaped by corporate-owned media.

Events at UCI include a free panel discussion on issues in contemporary African-American photography, with UCI art professor Pat Ward Williams and several artists in the exhibit (Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. in the Fine Arts Gallery) and a free lecture by the nationally known artist Barbara Kruger, Regents Professor of Art (Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Nixon Theater). Artist Deborah Bright also gives a free lecture (March 30 at 7:30 p.m. in the Nixon Theater).

Performance artists Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco--who are doing a 10-day residency dealing with the quincentennial of Columbus’ landing on American shores--appear in a free performance, “A Performance Chronicle of the Rediscovery of America by the Warrior for Gringostroika,” March 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Gallery.

SADDLEBACK COLLEGE ART GALLERY

“Alfonzo Moret: Speaking in Tongues” (Jan. 16 through Feb. 28): A black artist’s video installation looks at religious belief systems that act as cultural anchors in contemporary African-American life. Moret’s work in general examines stereotypes created by the dominant (white) culture in terms of African-American poetry, ritual and literature.

“Lilla LoCurto & William Outcault: Sculpture” (March 12 through April 10): LoCurto’s objects refer to global politics and the environment; Outcault’s abstract work relates to the way the mind organizes diverse data.

IRVINE FINE ARTS CENTER

“Imperfect Order” (Aug. 15 through Nov. 3): Paintings, sculpture and installations (some specially made for this exhibit) deal with the urge to bring order to human experience while acknowledging the way the mind inevitably adds its own quirks and inconsistencies. The artists, from Los Angeles, New York and Germany, include Tim Hawkinson, Barbara McCarren, Carrie Ungerman, Martin Gantman, Erwin Wurm, Nicholas Rule and possibly Sarah Seeger (also in a winter exhibit at Newport Harbor; see above).

SECURITY PACIFIC GALLERY

The first question is, What will become of the Security Pacific Gallery (Costa Mesa) after the bank merges with BankAmerica? Curator Mark Johnstone says the dovetailing of the two art programs (BankAmerica has a major program of its own) won’t happen until the banks legally join forces at an as-yet unspecified date in 1992. In the meantime, he hopes to show more six- to eight-week exhibits rather than long shows, and economize by focusing exclusively on the work of Southern California artists.

“the frame: multiplied & extended” (Jan. 18 through March 21): A selection of multiple images by 23 artists working in painting, photography, sculpture and mixed-media encompasses two- and three-part pieces and works involving more than one framing device. Artists include Dottie Attie, Russell Crotty, Robbert Flick, Jim Morphesis, Renee Petropoulos--and Newport Beach resident Susan Hornbeak, a finalist in the recent juried competition at the UC Riverside University Art Gallery.

“Charted, Collected and Carefully Counted” (Jan. 18 through June 13): In the “Project Room,” Los Angeles artist Nicola Rosalie Atkinson-Griffith will install a “metaphoric environment” based on 180-word biographical stories about childhood memories sent to her by members of the public during the run of the exhibition.