Small wonders from a regal era

“Treasures of a Nation: Indian Miniatures from the 17th Century to the 19th Century” is a terrific introduction to an art form rarely seen in Los Angeles galleries. At Roth Horowitz, Ferrini & Biondi, nearly 50 paintings, six books, a map and a board game invite viewers into a world where power and pleasure go hand in hand.

In terms of subject matter, nothing distinguishes the lives of the kings, princes and princesses in these pictures from people who wield power today. The topics -- sex, war and leisure -- were as much a part of Mughal court life as they are a part of American soap operas and Mexican telenovelas. But the details are different and worth savoring.

The sexual gymnastics in the first five works are less fascinating than what is painted in the backgrounds: a rapturous landscape, a trio of towers, a perspective-twisting view of a palace and a bedroom stuffed to the ceiling with lavishly patterned fabrics. The fifth work depicts a couple adept at multitasking: With limbs twisted like a pretzel, she calmly plays a guitar while he stares off into space, the picture of laid-back serenity.

The other works that feature women show them hanging out with their girlfriends. Some while away hot afternoons, listening to music as they chat with servants. Others stroll in manicured gardens or toss snacks to pampered pets. Still others try out new hairstyles, losing themselves in daydreams as they gaze into hand-held mirrors.

The men head out on horseback to hunt wild boar or brandish swords, spears, guns and bows -- always ready for warfare. Although Prithvi Raj, the king of Delhi, and a pair of Jodhpur noblemen ride alone, most are accompanied by well-dressed retinues carrying everything from umbrellas to banners and musical instruments.

One of the largest paintings presents the royal procession of Lakhpatji, who smokes a water pipe as he rides an elephant surrounded by 13 mounted warriors and 27 footmen. Even his assistants have assistants. The complexion and dress of the one who carries hot embers for the pipe carrier reveal a highly stratified society.

Real pearls have been glued around Lakhpatji’s neck and to the tips of the feathers in his headdress, attesting to great wealth and even greater attention to detail. And a sky full of peacocks, flying along with the parade, implies that its ranks are a part of the natural order of things, in harmony with the cosmos.

The depictions of palace life -- as an orderly beehive of efficient activity -- drive this point home. But what’s most fascinating about the show is the sense of fatalism its images embody. Nearly everyone pictured goes about their activities as if they weren’t doing anything special or even particularly memorable.

That, paradoxically, is the biggest difference between its 200- to 400-year-old works and the present. Today, most of us (and not just the powerful) tend to behave as if every little thing that happens to us were a big drama -- one that deserves a larger audience via snapshots or e-mail dispatches. Part of the pleasure of this satisfying exhibition is that it gives viewers a chance to stand back from modern life’s overwrought self-involvement.

Roth Horowitz, Ferrini & Biondi, 8446 Melrose Place, (323) 782-4950, through March 4. Closed Sundays.

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When the abstract and figurative mix

When Gerhard Richter began painting both abstractly and figuratively, his goal was to make the most powerful works possible by any means necessary. Paradoxically, the lesson learned from his dual oeuvre is that it’s OK for an artist to paint abstractly or figuratively -- as long as the two styles don’t mix in individual works.

Cecily Brown’s new oils on linen make short work of this conservative shoring up of the distinctions between two types of image-making. At Gagosian Gallery, 11 large paintings throw open the doors to wild possibilities by melding abstraction and figuration in mutant stews that will do almost anything to get your attention and keep you interested.

Brown’s gooey pictures fall into four groups: abstract landscapes, realistic nudes, fleshy red ones and sexy black ones. These categories are not exclusive.

Most of Brown’s works fit into at least two. For the New York painter (who was born in London in 1969), categories are what contemporary painting starts off with, not where it ends up.

Her abstract landscapes include loads of freewheeling brushwork, and out of those splashy smears fragmented figures often emerge. Paintings like “Funny Cry Happy” and “Figures in a Landscape 1” resemble the love children of Willem de Kooning’s ferocious women and Joan Mitchell’s tortured lyricism.

But what’s most remarkable about Brown’s queasy paintings is that their images drift in and out of focus. Usually, once you determine that swirls of paint depict something, it’s difficult to go back to seeing them abstractly. (The same is true of clouds; when someone points out that one looks like a ship or Lincoln’s profile, it’s nearly impossible to see it as an indescribable shape.) In contrast, Brown’s vigorous brushwork absorbs her figurative elements, creating a kind of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t magic.

Her realistic nudes lack this shifty dynamic. They struggle, only somewhat successfully, to make up for it with blurry sensuality. Sometimes awkwardness signals urgency. At other times it’s just clunky -- neither lurid nor lovely.

