A Little Slow on the Draw : Golden West Exhibition’s Focus on Works From the Past Ignores What’s Fresh Today

In a short video that accompanies “MIND + EYE + HAND + HEART,” a group exhibition of contemporary figurative drawing at Golden West College’s Fine Arts Gallery, veteran artist Jim Dine explains that the particular images he has used over and over (such as the hearts and bathrobes of the 1960s and ‘70s) have come to him from “random thoughts and dreams.”

Indeed, without substantial access to imaginative resources, a figurative draftsperson is little more than a plodding illustrator. But today, the stakes are even higher.

Once a stepchild of painting (though always prized for its fluency and immediacy), drawing has become a prime medium in its own right. But its ascendancy as a conceptual-art medium has doomed traditional figure-drawing to wallflower status. Only work by exceptional stylists still looks fresh and vital.

This exhibition is a disappointment because it gives little idea of the fresh side of drawing today. Of the seven artists, three turn out work that is stolidly academic (Stephen Namara, Robert Schultz, Bill Vuksanovitch). One (Jim Morphesis) continues to churn out Neo-Expressionist images of bulky male torsos often titled to suggest a classical reference; now that the mock-heroics of art in the ‘80s are (thankfully) a dim memory, these pieces look tiresomely mannered and overblown.

That leaves us with Dine, represented by two large, pensive ‘70s drawings of women, and--praise be!--a suite of vivid images by the Joyce Treiman and several captivating views of skateboarders by Sandow Birk.

Treiman, who died in 1991 at 69, was a legendary Los Angeles artist who married an extraordinary facility for draftsmanship with a searching interest in the history of art, a self-deprecating wit and a keen eye for the riddles and odd conjunctions of life.

Treiman’s “Torso and Boxers” is a sheet of drawings that are as related or unrelated as the viewer chooses to make them. At the top of the paper, the artist has soberly outlined the head and torso of a firm-bodied, supine man whose stiffness and style of beard suggests a fallen ancient Roman statue. Below, two boxers raise gloved hands in victory, vitalized by Treiman’s vivid mingling of black and red markings.

Aha!, the viewer thinks: There’s a link here between classical and contemporary notions of sport; of the spoils due the victors; of the passage of time as the ultimate “winner.”

But there are two other images on the sheet: a woman’s head, tilted back and open-mouthed, and, above her, as if propped up in bed, a rather evilly grinning man with a bare shoulder. Sexual conquest and its ramifications add yet another facet of “victory.”

In another, untitled drawing, Treiman divides the paper horizontally between the framed image--as if in a viewfinder--of an elk looking straight out at the viewer and that of a bearded man with an arc of darkness suspended like a halo above his head.

What is the link between the magnificent, vulnerable animal and the guarded-looking man, seemingly viewed in his own, shadowy lair? Treiman lets the viewer connect the dots.

Other drawings on view by Treiman mock her own diminutive, aging figure, labeled as “The Joker,” or reinterpret a beloved artist’s style with flair and personality (“Study for Rose, Me and Bonnard,” an outdoor portrait bathed in shadow and light).

Birk’s drawings of skateboarders wiping out are reminiscent of Robert Longo’s large-scale ‘80s images of smartly dressed yuppies knocked off balance into flat white space. But while Longo emphasized the brittle angst of his subjects, Birk uses figural displacement to evoke adolescent awkwardness.

The youths’ clumsy, splay-bodied falls are emphasized by their ungainly attire (oversized pants and shirts) and their transitional bodies (smooth faces, legs sprouting hair).

Birk seems to revel in contrasts: between the balance and agility needed to be a skater and the deliberately oafish skate fashions; between split-second airborne expertise and the splat of a body unable to resist centrifugal force.

In one of these drawings, “Backside Grind Skater,” Birk gets a bit more daring, flattening one of the falling boarder’s wide black pant legs in a way that makes his arms look frail and vulnerable, and gives his body the abstractly mechanical look of an opened penknife.

Dine came to prominence in the ‘60s, mostly because of his apparent link--as an artist focusing on single, easily recognizable objects--to Pop Art. But he lacked the coolness of the Pop artists; he remained in thrall to an expressive style of painting and to objects with a symbolic personal meaning.

The women’s portraits by Dine in the show don’t make much of a case for his specialness as an artist. His “portraits” of inanimate things, whether in charcoal and graphite or paint, are fascinating because of their curious mixture of ineffable symbolism and everyday simplicity.

The painterliness and emotional weight invested in the bony contours and delicate profile of Dine’s “A Reddish Nude” marks the charcoal, oil and crayon study as the work of a highly accomplished artist. But if Dine were known only for work like this--keenly observed, sensitively drawn, but not particularly distinctive--chances are he would be laboring in genteel obscurity today.

Yes, fashion--ocular and conceptual fashion--plays a part in all this. Because of other artists’ fresh visions, we don’t see the same way today as we did 30 years ago. And the fallout for figurative art is substantial.

* “MIND + EYE + HAND + HEART,” at the Fine Arts Gallery, Golden West College, 15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach. Free. Hours: 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Monday-Friday (Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, 6-9). Through April 19. (714) 895-8783.