Bolton Colburn, curator of collections at the...

Bolton Colburn, curator of collections at the Laguna Art Museum.

* Ashley Bickerton, “Tormented Self-Portrait: Susie at Arles,” 1990. I saw a reproduction of it in Flash Art magazine. It was a classic Bickerton high-tech/low-tech unit, but also it was decorated with stickers from the products he uses and is represented by. . . . . It was extremely funny and ironic. (The idea of) literally defining oneself by the products one uses and by whom one is represented is perhaps the ultimate pun on the corporate ‘80s.

* Philip Guston, “Bombardment,” (1937-38, oil on wood, McKee Gallery, New York). I knew of Guston’s color field paintings and the cartoon-like figurative work he did (in his final years), but I knew nothing of his paintings during the ‘30s and his involvement with (Mexican painter David Alfaro) Siqueiros and the WPA Federal Art Project. I loved the mannered space and shaped canvas--great devices for dramatizing the devastation that took place during the Spanish Civil War, and a testament to how California influenced him.

* Robert Williams, “Oscar Wilde in Leadville, April 13th, 1882” (1991, on view through April 26 in “Helter-Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s,” at the Temporary Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). On my first visit to Robert’s studio I was bowled over by this painting. It’s definitely one of the funniest narrative paintings I’ve come across recently--unapologetic, pronounced and bold.

* Richard Ralph Roehl, “Surfboard Bouquet,” (mixed-media, 1991). The work, which I saw at Richard/Bennett Gallery (in Los Angeles) was based on a long-range love relationship, a correspondence that he was having with a woman in Hawaii. The exhibition was set up so that you would (confront) each piece in sequence. The whole thing read as a narrative about an obsessive relationship that culminated in (the piece) “Surfboard Bouquet,” which is about the breaking of a heart. It works on two levels: the breaking of the artist’s heart in a love relationship, and also over his career as an artist. It was one of the saddest pieces I have come across (recently).

* Chi Le, “Sweet Home” (mixed media, 1991) It’s a very perverse, dark piece--in the mode of (Los Angeles artists) Mike Kelly or Jim Shaw, but with consequence--no doubt tied in with her experiences in Vietnam. The cotton and plastic are painted in garish, bright blues and greens. Flies copulate in a house on bamboo legs, which stands in a bed of squirming maggots. An audio element plays an (almost) inaudible track that sounds like (an obscenity), but I was told it actually says, “Night, night.”

Favorite Things appears Wednesdays in the Calendar section of The Times Orange County Edition.