Just Deserts

Glowing, glowing, gone. At the Laguna Art Museum, a seductive show of early 20th century landscapes, “Afterglow in the Desert: The Art of Fernand Lungren,” presents the American West of our fabled past--vast and sun-splashed, devoid of malls and megaplexes, full of hope. It remains on view through March 25.

Organized by the University Art Museum at UC Santa Barbara, “Afterglow” is an homage to an aesthetically wide-ranging painter.

In all, it is an eye-dazzling exhibit.

The show’s title refers to a striking oil on canvas of the same name, an undated desert scene that is top-heavy with a dense, yellow-gold sky.

Most of the 55 paintings on view are long on shimmering sunset colors and heroic images of unspoiled wilderness that sometimes seem close to cliched.

But Lungren’s signature sense of space--seen in the low, sharp horizons of “Moonrise at the White Mesa, Arizona” (1904)--adds a fresh tweak to what feels like familiar myth. His intriguing spatial tension, plus a pearlescent, haunting color palette, make “Afterglow” a rewarding view.

Born in Maryland in 1857, Lungren lived in Santa Barbara from 1906 until his death in 1932. A self-taught artist, he worked as a magazine illustrator for three decades, beginning in 1879.

Based in Ohio and New York, he traveled often to the Southwest in the 1890s, painting scenes for calendars and brochures published by the Santa Fe Railway. From 1899-1901 he lived in London, where he painted shadowy night scenes of the city.

“Afterglow” is a good sample of this early work. Mostly, it seems stiffer and less passionate than Lungren’s later images.

Lungren moved to Santa Barbara, and his love affair with the wilds of California and Arizona, with Death Valley and the Mojave, persisted until his death.

These stark desert vistas are devoid of human presence. They have an arresting, out-of-time aura.

Some are about as close to abstraction as a landscape can be and still be called a landscape painting.

Not all of Lungren’s oeuvre is graceful. He did better with sunshine or clear night skies. His clouds look crude and clunky in “Pink Cloud” and “A Cloudburst,” as if they were frills he grudgingly forced himself to add.

Among his best pieces is the nearly monochrome oil, “Sands of Silence.” Its dusky pinks conjure the inside of a seashell. The painting swallows your eyes with its stillness.

And “Starlight in the Desert” glows all the way across the gallery with tiny, twinkling white dots on a midnight blue ground.

In fact, it’s worth standing way back to peruse many of Lungren’s paintings. They shine fiercely from a distance, as if from within.

SHOW TIMES

“Afterglow in the Desert: The Art of Fernand Lungren.” Daily (except Wednesdays), Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $4 to $5; children 12 and younger admitted free. Free on Tuesdays. Ends March 25. (949) 494-8971.