Whispering Walls

By sheer celebrity body count, the current exhibition at the Carnegie Art Museum is among the most star-studded shows ever contained in these walls. Among the artists on exhibit are Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly and even iconic composer-thinker John Cage, all important figures in the evolution of American art over the past several decades.

But wait: lest the visitor build expectations of an eye-opening sensory spectacle, take note of the show’s title, “Eminent Delights: Images of Time, Space and Matter,” whose cerebral ring gives an idea of the subtle dimensions at work here.

The show, culled from the University of Arizona Museum of Art’s collection, consists mostly of conceptually minded prints, from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, that whisper rather than scream.

This art, light as it is on the eye and brain, is about an important move in the art world, away from representation in the traditional sense and from the romantic bravura of the painting-as-sacred-object ideal. Instead, the artists deal with a reproductive medium and areas of arcane and philosophical interest.

Curator Peter S. Briggs writes that this work hinges on “the relationships between presence and absence, the process and passage of time, the limits of space and the dynamics of shape and color.” Put another way, understatement and unhurried exploration--of time, space and materials--are standards here.

Sometimes, the art here runs contrary to the established reputation of artists as we’ve come to know them. James Rosenquist, the reformed billboard painter known in the art history books for his bold, winkingly ironic contributions to Pop Art, veers into a more surreal zone in 1974’s “Alphabet Avalanche.” Here, freely associative imagery, including a beach umbrella, a fan and a staircase, are juxtaposed in an essentially abstract relationship.

Rauschenberg and Johns were critical cogs in the intellectual revolution in art in the ‘60s, as they danced wildly between art-making and the “real world” with assemblages and collages. The same attitude appears in what they bring to the more hands-off medium of printmaking. Johns’ 1971 work “Fragments--According to What--Coat Hanger and Spoon” boasts a title like a poem. Its interweaving of subject matter questions the reality of the scene, vis-a-vis the reality of the artwork.

Rauschenberg’s “Booster” series is based on images clipped from newspapers and then distorted, its specificity rubbed out and turned into pulpy putty. The effect reduces hard-copy reality to ghostly after-images, the stuff of an artist’s studio floor and drawing board.

Though known for his dynamic and decidedly physical pieces, Frank Stella’s prints take advantage of the flatness of perspective and presentation. His first print, “Star of Persia,” from 1962, is a simple symmetrical snowflake design, contrasting with a piece from a decade later, “Sharpville,” with its delicate echoes of ever-smaller squares.

Lusher image-making appears, in disparate ways. Frances Whitehead’s “Conclusus III,” with its precisely rendered and diaphanous layers and vague nods to classicism, is one of the most visually beautiful works here. Cheeky sensualist June Wayne goes the direction of neo-psychedelia in “Between,” a wild-hued image that suggests cosmic debris and flower power flamboyance revisited.

The apt phrase “nonvicarious art” is used by James Turell, whose work ever so gently twists perception and basks in imaginary space. A different sort of imaginary space appears in Bruce Conner’s lithographs, almost mandala-like images, painstakingly textured with tiny markings and detailed patterns that recall fingerprints.

Ellsworth Kelly is represented by works of disarming economy, whether simple wavy line drawings of flowers or the elemental colored shapes of “Orange and Green.”

As with many pieces here, what’s missing is important to its message and/or end effect. That’s certainly true of the works by John Cage, whose visual art was as deceptively plain and direct as his musical ideas. “9 Stones” and “Where There is Where There-Urban Landscape” depict an ethereal Cage-ian world in which references to the concrete “outside” world appear in ambiguous newsprint, drawn in a careful, almost musical, balance with the dull murmur of smudges and a few raw circles.

Cage, like most of the artists in the upstairs gallery exhibit, walks and creates lightly but has some compelling ideas to impart. So goes this star-studded show, almost soft in its immediate impact, but brushing across some ideas that have helped to shake up complacency in the realm of art.

Magical Realm: It’s a treat to see a gallery full of the creatures residing in the paintings of county resident Christine Brennan. The show, in the Carnegie’s downstairs room devoted to area artists, brims with the signature enchantment we’ve come to expect from Brennan’s work, which seems to exist in a self-imagined kingdom between children’s literature and a parallel village in a private dream world.

Her otherworldly menagerie is conveyed in a series of new paintings sometimes accented by gold leaf, with “life-size” creatures cut out and set up in the middle of the gallery like stage props. Her characters, not quite of this planet but not descendant from standard alien lore, either, are depicted with Brennan’s evolving panache. Her brood is half theatrical, half innocent and wholly enchanting.

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DETAILS

“Eminent Delights: Images of Time, Space and Matter” and Christine Brennan’s “Imaginary Friends” run through May 16 at Carnegie Art Museum, 424 South C St., in Oxnard. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thurs. and Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun.; 385-8157.

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Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.