ART REVIEW : Exhibit’s Saving Graces Are Few and Far Between

It does not exactly instill confidence when the labels for a group exhibition are riddled with errors:

* Erroneously implying that artists Marc Chagall, Stanley William Hayter and Paul Delvaux are still living.

* And translating the French title of a Matisse lithograph as “Dancer, Head Perspiring” instead of “Dancer, Head Partly Visible.”

Even more curious is when a show combines works by renowned modernists--lent by the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock--with works by Southern California college students. And it’s absolutely astounding when background information is provided only for the student pieces!

Add the uneven quality of the work in “Great Prints: European Modernists and the Next Near Wave,” at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center (through Feb. 26), and it’s hard to see the point of having such a show.

To be sure, we in Orange County don’t get to see a print by Georges Braque or Kathe Kollwitz every day. But please, quality and context count, as do the art historical details.

Granted, there are a few bright spots.

The Kollwitz etching--”Sharpening the Scythe,” from 1905--is a splendid example of the socially conscious German artist’s ability to imbue humble actions with intense passion. The figure’s clenched knuckles, narrowed eyes and distorted cheek--dented by the massive tool--emerge from the soft blackness with wrenching clarity.

Also noteworthy are an undated, untitled lithograph of a Dutch prostitute and her client by Beckmann (who borrows the sexual iconography of his pipe and her shoe from 17th-Century Dutch art) and “The Secret” by the Surrealist Delvaux, a lithograph of two zombie-eyed girls locked in a disturbing caress. Elisabeth Frink, a rather obscure British artist better known as a sculptor of animals, is represented by a delicate lithograph of a horse’s head, emphasizing both its skeletal structure and tactile qualities.

An undated conceptual piece by Pierre Alechinsky, a member of CoBrA (an experimental artists’ group formed in 1948 by residents of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam), combines various notaries’ letterheads and 19th-Century document fragments with sexual imagery to startlingly contemporary effect. The title, “Avenir de la Propriete,” or “The Future of Property” (which, annoyingly, is not translated) involves a pun on the French word for legal summons ( avenir ).

Lacking a discernible theme or historical thread--or even the customary discussion of printmaking techniques--this show also tends to represent famous artists by work made many years after their stars fell in the artistic firmament.

The Braque--”Poster for a Love Letter,” dating from 1963, the year of his death--is a mere trifle, light years removed from his groundbreaking Cubist works of the early 20th Century.

The student portion of the show contains works in traditional and contemporary styles, as well as some on non-traditional materials (a dress, a plaster torso).

In terms of tone, craft and overall concept, Saddleback College student Atsuko Okamoto’s illustrations for a poem by Kenji Miyazawa, “Eiketsu no Asa” (The Morning of Eternal Painting) is a standout. The blue and white images--of cupped hands, snow-blanketed fields, a white tree haunted by a blue ghost--beautifully reflect the distracted mood of the poet, writing about his sister’s death in winter.

Also worthy of note are Chuck Chugunlung’s weird, small, untitled etching (of a blind boy whose broad grin is attached to a string wrapped around his head) and Janice Ledgerwood’s “Homecoming” (in which a text inscribed on a party dress matter-of-factly recounts a teen-age rape). The girl’s violated nakedness appears in a photo-etching printed on the front of the skirt--a ghost image of the event she kept secret “for years.”

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“Great Prints: European Modernists and the Next Near Wave,” through Feb. 26 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Free. (714) 738-6595.