‘Video Art’ Gives Maligned Genre a Rewarding Boost

Video art is a form many gallery devotees will not touch with a 12-foot remote. It has, unfortunately, earned its bad reputation as a haven of self-indulgent amateurs who think they can make art out of a jumble of shots set against a mysteriously incoherent soundtrack with running times that seem longer than a Chinese opera.

All the same, when an exhibition titled “Video Art: The First 25 Years” turns up at a showcase as respectable as the Art Center’s Williamson Gallery, anticipatory suspicion is somewhat mollified. The title has a nice definitive ring. The impression only expands on learning the anthology’s organizers are none other than New York’s venerable Museum of Modern Art and the American Federation of Arts. Winnowed by MOMA curator Barbara London, this should be the creme de la creme from a quarter-century of combined effort, the classics of the genre. Maybe it’s worth a shot.

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On the other hand, the menu sounds daunting. Four thematic programs encompass some 60 works requiring in excess of 6 1/2 hours for complete viewing. Art Center gallery director Stephen Nowlin humanely ameliorated this pickle by turning his emporium into an ad hoc Cineplex. Four viewing spaces are tricked out with theater-size screens. Visitors can get a decent sampling while editing out the boring stuff. (Feeling occupationally obliged to do it all, I borrowed a set of tapes to watch at home.)

It turned out to be a rewarding experience even though--considering the amount of work that’s out there--the quality falloff is precipitous. About 15 pieces are bona fide works of art. The best are masterpieces that fulfill video art’s aspiration to fruitfully mine turf ignored by mainstream television.

None of them shows up in the first program, “Gender and Convention.” The inherently predictable and over-generalized nature of the subject seems to repel attempts to turn it into art. Dara Birnbaum’s “Damnation of Faust: Evocation” succeeds by failing to be anything more than nicely cut footage of a sunny day at a playground. Tony Cokes’ “Confession”--an endlessly pedantic, obscure feminist broadside--would be brilliant simply edited to a short epilogue of Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit.”

Five of seven works in “Autobiographical Voices” are compellingly original. Juan Downey’s “The Laughing Alligator” documents a spiritual quest to the Amazon rain forest where he and his family lived among the ferocious Yanomami people. Downey says he went there believing they were cannibals and hoping to be eaten. He isn’t, but the strangeness and suspense of his primitive quest makes Werner Herzog look a little tame.

Vanalyne Green’s “Trick or Drink” manages to convey the actual sensations of being the child of hopelessly alcoholic parents. By contrast, Ilene Segalove delivers the surreal, edgy humor of living in Southern California’s sitcom suburbs.

The hands-down classic of the “Media and Process” program is Woody Vasulka’s “Art of Memory.” A kind of techno-psychedelic dreamscape, it interweaves panoramas of nature with scenes of this century’s human carnage. It’s an operatic world overseen by a winged figure perched on a cliff, part Satan, part Icarus. When an ordinary man appears and tries to dislodge him, the man is made to vanish. Vasulka takes the cliched question of humankind’s abuse of its beautiful home and raises it to the level of epic metaphysical poetry.

Unfortunately, L.A.’s local hero, Bill Viola, is not particularly well-represented, but Peter Callas’ “Neo-Geo: An American Purchase” is a cartoon Expressionist hoot. “Performance and the Body” begins with a brace of early short works by William Wegman. It’s fun to revisit such drolleries as watching him crawl away from the camera dribbling milk from his mouth only to have his dog, Man Ray, immediately lick it all up. Wegman is so naturally funny it’s easy to forget his importance as a conceptual pioneer.

Good work follows by Laurie Anderson, Stuart Sherman and the collaborative “Ear to the Ground” by Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn. The deserved finale is Charles Atlas’ “The Myth of Modern Dance.” It’s hard to say exactly why this satirical spoof is so hilarious. Part of it comes from wacky abstract backdrops where the dancer moves as if on air. Another part is the brilliant ineptitude of the dancer, Douglas Dunn.

* Art Center College of Design, Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena; through Sept. 21, closed Mondays and holidays. (818) 396-2244.