Timeless Tributes

Ronald Reagan’s warmly stoic mug is one of the cavalcade of faces making up the compelling current exhibition, “Faces of Time,” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

That comes as no surprise, this being his place after all. But Reagan’s face, as seen in a single portrait and one with his back to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, is only a small part of the strength of this show, organized by the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.--and probably the finest art exhibit yet seen here.

One tacit message of the show is that Time magazine, founded in 1923, has become a forum for art in a very public place--a newsstand near you--rotating weekly.

Of course, the number of artistic covers in a given year is marginal, but altogether there are plenty of striking images that not only give an overview of the sociocultural parade of faces important to our times, but also give a public showcase to worthy and/or celebrated artists.

Forget, for a minute, the well-known faces on view: Look at the well-known artists behind those views, with the original artworks reproduced for cover art and without the distracting type placed over the art.

Look at Andy Warhol’s blandly cheeky portraits of John Gotti and Michael Jackson, or Philip Pearlstein’s Henry Kissinger.

Inspired by comic strips, Roy Lichtenstein brings his touch, color dots and all, to RFK; Alex Katz offers his deceptively plain style in depicting John Updike; R.B. Kitaj takes on Vladimir Horowitz; and Robert Rauschenberg lends his ragged collage effect in a portrait of Deng Xiaoping. These are modern art icons, granted brief access to the general public’s sight lines.

Portraiture is the goal here, and the artists approach that hoary, challenging task in as many different ways as there are personalities. Boris Chaliapin painted the great, eccentric jazz pianist Thelonious Monk with a reflective gaze, his dark, hunkered intensity set against a bright red backdrop. Bernard Buffet’s Charles de Gaulle is elongated, etched with Gallic pride. The portraits aren’t always about flattery, as seen in the lanky visage of Jeanne Moreau by Ruffino Tamayo, or the shadowy Jesse Helms painting by Alfred Leslie.

Sometimes, the subject’s notable achievements inform the image surrounding the face. Albert Einstein, by Ernest Hamlin, is viewed with an A-bomb cloud in the background, his E=MC2 equation floating in it. Artist Boris Artzybasheff envisions Buckminster Fuller’s head, logically enough, as a multifaceted, geodesic dome.

David Byrne appears in a self-portrait, done as a multi-colored photo collage. Iconoclastic film director David Lynch, as cleverly shot by Gregory Heisler, appears schizoid, one half of his face in clear light, the other in sickly green light, and with an errant eyeball.

One of the finest photographs on display is George Platt Lynne’s clean, empathetic shot, in profile, of Gertrude Stein, with closely cropped hair and a visionary gaze. On the other side of the female spectrum is Raquel Welch, seen in buxom, three-dimensional splendor in Frank Gallo’s sculpture.

Richard Nixon, one of the most familiar faces of the 20th century--and who was one of the stars of the earlier exhibition of presidential portraits in this venue--is curiously absent from the show. He does, however appear as a team player in caricaturist Jack Davis’ lovably goofy “Watergate Breaks Wide Open,” with a circle of finger-pointing suspects enveloping the man who was “not a crook.”

In another anomaly, Roger Brown, the famed contemporary artist who calls La Conchita his part-time home, depicts a different kind of all-American face, the New York skyline. His cover, called “I Love New York” adheres to Brown’s mosaic-like, compartmentalizing charm, with humanity in Gotham viewed like vignettes of love and death, anger and joy, fame and anonymity. The faces come in the form of tiny silhouetted components in an impersonal labyrinth.

It makes sense in this context. Manhattan is Time’s home, the perch from which it surveys the world. And art is in the neighborhood: the Museum of Modern Art is a short walk from the Time-Life Building. May they continue to consider reality, artfully.

DETAILS

“Faces of TIME,” through Nov. 14 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 40 Presidential Drive, Simi Valley. Gallery hours: daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 522-2977.

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