Photographs Illuminate Barbie’s Perfect World

Barbie Millicent Roberts and David Levinthal are a match made in heaven. Next year, the most popular doll in the world turns 40, and a more suitable artist could not be found to pay homage to the 13-inch American icon with whom everyone seems to be on a first-name basis.

Few mass-produced objects galvanize attention and opinion as forcefully as the brilliantly marketed gal who brought French couture to Middle American teens, shoring up some stereotypes about women while unsettling others. At Mark Moore Gallery, Levinthal is wise not to get in the way of most viewers’ intimate relationship with Barbie. Knowing a good thing when he’s got it, the New York-based photographer leaves plenty of room for fantasized projections, never coming between a viewer and the object of his or her desire, however ambiguous it may be.

Remarkably straightforward, Levinthal’s large-format Polaroid shots generally present a solitary doll standing before a monochromatic backdrop. Sheer elegance radiates from these formal portraits, particularly a black-on-black composition in which a blond, blue-eyed Barbie from 1966 projects fabulous self-confidence in a strapless silk sheath. In a related print, having shed her pearl necklace, slipped out of her heels and turned her back to viewers, she embodies the teasing play of sexy suggestiveness, as well as that of high-brow discretion or good-girl unavailability.

A trio of close-ups highlights the dolls’ perfectly coiffed hairdos, lavish eye shadow, shiny red lipstick and miniature jewelry. With their heads tilted ever so coyly, these perky figurines strike silently attentive poses no different from those that seem to come naturally to women who are unafraid to use their wily charms for whatever purposes they see fit.

But all is not glamorous in Barbie’s idealized world. Two Ponytail Barbies from 1960 (one blond, the other brunet) wear complementary gold-brocade cocktail sheaths and stand as if mirror images of one another. Their pulled-back hair, pinched lips and oddly proportioned heads give them the shrill, menacing presence of fateful Sirens or modern harpies.

The earliest doll on display is the German toy Lilli, on whom Barbie was modeled. Tarted up in a red halter that barely covers her bust, she perches on a hot rod’s roll bar and looks like Barbie’s wall-eyed cousin from the other side of the tracks.

Celebrating Barbie’s rise from her trashy origin as a shameless bimbo to the dazzling celebrity of a breathtaking sophisticate, Levinthal’s survey of the doll’s life says as much about any girl’s desire to grow up as it does about stereotypes so powerful they eventually become myths.

* Mark Moore Gallery, 2032A Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-3031, through Nov. 28. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Trying to Fit In: Marked by a perfunctory, just-good-enough-to-get-the-job-done quality, Mark Grotjahn’s paintings and works on paper are both refreshingly unpretentious and guardedly unambitious. At Blum & Poe Gallery, the young artist’s third solo show of the season appears to be more concerned about fitting into its surroundings than standing out from the crowd.

Grotjahn’s two largest paintings look best from far away. Each vertical work consists of three horizontal fields, themselves made up of brightly colored stripes that swiftly recede to a point on their tiered horizons. Creating woozy optical effects that make the room seem to sway, these rudimentary pattern paintings recall Op Art and its myriad offshoots--generic compositions that once decorated rec rooms and parking structures.

From close up, Grotjahn’s images convey an entirely different sensibility. Each angled stripe seems to have been painted with the goal of using as little paint as possible. Brush strokes are parsimoniously doled out. Pencil lines are visible, as is the weave of the thinly covered linen.

If Grotjahn had wanted to make crisp, vivid images, panels of wood or aluminum and thicker layers of paint would have better served this purpose. His use of oil on linen (even more prestigious than oil on canvas) suggests that his aim is to articulate an idea about abstract painting rather than to exploit the physical qualities of a chosen material.

Two groups of handmade signs, displayed alongside Grotjahn’s own works, clarify his intentions. Made by merchants to advertise a house specialty or to warn against reading unpurchased magazines, these cardboard panels communicate direct, sometimes blunt messages. Grotjahn obtained the used signs by trading new duplicates he had made, often on sturdier materials.

His exhibition is on the mark when it asserts that art galleries are small businesses that are not fundamentally different from mom ‘n’ pop restaurants. His show sells itself short, however, by merely making this point.

