Truth Theorum

Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Is perception reality? When it comes to art, no and yes, respectively.

“I suppose artists can say ‘This work is meant to be understood in this way,’ ” said John Baldessari, California’s nationally known conceptual artist. “But there’s always going to be somebody who didn’t hear those words. And even if they did, they might say, ‘Sorry, that’s not the way I see it.’ ”

Works by Baldessari are among those of 45 artists in a new Laguna Art Museum show inspired by notions of immutable truth versus fluid interpretations of the world.

“Life Lessons: How Art Can Change Your Life,” opening Saturday, showcases for the first time artwork amassed by Judith E. Vida and Stuart Spence, which ArtNews magazine for much of this decade has listed annually among the 200 “Top International Collections.”

The Sunland couple, also known as the Spences, began collecting art in 1972, about the time Vida, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, began her psychoanalytic training. Back then, the field was divided over competing ideologies, said Vida, who managed to find reinforcement for her own theoretical demilitarized zone in one of Baldessari’s text-based works.

“Painting for Kubler” (1966-68) paraphrases a passage written in 1962 by pioneering art historian George Kubler, which, at its core, debunks the notion of a single, static conception of what’s what.

The idea of psychoanalytic theory, as well as life, as ever-evolving appealed to Vida, a past president of the Southern California Psychiatric Society and a founding member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.

“What is new and what is old [is] continuously being rethought in relation to one another,” she says in an Acoustiguide recorded for the exhibit. “Since 1973, when we acquired [Baldessari’s painting], this piece has become our family motto.”

Indeed, even the way the Spences interpret the works they own has changed.

“Meanings and understandings are always being generated, the tapestry is always being woven and unwoven and regenerated over time as we get to know the artists and sustain relationships,” Vida said in a recent phone interview.

In this spirit of fluid truth, the following are interpretations by Vida and the artists who made the works in the show, curated by museum director Bolton Colburn.

Vida’s comments are excerpted mostly from the Acoustiguide to the show, which grew out of a lecture she gave at the museum in January. The artists, all Los Angeles County residents, most in their 30s or early 40s, spoke about their works in recent telephone interviews.

* “Corrected Stonehenge” (1984), John Baldessari. A cropped movie still shows two men in dark glasses standing in front of some of the stones in England’s Stonehenge, across the top of which the artist has drawn a thin magenta line.

Vida: “Perfectionism is the idea that there is another way to be for a thing or a person than the way it already is. That other way is better.”

Baldessari: “It’s about correcting Stonehenge with a straight line. I’m sure whoever [built it] thought it was perfect. I’m just entering into someone else’s creation, I’m not saying now it’s better, [I’m just] seeing how it would look [differently]. The men in dark glasses imply a certain kind of gangsterism, of violating something that’s been around a long time.”

* “Thou Still Unravish’d Bride of Quietness” (1987), John Boskovich. A photographic montage including imagery of the artist.

Vida: “The title comes from Keats’ poem, ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn.’ The floating, pajama-clad figure of the artist above the scenes of a seance suggests the ghosts of unknown, unidentified history that [disturbs] rest, that [makes] sleep elusive.”

Boskovich: “It’s a romantic piece, but it’s more about dislocated romance, that’s why the vases are flying. Maybe it’s about romance that’s been estranged, . . . which has always been a recurring theme of mine. It also connoted that sleep was never a pleasant experience for me.”

* “Inconsolable” (1987), Meg Cranston. A small piece of delicate pink fabric is worn away to show parts of the green fabric beneath it.

Vida: “There is no more powerful picture of hurt, injury, trauma than this. Cranson rubbed a brick over two layers of silk. You can’t fix the damage. But its sheer awful beauty suggests that you can’t just throw it away, either.”

Cranston: “This is a metaphor for when tragedy strikes. Some things are so severe that you’re inconsolable, like that fabric can never be rewoven, it’s just a hole, and I guess I feel that’s part of being a realistic adult. There are things in life that can never be made right. As a culture, we’re uncomfortable with that, we think there must be a therapy or a solution, or if there’s something [tragic] in your youth, you can overcome it. Some things cannot be overcome. If [the work] were a garment, you’d have to wear that garment with a hole in it.”

* “Missing” (1993) Chris Wilder. Wilder fashioned a photograph of himself at age 12 wearing a Snoopy costume his mother made into a poster for a missing dog.

Vida: “Grief is as fresh and immediate as a poster tacked onto a telephone pole--like the waves of grief itself, when one comes down, another goes up.”

Wilder: “The child in the poster, me, is in disguise, so in a weird way the piece is about the loss of my innocence. The poster is dated Halloween, 1969, which was the same year as the Manson murders, and it was the end of the ‘60s, this optimistic period, and the year of Altamont [a Bay Area auto speedway], where Hells Angels [members] beat up the crowd at a [Rolling] Stones concert with pool cues.”

* “Big Girl” (1998), Corey Stein. Made of satin, this full-figured, life-size woman is sewing her vagina shut. Stein, an epileptic, was horrified as a child by a then-reputable science book’s assertion that epileptics, as she quotes, could be “sterilized” against their will.

Vida: “The big girl has to assume responsibility for managing her own vulnerability, and yet, the culture (family and others) expects her to remain open and receptive. This powerful piece . . . [makes] an aggressive, defensive, self-protective response and at the same time showing how much it hurts.”

Stein: “It’s a piece from my series ‘Fixing Yourself,’ and a pun on the quote about sterilization from that book--you know, fixing a cat or a dog. So she is sewing herself shut before the doctors can take anything out or put anything in.

* “Sketchbook” (early 1990s), Russell Crotty. One of about 100 actual sketchbooks made by the artist, known for obsessive scribblings of everything from surfers such as himself to smokestacks.

Vida: “This artist’s repetitive, closely observed drawings show how much more there is to see when we get totally involved and start paying attention in minute detail. Maybe that’s how you read waves too.”

Crotty: “The books are semi-autobiographical and fairly escapist. I’ve done them since I was a kid in the hospital with diabetes. I create characters and places. The drawings aren’t like comics, they’re much more gestural, obsessive, with a lot of repetitive imagery and recurring places, which are sort of based on real places. I’ve been surfing since ‘65, when I was a little kid, and it’s a very obsessive practice, like bird watchers, or amateur astronomers. You have to know the waves to ride them.”

* “Life Lessons: How Art Can Change Your Life,” Saturday through Jan. 3 at Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. Runs concurrently with “This Side of Eden: Images of Steinbeck’s California” and “Laguna Beach Impressionism.” Hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $4-$5. (949) 494-6531.