Banal ideas give way to great art

Roy Lichtenstein’s abstract paintings at Gagosian Gallery offer an eloquent argument against the seemingly sensible idea that great art comes from great ideas. Just the opposite is true of the Pop artist’s “Perfect and Imperfect” series, which begins with an idea so simplistic that it can only be described as dumb.

The exhibition’s 14 canvases and 20 drawings follow the same recipe. Start with a rectangle, either horizontal or vertical. Pick a point on its perimeter and draw a diagonal line to another side. Without picking up your pencil, do this again. And again and again, from five to 12 times. The last line must take you back to the starting point.

Then fill in most of the spaces between the lines. Use solid colors, diagonal stripes or dots.

The only difference between Lichtenstein’s “Perfect” and “Imperfect” works is that the latter include a triangle or two that extend beyond the edge of the original rectangle. This little gesture transforms an ordinary four-sided canvas into a shaped painting. It also suggests that Lichtenstein (1923-1997) got carried away -- that his ricocheting pencil went too fast to stop before breaking out of the image.

That’s an illusion. These paintings are among the most controlled of his exceptionally deliberate oeuvre. He made three in 1978; the rest are from 1986-88. (Nearly all were borrowed from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and are not for sale.) They embody such a surplus of linear mastery, coloristic nuance and formal refinement that they turn a dumb idea into a springboard to experiences of joyous exuberance.

There’s nothing unsophisticated about the pleasures they deliver. In many, buoyancy, verve and clarity pirouette around each other, bouncing your eye around the picture plane with more animated energy than a movie jam-packed with special effects.

To see Lichtenstein’s drawings (made with colored pencils on ordinary sheets of graph paper) alongside his paintings is to see his mind in action. Designs are refined, compositions balanced and contrasts sharpened. Only a handful of his studies match the paintings executed from them. The rest reveal changes he made as he translated his dynamic patterns from paper to canvas, adjusting the thickness of a line, altering the color of a triangle or shifting the angle of a shape’s edge.

There’s a flexibility to his art that suggests he loves rules for the exceptions they make possible. One of the most fascinating pieces is one of the “Perfect” paintings, made of sheets of patterned fabric he stitched together. It’s the only one in which Lichtenstein’s line changes direction in the middle of the image, not once but twice. In three others, a gentle arc appears, throwing a curve of relaxation into the otherwise straightforward geometry.

In a newly expanded upstairs gallery (designed by Richard Meier & Partners) stands a small sculpture. Bringing Lichtenstein’s acrobatic lines off the wall and into the same space viewers occupy, this piece of steel punctuates a magnificent exhibition by looking as if it, too, is about to make a gravity-defying leap.

Gagosian Gallery, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 271-9400, through Dec. 7. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

*

Monumental paintings, done with a light touch

Sean Scully’s massive paintings, some of which are as big as the walls in most homes, tower over viewers with seemingly monumental authority. But there’s something intimate about the 57-year-old painter’s abstract compositions, each of which is made up of rectangular slabs of warm color stacked atop one another like blocks of concrete. These approachable, unexpectedly forgiving works use the larger-than-life-size scale of architecture to make a place for sensitivity, delicacy and loveliness -- typically feminine attributes that often embarrass artists who are afraid they’ll make fools of themselves if they don’t put on a tough front.

At L.A. Louver Gallery, Scully’s first solo show on the West Coast in 10 years includes six works on paper, three suites of photographs, eight oils on linen and an enormous four-part painting. “Four Dark Mirrors” doesn’t dominate the main gallery so much as suffuse the stark space with sensuous color and rhythmic movement.

Each of its four parts is a diptych that measures 11 by 8 feet. Each half contains from four to seven alternating horizontal bands of two rich hues, such as navy blue and gold, crimson and ivory, or deep forest green and silvery white. The striped sleeves of rugby jerseys come to mind, as does the luxuriant palette of tastefully renovated Old World hotels.

But what’s most impressive about Scully’s huge painting is the up-and-down thrust it sets into motion. Imagine the pistons of an eight-cylinder engine slowed down to a glacial pace and you’ll have a sense of the steady movement pulsing through the painting. To stand back and take it all in is to see that the Irish painter has transformed right-angled geometry into fluid, serpentine swaying.

From up close, each block of color’s messy edges come into focus. So do the bright layers of under-painting that peek through the gaps and the sweeping strokes of Scully’s brush, which he appears to have used in the manner of a house painter racing to finish before the rain starts. (Upstairs, a series of photographs depicts the exteriors of weathered buildings in Merida, Mexico, again linking Scully’s abstractions to the labor of house painters.) But his work never feels slapdash. Nor does it create the impression that you can see it in a hurry.

