More Angst Than Answers Created by Drawing Group

Breaking the shackles of convention is supposed to make you feel good. According to the current exhibition at Loyola Marymount’s Laband Art Gallery it doesn’t always work that way.

The matter at hand is “The Drawing Group--An Emerging School of Los Angeles?” It concerns the work of 13 local contemporary artists in mid-career plus local art historian-cum-draftsman Gerald M. Ackerman, who wrote the exhibition brochure.

The artists all paint, sculpt or draw based on a fundamentally academic rendering of the human figure. In 1994 they banded together for regular sessions of sketching models and critical discussion. The most familiar participants are Jim Doolin, Jon Swihart and sculptor John Frame. His studio has served as the group’s meeting ground.

Frame’s study room is re-created for the exhibition. It’s comfortably crowded with memorabilia and such fusty drawing aids as a model skeleton. But there are also mummies and folk art masks suggesting the group is pretty ecumenical. Lettered in gold at the ceiling line are names of artists that presumably constitute the group’s role models. French salon artist Jean-Leon Gerome is there but so are James Ensor, Lucian Freud and H.C. Westermann, reinforcing the impression of a certain intellectual inclusiveness.

By rather instructive contrast, an adjoining nook is papered with examples of the group’s figure-drawing exercises. Masterful in skill, they are nonetheless about as interesting as watching a middle-aged guy do push-ups. In contrast to the study they raise questions about the capacity of 19th century drawing to embody 20th century attitudes.

According to gallery director Gordon L. Fuglie, the group came together to compensate for a sense of cultural isolation from current artistic trends. Every sensitive soul in L.A. gets alienation vibes. It goes with the geography. These folks, however, seem to feel marginalized because they’re figurative artists. Frankly, that doesn’t make a lot of sense in an area that counts David Hockney among its most admired art heroes.

The group includes three artists who prove that great figure drawing has never been more relevant or more in demand. Steven Dean Moore has a day job as an animation director for “The Simpsons” TV series. Brian Apthorp draws for “Batman” comics. Ken Jones links his art to the skateboard subculture and underground comics.

All three wield their pens with wonderful suppleness and seem to have fun. By contrast, the principal emotional vector uniting the otherwise diverse fine arts contingent is a sense of serious worry.

The best of these people deserve admiration and respect, but it’s impossible to look at them in a detached mood and fail to notice a kind of haunted tension. It’s as if they think the world’s about to fall apart. There’s even something vaguely apocalyptic about Doolin’s nominally pastoral and technically astonishing aerial views of historic L.A.

Swihart’s amazing miniature magic-realist compositions re-create ancient mysteries in modern dress. His “Tenax Vitale” (Tenacious Life) depicts Frame in a forest contemplating his twin self either napping or dead. The sculptor’s own ingenious wood carvings have one foot in the Medieval Ship of Fools.

F. Scott Hess’ complex compositions blend the Flemish religious past of Hugo van der Goes with the satire of Paul Cadmus. His “The Red Door” depicts a band of suburban lugs breaking in on two nude guys in the midst of what appears to be an S&M; ritual.

Stephen Douglas’ full-length portraits blend Eakins and Sargent into a dilemma about the fate of heroism in a world ruled by anomie. Peter Zokosky evokes Balthus’ obsession with young girls in a group portrait of his fellow members ogling a model. It manages to be neither sexy nor disapproving.

Frequently this art dives into moral dilemmas only to find itself neutralized. All that remains is existential angst. If that all somehow points to a concern about the fate of the individual in an increasingly collective electronic Gothic Baroque culture, they’ve probably got a point.

Other participants include Cecilia Miguez, Wes Christensen, Luis Serrano and Lauren Richardson.

* Loyola Marymount University, Laband Art Gallery, 7900 Loyola Blvd. Ends next Saturday. Closed Sunday through Tuesday. (310) 338-2880.