“Red Painting 1” resembles an abstract landscape seen through a red filter. “Red Painting 2” casts a wary glance at Philip Guston, filtering his meaty cartoons through a ham-fisted rendition of Cubism. Both treat painting as an art that includes everything plus the kitchen sink. Unresolved yet promising, their eager enthusiasm is oddly endearing.

Brown’s two black paintings are among her most impressive. Each depicts a woman lying in bed beneath an expanse of midnight blackness interrupted by smudges of gray and hot flashes of color. The women’s pale beige flesh combines the gaseous quality of Francis Bacon’s figures with the haunted pallor of Edouard Manet’s stiff sitters.

Playing fast and loose with art-historical precedents, Brown brings a lot of life into the present. At the heart of her carnal works is the wisdom that when it comes to art, confusion provides a better point of departure than knowledge, and that general categories get in the way of painting’s peculiar pleasures.

Gagosian Gallery, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 271-9400, through March 15. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Landscapes down to the basics

At L.A. Louver Gallery, 14 new black-and-white landscapes by British painter John Virtue strip pictures down to their bare essentials: blunt contrasts between light and dark, explosive energy and utter stillness. Comparisons to Franz Kline’s abstractions are inevitable but misleading.

Where the American Abstract Expressionist used a similar palette to create works with no direct references to the visible world, Virtue paints pictures that let viewers get their bearings with a quick glance at the horizon line. And where Kline locked his compositions so securely into place that they seem to be under immense external pressure, Virtue leaves more breathing room in his images, which not only appear to recede into deep space but seem to expand outward.

This is most evident in his four page-size paintings, each of which has the authority and impact of a work measured in feet, not inches. Silhouettes of recognizable objects add to the sense of familiarity, as do consistent shifts in scale. Yet Virtue’s landscapes are not the sort of paintings that invite pleasant reveries or idle daydreams.

Still, they aren’t ominous or brooding either. They bristle with anxious energy, creating the impression of being grounded in a ferocious visual acuity that doesn’t suffer fools.

In the U.S., it’s often said that paintings by Pollock, Rothko, Newman and Still are surrogates for the sublime landscape of the West. This goes a long way in explaining why Virtue’s paintings look out of place here. For abstractions, they’re too representational. For landscapes, they’re too spartan. They do not fit into an American tradition.

Virtue’s compositions locate a viewer in a similarly in-between space -- not far enough away to get an overall view of the whole, nor in close enough to feel as if you’re on intimate terms with what’s depicted. Most are cropped fairly tightly around solitary trees. Leapfrogging a continent and a couple of centuries, Virtue’s bold pictures have roots running all the way back to Japanese landscapes painted by Zen masters.

L.A. Louver Gallery, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-4955, through Feb. 22. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

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Delicacy in steel and aluminum

Four years ago, William Dwyer exhibited a breakthrough body of work. At Kiyo Higashi Gallery, five new pieces continue to mine this vein, refining his formal inventions.

The materials Dwyer uses -- Cor-ten steel and industrial aluminum -- suggest he’s a sculptor. So do the techniques he employs: cutting and welding. The results of his labors, however, look like abstract paintings.

Each is a dense rectangle of rich color that sparkles with shifting highlights and dissolves into velvety shadows. More important, each functions like an abstract painting, drawing your eye into a space so mysterious that it raises intriguing questions about its relationship to the real world -- and your place in both.

Dwyer begins with a sheet of metal 1/16 of an inch thick. After cutting the sheet into 1/2-inch-wide strips, he cuts them again lengthwise, this time abandoning the efficiency of straight lines in favor of whimsical zigzags. Using a high-tech device that allows him to work freehand, he slices the metal as if driven by the desire to go from one end to the other by the longest route possible.

Unlike most painters, who build their surfaces by layering one coat atop another, Dwyer builds his surfaces by laying strips of metal next to one another, their jagged edges facing forward. Clamping them in a vise, he then welds them together, one at a time.

This takes a lot of time. Sixteen strips add up to only an inch. A foot consumes 192. On average, Dwyer uses 350 strips for a “painting,” which is between 16 and 25 inches wide and 24 to 30 inches tall.

The irregularly toothed surfaces reflect light and cast shadows in patterns that appear to be moving. The two steel works, spray-painted flat black, recall both Louise Nevelson’s abstract sculptures from the 1950s and advanced digital technology. Compressing loads of information (not to mention time and space) into compact dimensions, they make room for the imagination.

Dwyer’s three aluminum pieces are even more fanciful. Their surfaces capture faint shades of pink and green, which soften their sharp contrasts and warm their icy tints without diminishing their precision. They appear to melt into pools of atmospheric color. Metal never looked more delicate, nor monochrome painting more fluid.

Kiyo Higashi Gallery, 8332 Melrose Ave., (323) 655-2482, through March 1. Closed Sundays and Mondays.