ART REVIEWS : New Inspiration From Czechoslovakia

Two exhibitions of prints from Czechoslovakia tell a cliched tale about the relationship between communism and art. At Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery, “Flesh and Spirit: Middle European Reflections on Mythology and Religion Before the Fall of Communism” insists that the impulse to make art is as strong as the human will to live and cannot be crushed--or controlled--by any political system.

At Santa Monica’s Parnas Gallery similar reflections take place, but this time after communism’s fall in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which lead to democratic elections and Vaclav Havel’s presidency. An explosion of color, a wider range of scale, a broader scope of subjects and a greater diversity of styles suggest that communism’s demise was accompanied by a jolt of expressive freedom and a jump of artistic experimentation.

A strong sense of individualism unites these before-and-after exhibitions. The 10 artists in the “before” half appear to be fixated on European art history or stubbornly focused on the grand cycle of life. References to Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces by Brueghel, Caravaggio, Durer, Van Eyck and Vermeer abound, although quotes from rock superstars Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan also enter into the picture, in two collages by Jan Krejci.

Of the 37 works shown, 14 by Jiri Anderle ensure that the exhibition is heavily slanted toward mortality and melancholia. The 57-year-old artist’s realistic, freeze-frame displays of youth’s passage through maturity to death evoke a vanitas tradition, in which the pleasures of the flesh are tempered by the knowledge that they will inevitably pass.

A subtext of rebellion, however, underlies this emphasis on the transitory nature of human existence. Henry F. Klein, the curator of the exhibition and an art professor at L.A. Valley College, contends that Czech and Slovak artists invoked European art history to register their discontent with state programs. They staked their claim to the great tradition of Western individualism, or stoically referred to life’s inevitable passing, in order to sketch an alternative to Soviet influence.

In the “after” half of the show, the past disappears as a point of reference, replaced by the stylistic freedom of Modern art. Realism, social commentary and narrative metaphor give way to individual searches for personal expression. Jaroslav Serych’s stylized figures, Ladislav Kuklik’s brooding women, Josef Dudek’s robot-people and Zdenek Netopil’s tangled nests of flesh outline a wide variety of approaches to the human form and quickly recap the history of Modernism.

Previous art, however, is not the only source for creativity. The more recent work seems to be influenced by photographic reproductions, as if the biggest change brought about by communism’s fall was an influx of glossy magazines. Eva Vlasakova’s colorful monotypes and Tomas Hrivnac’s abstract figures appear to be indebted to illustrations from fashionable periodicals.

Rather than making a convincing argument about communism’s hostility toward art and its flourishing after the fall, the two exhibitions suggest that artists in Czechoslovakia have simply traded one source of inspiration for another, equally valuable influence.

* Laband Art Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Loyola Blvd. at West 80th St., Westchester, (310) 338-2880; and Parnas Gallery, 1547 10th St., Santa Monica, (319) 458-6335; both through Feb. 26. Closed Sundays through Tuesdays.

Deceptively Simple: Six crisp paintings by Penelope Krebs show the 40-year-old, L.A.-based painter to be making the best work of her career. More concentrated and complicated than any of her earlier abstractions, the deceptively simple stripe paintings at Kiyo Higashi Gallery celebrate color in its most wildly unnatural state.

Each approximately two-foot-square panel consists of 11 vertical bands separated by narrow black stripes. Perfectly painted, they recall the seemingly infinite sense of

possibility that races through kids’ minds when they open their first giant box of crayons and gaze, in silent amazement, at the 128 different colors.

Krebs’ oils-on-canvas induce a similar sort of speechlessness. Before their odd combinations of color and exquisite mixes of pigment, the viewer is often at a complete loss for words. Struggling to come up with an adequate description for a single stripe is frustrating in itself, but doubly so when you discover that Krebs has positioned another almost indistinguishable stripe a few bars away.

Its slight differences in tone, hue and value make your description of the first stripe seem grossly inaccurate and in need of radical revision and refinement. These ongoing adjustments and calibrations are mirrored in the queasy tricks the paintings play on your eyes.

The sharp, perfectly ruled contours of their stripes soon begin to warp outward whenever you focus on them. Putting a kink in vision’s clarity, they create the sensation that they might be breathing, pulsing or swelling.

The animate visual energy of Krebs’ new paintings distinguishes them from her earlier, larger, more static abstractions, whose saturated stripes don’t vibrate, but lay on the canvas like flat slabs of color. By contrast, her latest body of work is so optically engaging that it tempts us to think that the best paintings are not inanimate objects at all, but ongoing events that invite us to enter into their flux in order to tune up our eyes.

* Kiyo Higashi Gallery, 8332 Melrose Ave., (312) 655-2482, through Feb. 12. Closed Sundays and Mondays.