Photo Exhibitions Spotlight Magical Worlds of Rock, Jazz

In four short paragraphs of an amazing six-page story in “Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy,” critic Dave Hickey suggests that pretty much all of the 20th century’s best art belongs either to the Age of Jazz or the Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll. At Fahey/Klein Gallery, a pair of solo shows by photographers Jim Marshall and Herman Leonard outline those radically different worlds.

Virtuoso solo performances define the former era, in which individual musicians improvise a type of tragic theater that, in failing to attain its goals, delivers a loaded dose of poignant melancholy laced with searing soulfulness.

In contrast, giddy group dynamics characterize the latter age of comic delicacy whose bands--striving to get their songs right--sometimes play so fast and furiously that you feel the imperfections of their performances as stirring instances of the spirit made flesh.

The larger, more rambunctious of the two shows consists of 63 black-and-white photographs of famous rock ‘n’ rollers. The majority of Marshall’s pictures date from rock’s heyday--1962 to 1972--and include classic portraits of Chuck Berry (teasing a spine-tingling chord from his guitar), Janis Joplin (wearing a glittery shift as she flirts with her demons on a polyester couch) and Jimi Hendrix (so deeply engrossed in a sound check that he looks positively transcendent).

Marshall specializes in the presentation of the hearts and souls of superstars, shot before the glaze of fame eclipsed their raw genius or outside the glare of the otherwise ever-present spotlight. Whether snapped in the intimacy of the recording studio or in backstage privacy, the photographer’s most memorable images depict stars shorn of their auras: regular folks whose talents alone distinguish them from you and me.

Among Marshall’s best prints is one of Ray Charles belting out a song in 1962. In another, Paul McCartney and John Lennon grin like gleeful adolescents as they perform in Candlestick Park in 1966. In a more vigorous vein, Johnny Cash gestures obscenely while playing in San Quentin Prison in 1970.

Likewise, a print lit by harsh afternoon sunlight depicts the members of Led Zeppelin struggling to stay awake in the back of a limousine in 1971. In a shot from the following year, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards lay down some licks as if they’re two sides of the same coin, embodying the double-edged lyrics of “Exile on Main Street” while playing its heroin-tinged melodies.

As a group, Marshall’s photographs capture rock’s magic. Unpretentious, unrehearsed and stripped of embellishments, these straightforward pictures reveal that rock ‘n’ rollers are performers who are themselves only when they’re on stage.

Actors or models are always posing or preening or putting on airs, but rock musicians sometimes get beyond such guises in the heat of their performances. Caught up in the music they’re making, they shed their personas only when they’re exposed to the gaze of the audience. Naked, vulnerable and fully visible, these public artists represent a type of honesty that exceeds anything they do backstage or say in press conferences or interviews.

In contrast, Leonard’s 31 black-and-white photographs of famous jazz musicians from the 1940s and ‘50s look studied and staged. Undeniably beautiful, their back-lit swirls of cigarette smoke, smartly arranged layouts and meticulous compositions bespeak a more interior sort of artistry.

In contrast to Marshall’s shoot-from-the-hip pictures, which are set in airplanes and alleys, back rooms and buses, limousines and lobbies, Leonard’s prints appear to be gorgeous still lifes--generic, theatrical backdrops against which such stars as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie shine, as they cut loose on their inimitable improvisations. Grand pianos, saxophones and cellos, set in shadowy nightclubs adorned with linen tablecloths, crystal ashtrays and champagne glasses are part of the semi-public spaces in which jazz unfolds.

As do rock ‘n’ rollers, great jazz musicians get lost in the moment, but the magic they enact takes place along more solitary, interior journeys, soul-searching adventures that cannot be repeated but only recalled as lost possibilities.

Paired, the photographs by Leonard and Marshall outline the two principal paths American art has followed this century: Expressionist improvisation and Pop publicity. Although each style maintains its distinctness, both break free of the boring ordinariness that often plagues everyday existence.

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* Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 934-2250, through Nov. 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.