Sculptor holds herself to the highest standards

“I want to say things in a contemporary voice,” says La Cañada sculptor Cindy Jackson, “but have the skills and craft to put it over.”

In this era of post-post-modernist art, standards of art and craft — let alone truth and beauty — barely exist. Personal prerogative and subjectivity are often the covers used by the untalented to hide their lack of imagination and ability. Representational painting and sculpting have been declared dead many times in the last 70 years and far too often substandard work offers the weak rationale of: It’s art because I say it is.

A funny thing happened, though, on the way to the funeral. Representational art has defied a determined military-industrial art complex and has thrived anew. Artists, both aspiring and established, have flourished in spite of an art establishment every bit as hide-bound as the subjects it regularly skewers. Whether it’s Eric Fischl, Paula Rego or Jenny Saville, the sanctioned art world seems to always have to make room for a pictorial painter.

A good yardstick of that resurgence is the California Art Club’s 104th Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, which opened this weekend at USC’s Fisher Art Gallery. The show hosted by the Pasadena-based California Art Club acts as a magnet for contemporary traditionalists around the country. While the annual event is not immune from trite subject matter (expect some seascapes and homages to the California Impressionists), it’s always a revelation to see how the truly creative can make vital statements with established elements and formats.

One of the entrants in this year’s show is Jackson. Her subject matter is explored through the human figure, and she often works in a large format. Two years ago, her startling “Yo Yo Man” greeted visitors to the Juried Exhibition: a compressed male figure suspended in the air on a cord.

Her membership in the C.A.C. is a form of community but, for Jackson, it offers something more. “All the people there have such good draftsmanship,” she maintains, “and sound craft to their work that it makes me set my own bar pretty high. If I was off by myself, it would be harder for me to keep my own standards so high. This is a bunch of very fine artists and I’m forced to stay up to that level. I’m a part of another group of artists whose work is far more abstract and Expressionist than what you find in the California Art Club and no one there cares if my work is sloppy or not.”

In some ways, Jackson represents the far reaches of the C.A.C.’s membership scope — both in thematic concerns and mode of execution.

“I’m putting in a piece from my ‘Always Wanting, Never Enough’ series,” Jackson says by phone, describing her offering in the show. “They’re two intertwined figures, cast in urethane. The idea was that they’re a male and female couple: they’re having a hard time with themselves and with each other.”

The figures are unmistakably accurate in their anatomical rendering and proportions, yet Jackson has taken a certain amount of Expressionist license by enlarging and exaggerating certain aspects. As she often does, she expresses stress and even tortuous emotion just through her physical articulation. These figures are roasting in a kind of self-made hell. “I call them my rapturous men,” Jackson advises. The daughter of a Pentecostal minister, she knows the sound of talking in tongues. To add a twist to the piece, the figures are covered in Louis Vuitton and Gucci emblems.

“It talks about our modern distractions,” she notes. “I’m talking about people who buy their way into something, as opposed to achieving something. It’s amazing to watch this society drown in consumerism.”

What: 104th Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, including sculptor Cindy Jackson

Where: Fisher Art Gallery, USC, 823 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Through April 19.

More info: (213) 740-4561, https://www.californiaartclub.org

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KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and art for Marquee.