ART REVIEWS : ‘Best’ a Tribute to an Artist of Courage

Mark Niblock-Smith was a local artist who died of AIDS-related cancer in 1993 when he was just 35. Presently a retrospective of his oeuvre occupies the gallery at Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts, where he worked as an instructor.

Much on view directly mirrors his experience with the plague. A couple of large posters designed for bus shelters warn waiting passengers of the danger of infection with brief but affecting narratives.

The first large work is a room-installation, “Untitled (Dream).” It consists of projected dissolving images of clouds and the sound of garbled airport announcements. Signs lettered with AIDS-related acronyms like HIV and SIDA hang on walls flanking the main narrative. It recounts a dream where the artist, waiting for departure, sees dancing seals in the sky. Gradually he realizes that these beautiful creatures soon drift downward to death on the ground.

The final work is another installation, the artist’s last. Its title, “Personal Best,” serves the whole exhibition. Its central icon is a life-size photo of Niblock-Smith. Emaciated and nude, save a loincloth and a catheter hanging from his chest, he strikes a pose reminiscent of Renaissance paintings of martyred saints.

The floor is covered in serried ranks of objects that look, at first, like run-of-the-mill precious-junk plastic. They turn out to be the myriad containers of medication, hypodermic needles and other paraphernalia used in the hope of controlling the disease. There are altar-like accumulations of nostalgic photos, piles of medical bills and coping pamphlets.

Moving and poetic in undercurrent, all these works, nonetheless, have a political aspect. They feel like part of an ongoing attempt on the part of the art-linked gay community to raise public consciousness so that the government will intensify its efforts to find a cure for AIDS, an effort many of them believe slowed by a homophobic bias in the Establishment.

Important as that effort is, furthering it in this way can be counterproductive. Arts’ real job is the illumination of the human condition. If it is perceived as a vehicle for special pleading no one but those immediately involved will pay attention and a praiseworthy attempt will fail. People who feel themselves outside the endangered circle will either find a cause closer to them or simply go about their pleasures.

Angelenos are stereotypically notorious in their pursuit of private fun. L.A. art is traditionally rather sensuous and resistant to dealing directly with life’s inevitable tragic factor.

Niblock-Smith seems to have had all this in mind when he undertook the middle body of work on view. It harks back to the first group of L.A. artists to seriously address tragedy, the Assemblagists of the ‘50s. Ed Kienholz was notable among them, not only for facing life’s dark side but dealing in such social themes as abortion and child abuse as universal issues. Niblock-Smith’s version of Assemblage echoes all that in a way that marks him as an artist for everyone, an artist of courage, compassion and wit. There are fetish-objects that make fun of fetishism while finding it endearing. “Buddy” is a set of trophy antlers wearing a knitted cap of red and white that makes you understand the killed beast was one of Santa’s reindeer. “Noble Friend” is a phallic gourd shape all trussed up in leather and wearing a jeweled collar and leash that makes bondage seem cute.

A series of portrait boxes make good use of Kienholz’s Victorian-Gothic atmosphere. They recount tales of friends who died in absurd ways, such as a little girl who so delighted in pogo-sticking she bounced herself over the edge of a cliff. An avid shopper falls fatally down the mall escalator. Each narrative is accompanied by a biblical verse dipped in irony. A rich and hypocritical evangelist is at the museum pursuing his passion for art when a crazed art student stabs him to death. The verse, of course, is “Beware of false prophets.”

All these works share the theme of dying in pursuit of a passion. That, of course is how people get AIDS. The search for love or a good high-kills them. By extension, everybody has within them a dormant condition that, if activated, can be lethal whether it be a renegade cell or a compelling need to drive too fast. That is what makes AIDS a fit subject for the illumination of the whole human condition. Even the healthiest and most cautious among us tests mortality-positive.

“Personal Best: The Art of Mark Niblock-Smith” was organized by gallery director Jay Belloli and the artist’s companion, Roger Workman. A nice little catalogue has additional essays by Jeffrey Herr and Jennie Klein.

* Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; through June 11, closed Monday, Tuesday, (818) 792-5105.