ART : Painting the Town : Midwesterner Robert Fischer gains credibility in Los Angeles with Warhol-style renderings on coats and jackets.

What happens when the Midwest king of pop art blows in from the Windy City and lands in the San Fernando Valley?

Ask painter Robert Fischer that question, and you get a variety of answers.

First you get his drop-kick sense of humor: “We’re used to living in a loft in Chicago about 10 feet from the El. It was culture shock to find myself dealing with neighbors and children with ponytails stuck out of the sides of their heads. My 9-year-old daughter Morgan is now uncomfortable because her name isn’t Tiffany. We call her Morgany to make her feel better.”

Then you get a reality check: “Actually, my daughter loves the Valley, her school and her teacher. We’re in the process of house-hunting, but right now we’re living in a North Hollywood apartment/studio and it’s wonderful. I can look out the window and actually see trees. Also, as a parent who’s always worried, for the first time in my life, I feel at ease about letting my kids go outside to play, and even walk to school. That was something they could never do a mile from downtown Chicago.”

In addition to family concerns, Fischer, 43, feels that this is the best possible place he could have chosen to continue his painting, a talent he applies liberally to clothing, canvas, furniture and more.

“I needed to move my art to an international city. New Yorkers take themselves way too seriously and being so uptight, they’re unable to see what’s there. L. A. people are much more open to creativity. I love being here--each area has its own energy. It’s very exhilarating.”

Fischer has a long history as an artist but his work only came to the attention of Southern Californians in 1986 when restaurateur Barbara Lazaroff saw a painted coat he had donated to a Starlite Foundation fund-raiser.

Lazaroff was so impressed, she chose Fischer as the first non-California artist to be featured at Spago, which she owns with her husband, superchef Wolfgang Puck. Fischer’s painted jackets have since become a permanent part of the Spago decor.

“Fischer’s works breathe; they have a life of their own,” Lazaroff said. “I think he’s very painterly, but he has a tongue-in-cheek quality and his selection of medium--coats and jackets--brought art to the streets, to the people. That’s what I was trying to do with the restaurant.”

Lazaroff recently commissioned two of Fischer’s painted chairs, which he covers with faces and abstracted faces, for the Las Vegas Spago that she and Puck opened in December.

Dubbed the Windy City Warhol by People magazine, Fischer has also been compared by many critics to Der Blaue Reiter school of German Expressionism. A silk screen serigraph of his “Blue Zebra” painting, depicting Tallulah Bankhead and Cecil Beaton at El Morocco, circa 1930, has been in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington for more than a decade.

“I owned the silk screen and when I heard that the National Gallery of Art was interested in this piece, I jumped at the chance to donate it,” Chicago art collector W. J. Goes said. “I later purchased the ‘Blue Zebra’ original oil painting when it came up for sale.”

Goes, who owns several other works by Fischer, feels that they have a unique reality. “There is an underlying movement in Fischer’s paintings,” he said. “Every time you look at them, you see another angle or aspect.”

Fischer also has pieces in the Art Institute of Chicago and his portrait of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, hangs in that city’s Du Sable Afro-American Museum.

The interest in Fischer is not limited to our shores, as evidenced by this comment from Ian Rogers, art critic and consultant from Melbourne, Australia: “Bob Fischer’s images breathe an aura of power. Beyond the tour de force of brilliant color, luxuriant surfaces and charismatic resonance lies the emptiness of sensuality, the folly of power and the suffering of desire. This is not mere repetition or witty comment on theme and method of mass media, but the profound examination of human dynamics. It is Warhol with a time fuse and an exploding Lichtenstein.”

A lot of Fischer’s creations are also walking around on some very famous frames. Stars sporting Fischer’s wearable art include Cher, Madonna, Tina Turner, REM’s Peter Buck, Arsenio Hall and Jay Leno (who at least agree about what’s hot fashion-wise). Two of Fischer’s most famous pieces, a Marilyn Monroe coat and a Marlon Brando jacket, have highly visible owners--Danielle Steele and Michael Jackson, respectively.

Fischer is an excellent showcase for his own work, in fact he’s a walking happening. He arrived for an interview wearing a rhinestone baseball cap, banana-yellow leather bell-bottoms from the real ‘60s, and sporting his first “skingraving.” A gift from his wife, the tattoo is a re-creation of Tallulah’s fabulous face from the “Blue Zebra” painting.

Dressed to go dancing later that evening, Fischer revealed that he’s been cutting a rug in more ways than one.

Besides hitting the floor at various clubs (he loves techno-music), he also has a new art form available--carpets that have been sculpted to his designs.

One of his carpets will be featured in the April issue of Designer’s West magazine, and his furniture will appear on its pages later this year.

“I discovered Bob at an art show in Chicago two years ago and felt his art had a very theatrical, California look,” Designer’s West sales manager Jeanne White said. “Fischer’s art is beautiful, but it’s also functional.”

To look at him and talk to him you would think that he’s been at this all his life, but not quite. Fischer knew that he loved art, but he was college-age before he realized that he had the ability to create his own.

“I used to cut school to go downtown to exhibits--I was 15 the first time I saw Magritte and I never forgot it. While I was going to Roosevelt University in Chicago, I spent most of my time next door at the Art Institute, just drinking it in.”

However, until he was 20, Fischer says the most creative thing he ever did was spell out “ISRAEL” in Popsicle sticks on the cover of a report for third grade.

Fischer swears he had no idea he had any talent. He couldn’t draw with a pencil and he still can’t, he said. (“My doodles look like something done by my 4-year-old son, Jared.”)

He always loved to watch his best friend, a painter, work but it wasn’t until he met a female artist in 1969 and fell in love that his creative epiphany occurred.

“One night I sat for hours, staring at a painting of Paula’s,” Fischer recalled. “Then, all of a sudden, I was throwing paint all over it.” He then woke her up at 3 in the morning to show her what he’d done; instead of getting furious, she critiqued the effort, telling him how much she liked his use of color. The two were married in 1970.

“Paula taught me to paint and it took me five years to go from abstract to people. I could draw with a paintbrush and when I got started, I got very turned on by the creative process. I still get that feeling when I paint.”

Fischer paints on just about anything and everything. And although his work may be unusual, he has no illusions that his talents are. “I think a lot of people have talent they don’t know they have. They just never investigate their possibilities or meet the person who has the key and they end up leading boring lives.”

Not a chance of this happening to Fischer.

On the personal front, he’s high on his change of venue. There are a few things he misses back in Chicago: son Aaron, 21, now attending De Paul University; good pizza and his mother’s kosher pickles.

But he’s so into California; he’s even made a stab at back-yard barbecue. What’s more, he was thrilled with his first few efforts even if his family did dub them “post-nuclear chicken.”

Professionally, there’s a great deal of interest.

His first major showing here of clothing, furniture and new paintings will open March 25 with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. at Media District Studios in Glendale; the event will be catered by Spago. The show continues through March 28.

Where and When Location: Works by Robert Fischer on exhibit at Rouge Optique, 12265 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Sundays indefinitely. Call: (818) 985-1866. Location: Furniture, clothing and new paintings by Fischer will be exhibited at Media District Studios, 1905 Riverside Drive, Glendale. Hours: Opening 5 to 9 p.m. March 25; show continues through March 28. Call: (818) 846-1905.