Two Shows That Celebrate Philanthropy

Despite generally good economic news, museums remain jumpy in a political climate that hardly favors the arts. It’s therefore not surprising to find a pair of exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art whose titles emphasize its reliance on the kindness of donors.

“Developing a Collection: The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Art of Photography” presents about 100 prints that the museum acquired thanks to the foundation’s generosity. “Hirado Porcelain of Japan From the Kurtzman Family Collection” displays 85 examples of sumptuously understated ceramics, which constitute a promised gift.

The ultimate beneficiary of such largess, of course, is us, the public. And we have the luxury of just kicking back and enjoying the art.

The Parsons exhibition includes an international sweep of modern masters ranging from Ansel Adams to Andre Kertesz and Alexander Rodchenko. It’s arranged in such conventional categories as figures and portraits, industrial and urban landscape plus formal still-life arrangements that reveal collective concerns.

I was particularly struck by a general contrast between the humanism of older prints and a kind of general distress among newer works.

In the recent pure landscape prints, it’s possible to detect worry about a natural world under extreme stress. Antonio Turok Wallace’s “Mexico” recalls Van Gogh in its image of crows in mad flight. Joseph Bartscherer’s “Fourth-leaf poplar break and apricots” turns wind into a malevolent specter.

A different sort of blight appears in landscapes that include man-made structures. John Humble’s “Selma Ave. at Vine Street, Hollywood, January 23, 1991” has particular local resonance. The composition is dominated by one billboard advertising a disc jockey and another trumpeting the sexiness of a celebrity wannabe. These are L.A. types who, in effect, wish to be objects.

The theme continues in two oversize figurative works by Joel Sternfeld. One depicts a woman at her digs in Malibu. Dressed in psychedelic exercise tights, she’s preparing a veggie dinner against the background of a spectacular ocean panorama. The other print similarly shows an investment banker apparently doing a deal on the phone while he works out. The people have exactly the same presence as their possessions. They’ve achieved thing-hood.

One of the few of the recent prints with some hopeful resonance is Carrie May Weems’ interior composition. A couple are all dressed up having lobster and wine at the kitchen table of their run-down apartment. The woman, although distracted, strokes her man affectionately.

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If the photo show is slightly unsettling, the Japanese porcelains seem a calm, reassuring reminder of civilized stability. That’s a little misleading since Japan quite literally captured the ceramic form in the late 16th century, swiping numerous Korean master potters during an otherwise pointless war. One of their descendants took the name Imamura Sannojo. He discovered kaolin--the crucial ingredient for making porcelain clay--at the Japanese village of Mikawachi. Thus was launched Hirado Mikawachi ware.

It stands in vivid contrast to the rough spontaneity of the Zen-influenced raku ceramics many Americans associate with Japanese clay art. Hirado, with its whiter-than-milk base and classic blue glaze, reveals its sources in China and Korea. Aesthetically, its most surprising quality is in combining cool purity with baroque virtuosity.

A pair of 19th century lanterns with openwork porcelain screens sport painted landscapes, cranes and mock-ferocious dragon reliefs. Less than 2 feet tall, the pieces manage the presence of life-size fixtures on a ceremonial path. The tapered neck of a modest sake flask achieves elegance, while its painting of a scholar and his attendant brings the work down to earth.

A large population of porcelain animals inhabits the show. There are magisterial dragons and guardian lions along with cuddly koi, rabbits and dogs plus lovable boars, oxen and assorted monsters. That their makers managed to avoid turning them into kitsch is a compliment beyond calculation.

The porcelains were assembled by LACMA’s curator of Japanese art Robert Singer and his associate Hollis Goodall. Both contributed essays to the slender catalog. Cameraworks were selected by Robert A. Sobieski and Tim B. Wride, respectively LACMA’s principal and assistant curators of photography.

* “Developing a Collection: The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the Art of Photography” and “Hirado Porcelain of Japan From the Kurtzman Family Collection,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; both exhibitions through March 30, closed Wednesdays, (213) 857-6000.