Three Strikes Indicate Starters Weren’t Ready

Now that the Laguna Art Museum is finally open for business with its first full roster of exhibitions since gaining independence from the Orange County Museum of Art in April, it’s time for . . . well, rejoicing isn’t quite the word. Reassessment is more like it.

Although a few things are worth seeing at the museum this summer, the net impression is that it has sunk back into the provincial torpor that early-’90s director Charles Desmarais labored so hard to eradicate.

The institution is attempting to make do with a fraction of its former $1-million budget and with only two paid staff members, including harried director Bolton Colburn, who also serves as curator. While most museums plan and finance their shows years in advance, Colburn had to scramble to fill the space once last spring’s stop-gap juried exhibition was dismantled.

Nevertheless, once a museum opens the doors and starts to charge full admission, the exhibitions must stand on their own. No amount of civic drum-beating by the new museum trustees, most of whom are still learning about professional museum standards and practices, can alter what’s in the galleries.

On the surface, the current lineup would seem to appeal to each segment of the museum’s current or potential audience: traditionalists (an airing of locally painted Impressionist canvases), beach- and popular-culture fans (vintage surfing photos) and the contemporary art crowd (two installations and a new piece from the permanent collection the museum shares with OCMA).

But none of the shows (except for the new acquisition, Tony Oursler’s video installation “Come to Me”) present the museum in a strong light. They all suffer from some form of second-rate-ness and the sense that not enough time or thought has gone into their presentation.

The Oursler is an uncannily disturbing piece by the 40-year-old New York artist in which a video of man speaking is projected onto a grotesquely bulbous molded head.

Alternately wheedling and whining, flattering and threatening, the grimacing head implores the viewer to come closer and be “friends.” He continuously blames his eruptions of yowling physical discomfort on the listener’s refusal to cozy up to him.

“It’s not what you think--it’s not dirty,” he murmurs. “The distance between us--it’s the distance that’s causing the pain. . . . I know you can control it. You like me better when I’m in pain. Is it because I’m in pain that you like me? Make it stop! . . . I’m not going to let myself be used by you. . . . I didn’t mean it. I think about you a lot.”

There is something uncomfortably compelling about witnessing the man’s obviously disordered mental state. For all its contradictory, manipulative abrasiveness, his personality actually is not so alien. He voices the roiling emotions that we may suffer in bitter silence when it seems impossible to connect with people or to influence their behavior.

On another level, the hypnotic allure of the diatribe parallels the experience of passively watching TV, temporarily merging our identities with an endless parade of real and imaginary people.

The museum wisely tapped former Laguna curator Michael McManus to write a wall text for the Oursler. No such interpretive finesse graces the zillionth showing of Laguna Beach Impressionist paintings from local collections.

There is just one innovation: small photographs of a few of the scenes in the paintings, showing what they look like today--a blunt reminder of paradise lost.

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Middle-aged surfers today are just about as nostalgic for a lost Eden as viewers who can’t get enough of plein-air paintings, but they represent a much more specialized coterie. For nonspecialists, looking at “San Onofre to Point Dume, 1936-1942: Surf Photographs by Don James” is like paging through a stranger’s photo album while he reminisces about old friends.

All the photos are tiny snapshots--young people hanging out at the beach and a few silhouetted glimpses of surfers in action--captioned with comments by some of the people involved. Documents of the era when a small group of young Southern Californians revived an ancient Hawaiian thrill-ride, these pictures are much more effective in the intimate compass of a small, limited-edition book published last year, from which the title of the show was taken.

It’s hard to reconcile the photos with guest curator Craig R. Stecyk’s breathless praise (in a wall text) of James’ “innovative [technical] prowess . . . in hazardous environments.” He is referring to James’ subsequent surfing action shots--none of which appear in the show--that were published in national magazines.

That’s a peculiar omission, but the major problem with the exhibition is its unconscionably narrow focus. Instead of relating the images on view to a broader social context (youth culture, amateur sports, prewar Southern California mores, the snapshot aesthetic), Stecyk offers only the tunnel vision and gee-whiz enthusiasm of a rabid fan.

One lesson that should have been learned from Stecyk’s 1993 “Kustom Kulture” show at the museum is that his insider information needs to be leavened with the broader, analytical approach of a more dispassionate and scholarly observer.

Finally, “The Los Angeles/Amsterdam International Exchange: Marcos Luytens and Elena Beelaerts,”--part of “Booster Up Dutch Courage,” an offshoot of the Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair--turns out to be two confusingly intertwined installations that look like community art center fare.

Beelaerts, a young Dutch artist, has contributed a supine Styrofoam figure wrapped in a bundle of plastic tubing, which looks like a jokey, thrift-store take on Neo-Expressionism, and a playfully surreal self-portrait photograph as a squid plus a couple of amateurish-looking paintings.

The installation by Luytens, who lives in L.A., includes a reflecting pool (“Imagine a Blind Turtle”) that is supposed to be activated by auditory sensors in the gallery (which weren’t functioning on the day I visited), a sound piece involving New Age-y hypnotic suggestion and “The Homecoming,” a wall piece in which giant double spirals of electrical tape contain what appear to be doorbell mechanisms. It just doesn’t add up, and the artists’ own words (in photocopied correspondence) are no help.

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Despite the inherent symbolism of opening the museum to the community as soon as possible, the institution may have done itself a disservice in the long run.

It might have been wiser to keep the galleries dark and rely on a publicity campaign to keep public attention focused until the museum could hire a full-time curator and assemble a first-rate program of exhibitions. Right now, the institution looks like it won the battle but lost the war.

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“Tony Oursler’s ‘Come to Me,’ ” the Los Angeles / Amsterdam Invitational Exchange: Marcos Lutyens and Elena Beelaerts,” “San Onofre to Point Dume, 1936-1942: Surf Photographs by Don James” and “Laguna Beach Impressionism 1900-1930,” all through Sept. 28 at the Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Admission: $5 adults, $4 seniors and students, under 12 free. (714) 494-6531.