On the contrary, his unfussy style embodies the casual confidence that an individual brushstroke will not make or break a painting. This attitude is also apparent in five watercolors and a big pastel drawing, which emphasize the liquid, even atmospheric quality of Scully’s art.

Likewise, his single-panel paintings soften the swagger of gestural abstraction with the everyday regularity of getting the job done. Never precious, they give form to a kind of workaday relaxation, of falling into a rhythm that produces wholes greater than the sum of their parts. Although Scully is often made out to be a heavyweight painter, the best thing about his works is their light touch.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Nov. 30. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

*

A California artist who broke the rules

Peter Voulkos is one of the most important artists to have come out of California. His ceramic sculptures revolutionized a medium, transformed art’s relationship to craft (not to mention its relationship to the rest of the world) and still influence generations of artists. Almost single-handedly, Voulkos (1924-2002) put California on the international art map as a place where the rules do not apply.

At Galerie Yoramgil, visitors step into this world. It’s a place where fearlessness and creativity are at home -- where vigorous thrusts and muscular moves thrive alongside delicate touches and quiet refinement. The small gallery is filled almost to overflowing with 33 works made over the last 50 years.

Two large abstract paintings, “Big Bang” (1958) and “Passing Red” (1959), nearly cover adjacent walls. Their rugged surfaces, which resemble asphalt-covered roads ripped asunder by volcanic activity, form a charged backdrop for the sculptures, vessels, plates and prints that rest on pedestals, stand on the floor or hang on the other walls.

A long shelf on the back wall displays 11 tabletop pieces from the early 1950s, including stoneware jugs, vases and bowls. These gorgeously glazed works reveal Voulkos’ keen eye for elegance and grace, along with his love of funky interruptions and unpretentious whimsy.

Each of the next three decades is represented by only a few pieces, but they’re stunning examples of Voulkos’ plate-like sculptures. These round slabs of clay, which have been punched, torn and abraded, look like the ancient ancestors of garbage-can lids or the tops of caldrons used in industrial-strength kitchens. The holes and bullet-shaped ceramic plugs in some cause them to resemble human faces or the masks of oracles.

The largest sculpture is “King’s Chamber” (1992), a 3-foot-tall mass of reddish copper clay that’s both phallic and feminine, as squat as a fireplug and infinitely more mysterious. A chimney emerges from its stupa-shaped body, suggesting a prehistoric kiln in which objects are subjected to hellish temperatures and regal ideas are forged. That’s what Voulkos did throughout his career, creating a legendary body of work whose sensuous intelligence still sets the standard by which other works are judged.

Galerie Yoramgil, 319 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 275-8130, through Dec. 15. Closed Mondays.

*

Women lost in their multimedia reveries

“Girl on Girl” is a playful grab bag of paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs that artist Sherin Guirguis organized by sending an e-mail to women whose work she liked and inviting them to bring whatever they were working on. With a higher percentage of pieces worth looking at than most group shows, the 19-artist exhibition at Miller Durazo Contemporary Artists Projects demonstrates that, when it comes to art, talent is more important than management.

In an art world increasingly administered by bureaucrats and curators who think they’re competing with the entertainment industry, that’s refreshing -- and a little rebellious.

Most of the works in Guirguis’ laissez-faire exhibition highlight one of two types of devotion. The first involves long hours of labor dedicated to getting a piece finished with sufficient polish. These include Audra Weaser’s sculpted paintings, Mikette Miller’s nearly monochrome photograph and Caroline Clerc’s Space Age sculpture that isn’t afraid of being mistaken for the centerpiece of a fabulously decorated table.

The second group gives form to various obsessions. Based in the fantasies of their makers, these scrappy works are less committed to painstaking craftsmanship than to the pleasurable rhythms of repetitious tasks. Suggesting long hours lost in reverie, they include Alexis Weidig’s spiraling wire tree filled with dozens of tiny red birds, Emily Wagner’s delicately drawn wonderland and Ruby Osorio’s dioramas made of paper cutouts.

The best pieces combine craftsmanship and fantasy. In Pilar Conde’s synthetic wall sculpture, abstract icicles, an oil spill and plastic lily pads depict a world in which artifice is just an extension of the real thing. The same is true of Jane Callister’s painting of ornamental ooze, Amanda Farrar’s gouache depicting an imaginary anteater, Carrie Jenkin’s sleek image of a bikini-clad babe and Alisa Ochoa’s homemade book, in which design tells the story so well that words are obsolete.

On the whole, the exhibition’s loose ends are its strengths. These are works that prefer psychological complications to prepackaged themes.

Miller Durazo Contemporary Artists Projects, 8720 W. Pico Blvd., (310) 652-0057, through Dec. 7. Closed Sunday-Tuesday.