While trading homemade signs with merchants may be a satisfying activity for the artist, serving up its souvenirs leaves viewers with little to experience. By modeling his own work on the hand-painted signs found in stores, Grotjahn acts as if the actual goods and services sold there were less important than their accompanying announcements. Art may be a sign that informs and instructs, but it’s also a product that satisfies more complicated desires.

* Blum & Poe Gallery, 2042 Broadway, Santa Monica, (310) 453-8311, through Dec. 19. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Country Escapes: David Ligare’s new paintings at Koplin Gallery reveal a deep streak of Romanticism running through an otherwise stuffy Neoclassical oeuvre.

Gone from Ligare’s meticulously rendered images are the toga-clad figures posing among ancient ruins and the clean-cut individuals acting out Greek myths, whose brutal violence their stilted gestures and emotionless expressions never managed to capture. Taking the place of these beatific figures is nothing but the timeless drama of late-afternoon sunlight as it casts long shadows and bathes the uninhabited countryside in its warm fading glow.

Set in Monterey County, the artist’s landscapes feature clouds scudding through the sky over rolling coastal hills, gently sloping valleys and slowly flowing rivers. All poise and serenity, the best of his variously scaled canvases give vivid physical form to those moments of silent stillness we city-dwellers sometimes experience when we get up before sunrise and feel the unspoiled potential of the breaking day.

Transferring this perception of energized tranquillity to the hours before twilight, Ligare’s becalmed pictures are endowed with a touch of retrospective meditation. One of the best things about his new works is they no longer presume to incite reflection on the entire history of Western civilization. Instead, they simply invite viewers to look back on more modest spans of time--days, seasons, or the years that make up a lifetime or two.

Ligare’s astutely observed and consummately crafted landscapes now leave more room for the present. Similarly, his small works often outshine his large ones, especially in terms of intensity of impact.

For example, the 7-by-10-inch study for “Broad Landscape With a River” is a gem of a painting that possesses so much compressed clarity that all of its elements feel as if they have the weight, density and substance of the real thing. In contrast, the large version of the same scene, which measures approximately 6 by 10 feet, is airier and less precise.

Although some of its elements equal the crystalline vividness of the small picture (like the sunlight reflected off the river’s glassy surface), other components (like the towering cumulus clouds) are too indistinct to be more than pale reflections of the world they refer to. Like his earlier images, these imprecise sections make some of Ligare’s large paintings feel staged and artificial--no match for the vitality that otherwise animates his new work.

* Koplin Gallery, 464 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-9843, through Jan. 2. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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In a Flash: A fine line divides art that’s light-handed from art that’s lightweight, and Jack Pierson has never let the risk of the latter detract from his pursuit of the former. At Regen Projects, a new suite of ethereal color photographs shows the New York-based artist to be more concerned with the slippery pleasures of prettiness than the heavy-duty effects of beauty.

Fleeting stimulation outweighs long-lasting impact in Pierson’s nine light-saturated prints, each of which begins and ends with the blurriness of firsthand experience. Nearly all of his deceptively vacuous photographs focus on luminous hot spots caused by an amateurish use of electronic flashes and the blinding brightness of overexposed film.

Shot at night, the clearest image depicts a picturesque bridge illuminated by blurry lights, as if seen through tears or in a light rainfall, the kind favored by melodramatic movies. Another image recalls Kenneth Noland’s stripe-paintings, except that Pierson’s version is so filled with soft pastels and glittery twinkle that it couldn’t possibly carry the weight of traditional abstraction. For their parts, a vertical print of a lushly colored Dumpster stands in as a tacky rehash of a painting by Mark Rothko; the glint of a gold card serves as a substitute Jules Olitski; and the glare in a dirty pane of glass could be a poor second cousin of a canvas by Larry Poons.

In Pierson’s photographs, the impulses that drive formalist abstraction are no different from the desire to catch a fleeting reflection off a starlet’s trailer or in the front window of a porno theater. Committed to the idea that life’s best moments happen too fast to be seen clearly--much less to be grasped firmly--his seemingly unfinished close-ups of shiny, highlighted surfaces insist that indistinctness and immediacy go hand in hand, despite old-fashioned notions about the clarity and distinction of true facts.

* Regen Projects, 629 N. Almont Drive, West Hollywood, (310) 276-5424, through Nov. 28. Closed Sundays and Mondays.