FALL PREVIEW : Our Critics’ Guide to the Season : Diebenkorn to ‘Sultans’

Fifteen years ago Richard Diebenkorn had a full retrospective exhibition in Los Angeles, while a complete survey of his work on paper was shown here in 1989. Now, another four-decade retrospective of the popular California painter arrives at the Museum of Contemporary Art (through Nov. 1).

Organized by London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery, this assembly of 50 paintings is--surprisingly--Diebenkorn’s first major European show (it has traveled already to Spain and Germany). Will the European angle provide a new take for Americans familiar with his light-filled abstractions and figurative paintings? At 250 S. Grand Ave., MOCA is closed Mondays; admission is $4, students and seniors $2, children under 12 free.

Examining relationships between the work of modern artists and such sources as tribal art, comics and advertising has been risky business for museums, as several exhibitions of the past decade have shown. The L.A. County Museum of Art gives it another shot with “Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art” (Oct. 18-Jan. 3), a huge show pairing the work of Paul Klee, Salvador Dali, Jean Dubuffet, Claes Oldenburg, Julian Schnabel and others with images and objects made by “outsiders”--self-taught, untrained individuals who compulsively create, often in isolation. LACMA is open daily, except Mondays, at 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; admission is $5, $3.50 for students and seniors, and $1 for children ages 6 to 17.

The ubiquity of camera-based work in art today can trace many of its roots to artists working in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s--which is precisely what the exhibition, “Proof: L.A. Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980,” plans to demonstrate in depth. The Laguna Art Museum show (Oct. 31-Jan. 17) will feature work by 45 artists, including such seminal figures as John Baldessari, Robert Heinecken and Ed Ruscha, to examine the ways in which photography has been employed in combination with other media. The Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach, is open daily, except Mondays; admission is $3, seniors and students $1.50, children under 12 free.

To celebrate the publication of a gorgeous facsimile edition of a late-16th Century manuscript created for two Holy Roman Emperors, the J. Paul Getty Museum has organized “Art and Science: Joris Hoefnagel and the Representation of Nature in the Renaissance” (Nov. 3-Jan. 17). The last, great Flemish manuscript illuminator, Hoefnagel (1542-1601) added exquisite paintings of flora and fauna to the dazzling display of calligraphy written by the great Georg Bocskay. The show will draw on other Getty holdings, including Durer’s watercolor of a stag beetle, to put its important manuscript in context. Admission to the Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, is free, but parking reservations are a must, (310) 458-2003; closed Mondays.

The transformation from bravura brushwork, typical of Abstract Expressionism, to the imagery of Pop, which typically sought a machine-printed look, is the subject of “Hand-Painted Pop: The Formative Years, 1955-1962” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Nov. 22-March 7). With a full roster of Pop and proto-Pop stars--Johns, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Ruscha, Thiebaud, Warhol and more--the show will attempt to demonstrate how stylistic techniques employed by the New York School evolved into Pop art, an evolutionary development, as it were, rather than a revolutionary one.

For a city-wide, grand-slam show of some 60 Los Angeles-based artists, which might evolve into a biennial exhibition, the Municipal Art Gallery has corralled seven other area arts institutions to show painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance art. “LAX: The Los Angeles Exhibition” (Dec. 3-Jan. 24) will take place all over town: the Japanese-American Cultural and Community Center, LACE, Otis School of Art and Design, Plaza de la Raza, Santa Monica Museum of Art and the university galleries at USC and UCLA, as well as in the Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park. A capsule version of the sprawling show--one work per artist, and dubbed “LA Xtension”--will be installed at the Convention Center during the run of the otherwise beleaguered annual art fair, ART/LA 92 (Dec. 2-6).

Other fall exhibitions of major interest include:

The Fowler Museum of Cultural History, a new, three-story, $22-million showcase for African, Oceanic and American Indian art and material culture, opens Sept. 30 with the exhibitions “Elephant: The Animal and Its Ivory in African Culture,” “Ceramics of Ancient Peru,” “Maya Dress of the 1960s” and “Reflecting Culture: The Francis E. Fowler Jr. Collection of Silver” (UCLA, just west of Royce Hall, (310) 825-4361).

“The View From Within: Japanese-American Art From the Internment Camps, 1942-1945,” paintings and drawings by more than 30 artists (UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery, 405 Hilgard Ave., (310) 825-9345). Oct. 13-Dec. 6.

“Breaking Barriers: Revisualizing the Urban Landscape,” works by more than 140 L.A. artists--including Barbara Carrasco, Robbie Conal, Kerr + Malley, Daniel J. Martinez, John Outterbridge and Manuel Ocampo--responding to the Rodney King beating and L.A. riots (Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 399-0433). Sept. 18-Nov. 1.

“Splendors of the Ottoman Sultans,” more than 270 artistic treasures, many of which have never been exhibited outside Turkey (Armand Hammer Museum of Art, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., (310) 443-7060). Wednesday-Dec. 16.

“When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan,” the largest exhibition ever assembled of Japanese kosode --the predecessor of the modern kimono (L.A. County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 857-6000). Nov. 15-Feb. 7.

“George Herms: The Secret Archives,” 30-year survey of the sculpture, reliefs and works on paper of the pioneer L.A. assemblage artist (Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Junior Arts Center Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., (213) 485-4581). Today-Nov. 1.

ART/LA ‘92: The Seventh International Contemporary Art Fair, exhibitions by dozens of contemporary art galleries from Los Angeles, the United States and international locations (Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa, (213) 855-1482). Admission is $12 per day, or $45 for the benefit preview on Dec. 2. Dec. 2-6.

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